What is a London Sport Relationship Manager?

London Sport is recruiting for an additional Relationship Manager. In this blog, Jolyon Whaymand explains why he loves the role and why it's so important for the organisation.

The role of Relationship Manager is hands down the best job at London Sport. I should know – I am lucky enough to have been doing it for the last three years.

It is also by far the most challenging role I’ve ever had, but that’s part of the appeal. The work is never done and there is always someone else to partner with and more to learn.

As Relationship Managers we are distributed across London, working closely with partners in a handful of boroughs each and the role often looks very different in each one of those communities.

We might be simultaneously helping to refine a local authority strategy, offering support and expertise to a faith group about a place-based project and providing local context and connections to a national activity provider.

However, there is a common theme that runs through every project that we are involved with; to work with our partners to better understand and robustly tackle the stubborn inequalities that exist amongst the least active people in London.

As such, we are sometimes required to be generalists, turning our hands to various challenges, without necessarily being experts - at these times we often work closely with our Strategic Advisors or other thematic experts.

As someone who has spent the majority of my career to date working on quite niche projects, imposter syndrome loomed large for me in the early days.

Over time though, I have learned that one of the ways to succeed in this role is to be honest when you don’t know something (people can generally tell anyway!) and to commit to action. This builds vital trust and forms the building blocks of relationships that can thrive in the future.

London Sport has recently unveiled a shiny, new strategy, of which we are all very proud and one of the fundamental principles that we commit to is ‘nothing about us, without us’.

This means no decisions being made that impact our target groups without ensuring that their voices are heard, loud and clear. This necessitates another essential behaviour of a good Relationship Manager – to consult and to be a good listener.

Don’t be fooled though. A Relationship Manager doesn’t spend all of their time running around London, dashing from one partner to the next.

A crucial part of the role is working with colleagues across the organisation to download and share what we are learning in our respective areas to ensure that we are continually developing our understanding of inactivity in London and improving our approaches.

At a very base level, in this sector, we are all agents of behaviour change. As a Relationship Manager, one can often feel this very strongly.

We are offered the opportunity to be part of work that is often ground-breaking for our partners and empowers new, active behaviours and choices, which otherwise might not have existed.

And that’s really exciting! 

London Sport are offering two opportunities to meet members of the Relationship Management team to learn more about the practical side of the role. 

It’s a Q&A session, so please come with questions ready. Email your preferred date (25 Feb, 8.45 to 9.30am or 5 March, 12 to 12.45pm) to attend to hr@londonsport.org.

Read more about the Relationship Manager vacancy here.