Begin Again

I have spent the first few months of this year with a focus:

“Begin Again”

Hence, I have been relatively quiet in terms of ‘shipping’ my work, but I have been working away, in many ways, trying to practice what I preach.

“To go deep, to go forward”.

Like many, the focus for the past couple of years has been a form of survival. Covid changed everything for everyone, and I have also had cancer. I’ve learnt so much from both experiences, both skillset and mindset, but I wasn’t confident I understood the value of the learnings, and I didn’t want to skip past this opportunity.

I say this understanding that the future is always unknown and unknowable, no matter how much thought and planning we put into it. And recent events, the floods, war in Europe, even the loss of Shane Warne, make me wonder whether taking the time, as I have, is an indulgence, an extravagance.

I have always enjoyed the ‘hard fun’ of setting goals and attempting to match them with capability, but often found my eyes too big for my stomach. This has taught me aspirations might get you going, but understanding who you are, keeps you going.

Design, will always beat discipline.

Idea:

Begin Again

I have used the concept of ‘Begin Again’ for some time, having first come across the concept from a meditation program with neuroscientist, philosopher and best-selling author Sam Harris called “Waking Up”.

It is a practice of bringing yourself back to the present*,* when your thinking becomes distracted, as it inevitably will be. But it’s also a very practical, and often necessary means of hitting the reset button. Your day might not have started well, or a meeting has gone off the rails, or an important conversation lost its way.

‘Begin Again’ is the circuit breaker. We cannot change what has happened, but we can take responsibility for what we do about it, give ourselves the best chance to make the most of the rest of our day, or the time we share together, or even the next ten minutes.

‘Begin Again’.

My system is to pause, and quietly ask myself:

“What does this role/situation/moment expect (or need) of me?”, and it starts with ‘being where your feet are’ followed by the words calm, brave, humble and compassionate. By role, I am referencing the many we play in life – leader, parent, child, sibling, friend, team member, customer, competitor etc; measured in our response to a situation and in the moment.

Good intention is important, but people do not experience your intention, they experience your behaviour, often tested in these moments, the gap between the best and worst of who we are.

But ‘Begin Again’ also has a strategic value, a form of situation analysis, not allowing momentum or the demands made of us to define the direction our life (or our day) takes.

Good strategy, be it your plan for you, your team or your organisation, starts with two ideas:

• Vision Driven

• Values Based

In essence, we are asking two questions

• What’s possible?

• What’s important?

I found myself back in this place from just a few years ago, studying Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, when, on day one, we were asked to grab one sheet of paper, one tube of paint, and a pencil and draw a self-portrait. I remember finishing the exercise, then feeling compelled to turn my Blackwing pencil and erase my eyes, a metaphor for the new horizons that I was opening up, but also the fear that was embedded in this choice, so distant from how I had spent the previous 25 years as a CEO of AFL clubs.

It was ‘Begin Again’ in almost every way, and as I was drawing it, a quote from one of my favourite books came to mind from “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch:

“What do I, alone, truly have to offer?”

I again asked this question as part of my ‘Begin Again’ process as a leadership coach, mentor and teacher (they are all a little bit different):

“What do I, alone, truly have to offer?”

My purpose in the work I now do, is to help leaders answer this question.

In times of great uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, leaders are now expected to create environments that not only achieve strong performance outcomes, but also establish high levels of emotional well-being for those who align their careers, and lives, to the cultures that leaders build. This is the context for both the vision and the values; articulating what is possible while building on what is important.

A question that organisations need to ask themselves is simply “What can our culture overcome?” because inevitably that is what it will be required to do…overcome.

We can only push people as far as the level of trust we have with them, and trust will always precede progress.

Therefore, developing leaders who can navigate complexity is now the strategic priority—and, if done well, a competitive advantage. Beyond developing capability, we need to develop leaders with consciousness, courage, humility and compassion.

I have spent the past few months rebuilding the designCEO leadership learning programmes, that allow leaders to answer this double-barrelled question:

“As a leader, what is the impact I am seeking to make, and the culture I am building to create?”

Any leader who undertakes any of the leadership learning experiences with me will not be asked to do more, but they will certainly be asked to do different as they build out their leadership craft.

It will focus on the idea of design beating discipline, the mindset, habits and identity to create the behaviours that achieve desired outcomes.

