When I was growing up sport was a big deal. At school being good at sport was a gateway to, well pretty much anything. If you weren’t good at sports, you could be clever – but that meant Oxford and Cambridge clever. If you weren’t that clever and you weren’t good at sports, you had a problem.

I stood no chance. My first attempt with a cricket ball was better suited to lobbing a hand grenade and the idea of running whilst also controlling a football was a non-starter. This led to many unpleasant years in the playground which ironically did help with Rugby, where running faster than people who want to punch you in the face was ‘all part of the game’.

Things were not looking good. I had to either develop a first-class brain very quickly or find a sport I could succeed in. Oh yes the success part was also key – whoever said “it’s all about taking part” wasn’t in charge of anything in the 1980’s. So, I found Fencing. Was I great – no but neither was anyone else at the time so I could at least survive and make the school team.

After a few years I had got the hang of it, but we still weren’t actually winning anything. I persuaded a couple of friends to have a go, and one of them was good, really good. He was good at a lot of sports, one of those people that can pick up any sport. You know the type – the ones that exclaim “oh its easy once you get the hang of it” as they birdie a par 4 on their first outing with a golf club.

In a matter of months, he was better than me, If I was upset by that, it didn’t last, we were having fun and nothing (for me) beats being part of a winning team. Our enthusiasm was infectious, and we got a few more people to join – they were better than me too (not by as much but still) and I became the ‘encourager-in-chief’ I was always there when they wanted a partner, needed help with kit or any of the technical stuff that I did know.

We became the most successful team in over a decade, won awards and even sent people to compete on a national level.

I was still not a very good fencer, if only there were awards for encouraging.

It was many years later that I led my first business and the philosophy worked again – find people better than me, give them the tools, the environment and the resources they need to do a great job, then become the encourager-in-chief. The business, a travel agency, grew to over £13 million and more importantly the team grew in confidence, became a contributing part of a larger group and we even had some fun on the way.