Episode 19: Donna Harris | Coaching, Self-Care & Upcoming Human Assignment Projects
44 mins
This week we welcome/introduce Donna Harris, the Human Assignment co-creator, to join the show. Donna has been a previous guest with Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood and will now join as a co-host for most episodes.
A coach at heart, Donna, is continuously intrigued by all types of human performance and what people need to be at their best. Donna has extensive experience in high-performance sport. She is a former All-Canadian athlete in Track and Field. Donna transitioned from athlete to coach and held concurrent roles at the national level as a coach (University of Manitoba) and a sport administrator working full time for various organizations, including Athletics Canada, Athletics Manitoba, and Racquetball Canada. During this time, she started to experience challenges with work/life balance, which led to an illness from stress when her life load was out of control. These experiences, coupled with a decision to walk away from a national team coaching pathway, led Donna to graduate research that uncovered the role that passion, culture, recovery, and connection play in sustaining performance. The research, while rooted in elite sport, has application across many contexts. There were two big takeaways from Donna’s graduate study research that led her to the Human Assignment. The first is the takeaway that there is no such thing as work-life balance, but with awareness and deliberate actions, an effective work-life blend is possible. The second big takeaway was the discovery that we tend to see those around us as one-dimensional. We do not realize that there are several dimensions to the people we interact with every day. When we learn to see people multidimensionally, we can really see them, and when we really see them, we are better able to understand them and connect with them. When this happens, we cannot only better help them be at their best, but we celebrate the holistic human within them.
In this episode, we talk about Donna’s background, her research, family life, and some of our visions for the Human Assignment. We hope you enjoy the show!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or your favourite podcast platform.