The work will include:

• Working with CEOs, leaders and their teams, taking them offsite, possibly into the area I now live, Daylesford and all that it brings, its nature, goodness and folklore, to support their efforts as leaders to ‘begin again’. Having 2-3 days in a different environment, not to review budgets or debate business plans, going deep to go forward, mind, body and (leadership) craft…knowing that it is not about the roles you play, it is what you bring to the roles you play.

The leaders will walk away with a personal leadership philosophy, thinking of leadership as a craft. It will also build an understanding of how they best work together, taking the important steps to build a culture unique to them.

• One-on-one coaching of leaders with the same objectives, again taking them out of their day-to-day environment. Intense learning sessions, allocating a full day, finishing the day with a plan, crafted and personalised, energised by what we have achieved, and what the future now holds.

• Intense virtual Masterclass sessions, accessible to all levels of leadership.

If any of these options interest you, email me on cameron@designCEO.com.au, and we will talk. We will design a program for you, and your organisation or team.

Quote:

”Human beings change through study, habit, and stories.”

David Goggins from his book “You Can’t Hurt Me”

Recommendation:

Michael Willson’s photography.

Capturing a great moment.

…and a timeless song lyric:

Alone with You – Sunnyboys

We can lock away the bad memories together,
Close the doors to the past forever.
Watching you touch,
We’re past this much.

I’m alone with you tonight
I’m alone with you tonight
I’m alone with you tonight

I can’t always remember what I say,
I can’t always take it having to pay
Watching you walk,
You know you’re really attractive.

I’m alone with you tonight

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Easy Tiger

I have tried to define leadership over the years, both as a leadership tradesman and now as a coach, but always seem to end up with a grab-bag of platitudes. I now find it is best to describe the experience of leadership.

Leadership is waking up in the morning, and just as the new day puts its hand out to welcome you and shake you from your dream state, birds chirping, and cracks of sunlight creeping into your dark bedroom, a wave of dread hits you, and you think:

“Fuck.”

Idea:

Easy Tiger

Welcome to leadership, be it day one or year thirty.

For some, this feeling impairs, the morning sun injecting self-doubt and perhaps some self-loathing. For others, after a couple of moments to redirect their emotion, it soon energises, almost grateful, whatever the crisis they are facing…it is an opportunity to lead.

I have been both these leaders, my inner voices telling me different things, arguing with each other. Same person, dissenting voices.

The first voice is one of self-sabotage and labels. “You are a fraud”, it tells me, and today, everyone who doesn’t already know it or believe it will find out — laid bare, for all to see.

The second voice is one of wisdom, the learned voice. The one I had to develop, encourage, practice, and personalise, sometimes dig deep to find to respond to the first voice. Soon it became more than a voice; it was both a mantra and a system, the one I needed to access in these moments.

“Easy Tiger”.

The words I say to myself, often out loud. It would immediately lighten my mood, make me smile, and refocus my attention from what is going on inside me to how I’m going to show up.

Real confidence, it took me too long to learn, is more than belief in your plan, training, ability and experience to achieve an outcome; it’s knowing you will be ok if all of this fails.

If your confidence relies on you ‘slaying dragons’ every day, as a leader, you soon learn there are only so many dragons to slay, and dragons are fierce adversaries. They can burn your leader’s arse.

In these moments, self-compassion is more important than self-confidence.

As a leader, you are signing up for a life of ambiguity, uncertainty and friction, but mostly judged in hindsight as if none of this complexity exists. Leadership is many things, but it doesn’t promise to be fair.

The struggle of leadership will reveal who you are, from which you can assess and take action. Will the struggle build you, or break you. Will you give in to it, or grow from it. Either way, leadership will pick you up somewhere, and leave you someplace else.

You will be changed, because it changes you, often in unexpected ways, but mostly because you will want to change because you will see the need to change to enable you to lead.

This sounds circular, I understand, and maybe it is meant to be.

Leadership is not about doing more. It is doing different, and this requires a deliberate practice of reflection, deep introspection, focusing on who you are, and therefore what you bring to this role, and to this moment.

By choosing to lead, you are doing something extraordinary. Whilst chance and fate will play a role in both journey and destination, if you leave it up to these vagaries, you give up your power, and now you are not a leader. You are a watcher, a spectator of sorts, and you might as well sit in the stands.

