Leader not in name but in deed is key to success
Nathan Brown | August 3, 2008
ASK anybody about leadership and everyone will have a different description of it. Read textbooks or google the subject and many different explanations come up. Leadership is a term thrown around very loosely and sometimes without much credibility or knowledge behind it.
Leadership in team sport, in AFL football in particular, is no different, it is very ambiguous. Strong leaders as individuals can be very influential but leadership groups, such as we see at all AFL clubs, are even stronger and can lead a team to success or ruin.
The defining aspect of group leadership, in my opinion, is that the leadership group must perform on the ground. You can create good cultures, belief systems, behaviour standards and club trademarks, but if the players setting them don't get a kick, then it can all get lost very easily.
Over two years, we have had two very different styles of leadership programs at Richmond. We have outsourced this — as many clubs have — and used a company called Leading Teams run by Ray McLean who has worked across sports including AFL, rugby union, rugby league, basketball and companies such as Toyota, Sensis and HSBC.
We have also used Stealth Development, a group of Special Operations Group-trained police officers who are as scary as they look. When I found out we were using SOG, I pictured hard bastards who wore tight t-shirts and could do 1000 push-ups without stopping and ate nails for fun. I wasn't disappointed.
Leading Teams is an open and honest evaluation style of leadership where peers can tell you exactly what your weaknesses and strengths are as a footballer and as a person. There is no hiding and no joking, just straight-to-the-point honesty.
Stealth Development ran our leadership program this season. It has been a get-your-hands-dirty approach in which your mental and physical capabilities are broken down and tested to see what you can handle as an individual and as a team and then built back up. Tasks include being dropped in the bush to hunt for food and shelter, not being allowed to use a player's nickname, to swear or walk out of formation. We once ran up Mount Dandenong with bricks in our hands and at the summit a player swore, so we all trudged down to the bottom and ran up again.
As a leadership group, we had to be open and honest but, overall, united. If we were to take a certain path that maybe I didn't agree with, weight of numbers won out and I accept the decision and promote the outcome. In some instances, leadership groups have more power than the senior coach or even the board. The coach sets out the plan, but it is the leadership group that shapes the individual characters within the group and influences the group in a certain direction. Michael Voss led the Brisbane Lions to a hat-trick of flags from 2001 to '03 and is regarded as one of the greatest leaders of the modern era. But only three years before that, in 1998, they finished last on the ladder by a long way. So was Voss — co-captain with Alastair Lynch from 1997 to 2000 — a good leader when the times were tough? I have been told he was putting systems in place for the future with a young leadership group comprising Simon Black, Justin Leppitsch, Nigel Lappin and others.
And we all saw the fruit of that.
The Richmond Football Club finished on the bottom of the ladder in 2007 after an entire pre-season of the most intense leadership program any of us had ever done.
We had set up trademarks and behavioural standards for the whole club to abide by; our leadership around the club was as good as you could ask for.
Yet we were not getting results and becoming frustrated as a result. A year on and we have stuck to the same values, honesty and trademarks we started with, but the big difference is the on-field performance of the leadership group.
I'm not claiming to know everything about leadership, nor I am going to be giving speeches on the topic, but what I do know is that to have success in team sport, your leaders or key people have to perform. This allows the young and emerging players to come along for the ride without too much expectation. Their job is to supply the energy and enthusiasm.
The aim then for these young guys is to learn and carry on the trademarks and behaviours that have been set up.
We, like many teams, have a long way to go to catch Geelong as the superpower of the competition. There's a saying that "the fish rots at the head". The leadership group is the head of the playing group and, therefore, has a huge responsibility.
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