To lead, and I mean genuinely lead, by setting standards, impacting and influencing emotions and thinking to create the culture and behaviours that build trust, supporting individuals whilst stretching and challenging, all aligned to a vision that sometimes only you can see… that is not for many, in fact, it is for the few.

By accepting the role as leader, and honouring its inherent aspiration to make a difference, we are making a series of understandings, and the first of those is personal.

Accept that you are no longer ordinary.

Quote:

“A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.”

English proverb

Recommendation:

Half Wheelin’ Podcast

Not my usual style to recommend a podcast when I am the guest, but this one was deep and fun. Scott Barrow is a good friend who has been a trusted ear when I have struggled with many of the challenges I have articulated above.

He is one of the reasons I ride bikes.

…and a timeless song lyric:

Shine On You Crazy Diamond – Pink Floyd

“Wish You Were Here” is my go-to album when I just want to give space to make sense, mainly when I write.

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon
Shine on you crazy diamond
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light
Shine on you crazy diamond
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision
Rode on the steel breeze
Come on you raver, you seer of visions
Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine

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The Leader’s Limp

I am reading Dave Grohl’s autobiography “The Storyteller”. Actually, I am listening to it. The intimacy of someone telling their own story, having gone deep to make sense of it all. The understanding and meaning of their story ‘so far’, and the possibility and hopefulness of their story ‘not yet’.

His is a great yarn.

But there is one story that really resonated.

There is a period of his young life where he goes from an almost destitute drummer in LA, his current band fragmenting, questioning everything about his life, but still driven by his deepest calling, the music. Then the phone rings with an invitation to audition with a new group in Seattle.

The group is Nirvana, and within eighteen months, they are the biggest band in the world.

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Dave Grohl in Nirvana

Then, as we all know, Kurt Cobain, the songwriter, voice and face of Nirvana, after a torturous few years of heroin addiction, kills himself.

Dave Grohl is only twenty-five.

“What was once my life’s greatest joy had now become my life’s greatest sorrow, and not only did I put my instruments away, I turned off the radio, for fear that even the slightest melody would trigger paralyzing grief. It was the first time in my life that I rejected music. I just couldn’t afford to let it break my heart again.”

In time, he started recording songs by himself. Quietly. Few knew. No expectation, playing all instruments, ending with a shoebox of cassettes that he had no idea what to do with. He even came up with a band name of which he was the only member.

The Foo Fighters.

He then receives an unexpected call. An opportunity to be the stand-in drummer for one of his musical heroes, Tom Petty and his band, the Heartbreakers, for a performance on Saturday Night Live. A few years earlier, Nirvana had debuted the iconic “Seems Like Teen Spirit” on SNL. Given his “wallop” drumming style, he is perplexed and hesitant. He has not played the drums in public since the death of Kurt twelve months earlier. But his efforts in the studio give him just enough confidence to accept this most surprising of invitations.

It goes well, such that Tom Petty asks him to join the band permanently.

His choice, become a Heartbreaker, where he felt welcomed and loved the laid back professionalism and camaraderie, such a difference to the manic experience of Nirvana, but understanding that he would always be known as “that guy from Nirvana”, or the shoebox of cassette tapes.

He goes with the box of tapes.

Idea:

You are never ready.

We all have a shoebox full of cassette tapes.

“Ready” is a concept I often get asked about.

I was appointed CEO of the Richmond Football Club when I was twenty-four.

“Were you ready” is the question that follows.

I wasn’t and knew it, and it scared me. I understood I did not have many (most) of the experiences the role would demand of me, but whatever capacity I did have was such that the club’s board thought I was the best available person for the job, and that gave me just enough belief to accept the opportunity.

I am forever thankful to Neville Crowe, the great Tiger ruckman, called up to be President during the club’s darkest hour when the club needed a hero as much as it needed a President. Neville saw something in me that I had not seen in myself, and he wanted me to work beside him to try to save the Tigers, who were on the brink.

“Cameron is 24 going on 44”, he said at the press conference to announce my appointment.

“No, I am not”, I thought to myself.

Press conference to announce my appointment as CEO of the Richmond Football Club

But you learn a language by speaking it. Every day.

You become a songwriter by writing songs. Then playing them to an audience.

You are only a leader when you lead.

You need to do the real thing.

Any opportunity to lead, do it.

The only alternative to the ‘real’ thing is the ‘pretend’ thing.

There is no lack of ‘pretend’ alternatives, far less efficient and effective, that look nice and shiny, selling false promises, perhaps adding some cred to your resume (not for those who know what they are looking for), but only distract you from the best way.

There are leaders who ‘pretend’ lead, even when they are in leadership roles.

They are called leaders, at least that’s what their LinkedIn profiles and business cards pronounce, who are more likely to make the effort to read an article, listen to a podcast, absorbing the leadership learnings of others, than actually leading.

If you want to learn how to lead, then lead.

Make decisions that matter, with consequences you wake up to, that only you can make.

Decisions made with imperfect information, because if there was perfect information, we don’t need leadership. Decisions make themselves.

Make decisions that build cultures, vision-driven and values-based. Defined and modelled by you, the leader.

Step up. Challenge behaviour. As Rick Charlesworth says, “go in search of friction; otherwise, it appears at the worst possible time”.

To get buy-in, to drive outcomes, to influence, to adapt.

To inspire. To make change.

You will make mistakes, but if you own them, you learn, and by sharing your learnings, and your vulnerability, so do those around you.

Real-world experiences gifting you the feedback needed to grow. To get better.

You are starting to develop a slight limp. What Dan B Allender calls “The leaders limp”. It is your leadership authenticity.

You are now learning to lead. It is hard but is getting just a little bit easier, which is just as well because you need to make room for more hard.

Soon, you start to trust what you bring, something unique to you, self-expressed leadership, which can only be learned by doing, not pretending.

You are building your leadership character and your capability, which people will connect with.

But you survived it, or perhaps you didn’t.

Learnings that become embedded in your soul.

Then the next time you read a book or listen to a podcast, you have context.

You now proudly have the leader’s limp.

Go find that box of cassettes.

Quote:

“If you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback. If you have constructive feedback you want to give me, I want it… But if you’re in the cheap seats, not putting yourself on the line, and just talking about how I can do it better, I’m in no way interested in your feedback.”

Brene Brown

I’ve used this quote before, but it seems appropriate.

I struggle with the concept of leadership coaches who have never led.

“Never trust a leader without a limp”.

Recommendation:

Dave Grohl – The Story Teller on Audible

…and a timeless song lyric:

Everlong – Foo Fighters

“I wonder, when I sing along with you, if everything could ever feel this real forever?”

I like the acoustic version. 

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You Do Art Like a CEO

“Can we have a chat?”

A question light on words, heavy on latency.

Is it really a question? A generous view would be to call it an invitation, but really, it is an expectation, for it is mostly impossible to refuse. To say no, would be to adopt a position of avoidance, and even if you do, it is not going away.

Regardless, it will take you from whatever you were feeling, thinking or doing and leave you somewhere else, tinged with trepidation.

My nerves tingle just a little when I hear the words.

I’d gone straight back to a place.

A time when the question was regularly asked by me, with a full understanding of the weight the words carried, and from time to time, asked of me.

I then relax, reminding myself that I am no longer a CEO. In fact, I am a first-year university student, now in my 50s, studying Fine Art.

I’d also spent 25 years as a CEO training myself not to elevate in these moments. To stay calm, trying to control the places the mind instinctively wants to take you but is unlikely to serve you well.

The “better than human nature” expectation as Ron Barassi would describe.

I have a system for these moments.

First, I pause, then I breathe, and say two words quietly to myself.

“Easy Tiger”.

Idea:

The place my subconscious took me was a life-changing event just two years earlier when I’d been sacked as CEO of the Melbourne Football Club.

A day that started with those same five words and ended with a press conference in the Melbourne Football Club Boardroom in stands of the MCG.

Game changed.

Game over.

My domain is no longer coaches boxes and player meeting rooms, boardrooms, corporate dinners and smart offices. It is a barebones, leaky, drafty art studio shared with twenty or so, mainly 18-year-olds straight from school at the Victorian College of the Arts.

We shared more than studio space. We all had something to say but were not sure how to say it. A creative itch that needed scratching, perhaps the highest of expectations.

Never underestimate the intimidation of a blank canvas.

When you aim high and set expectations of yourself, there is a weight and tension that will obligingly join you on this journey, whether running a footy club or painting a picture.

This time, the man asking the weighted question is a wonderful artist and teacher Raaf Ishak.

About six months into my first year, Raaf walked into my studio, pulled up a chair, following up his first question with “I’ve been thinking about your work”.

“You do art like a CEO”, said Raaf.

I knew it wasn’t a compliment, but such was my respect for Raaf, it was never going to be a putdown, but it required me to work through its many layers.

It soon landed exactly where good feedback should. The more space I gave it, the more meaning it had.

The irony was, my mind went immediately back into CEO mode, a role where feedback played a critical part from a performance perspective, particularly in an elite sport environment, such that I’d developed my own three rules of feedback:

• Can you back it up?

• Is what you are saying important, valuable and helpful?

• Is it coming from a good place?

Tick. Tick. Tick. Raaf had all three well and truly covered.

When looking at my work, Raaf was telling me in his composed yet direct manner that my art was too obvious. I was giving the viewer no credit, no room for their own opinions, to find their own meaning in my work.

I feared my art being interpreted as something different to my intent.

But art, for all its meaning, is mostly about opening up the conversation, not closing it.

I lacked the confidence to do what art is intended to do. Hence I wasn’t being an artist.

I had to cross a new bridge of vulnerability, and Raaf was showing me the way.

As a CEO and leader, you have to cross many bridges, find something in yourself in the face of uncertainty while often trying to present as something quite different. To create belief, to give belief, often while struggling to believe in yourself.

I needed to embrace the ambiguity my art required, and I reflected on how often I’d been avoiding it for much of my working life.

Art forced me to rethink this approach. Ambiguity as an opportunity. Leading positively and purposefully whilst acknowledging uncertainty and the fact that you don’t have the answer invites a much better conversation.

To do otherwise, then you are not really being a leader.

Quote:

“Reassurance is helpful for people who seek out certainty, but successful artists realise that certainty isn’t required. In fact, the quest for certainty undermines everything we set out to create.”

Seth Godin – The Practice.

Recommendation:

A Sticky note on your screen.

I have a few around my screen.

Simple messages. Mantras of sorts. Reminders.

…and a timeless song lyric:

Get Back – The Beatles

My favourite ever group, like millions around the world are The Beatles.

Therefore, I am loving Peter Jackson’s “Get Back”.

I love a creative backstory, knowing how something of genius evolved, the struggles, challenges and grit required to get it to a place where the creator was prepared to “ship it”.

This little piece of footage captures so much.

Paul McCartney writing “Get Back”. From playing chords on his bass, with nothing much at the 30 second mark, to the basis of the familiar song 90 seconds later, and the timeless lyric:

“Sweet Loretta Modern thought she was a woman, but she was another man”

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From time to time to time we will email you with some leadership insights, as well as links to cool stuff that we’ve come across.

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The Demons

Having made my way into Jolimont by train, arriving at the station a good hour before the required time, I had killed time by walking laps around the outside of the MCG. I was desperately nervous. I could feel myself shake. I was hoping it was the cold Melbourne June day, and my walk would settle me.

It is the first job interview of my life. I am seventeen, midway through my final year of high school. A few weeks earlier, a job advertisement had appeared in the Melbourne Sun newspaper, and I’d applied. The job is titled ‘Assistant to the Football Manager’ of the Melbourne Football Club, with the only prerequisites being a demonstrable love of the game, a preparedness to work long hours, HSC (year 12), and a driver’s licence.

It was not until this advertisement appeared in the paper that I’d given any consideration to working in football even though the sport had been the constant in my life.

I was able to live the game vicariously through my father Alan, who after a highly successful career as a club leader, including four Premierships, was now a senior executive at the VFL, soon to be AFL.

Such was the pedestal that I’d put my father on, I thought the possibility I could play a role in the game was well beyond me.

When I spoke to dad about the role, he simply asked, “Are you prepared to work hard?”

Dad would have been confident I had enough of the basic tools. My school reports indicating I had some horsepower but wavering application. Given we’d spent a lifetime talking football and surrounded by football people, he also recognised the benefits of my unique upbringing.

“Yes”, I said. If pressed however, I knew I couldn’t back it up. I had no track record of dedicated and concerted effort, which I am sure is the reason he’d asked the question in the first place.

But I had a clear understanding of the expectation of hard work. My lived experience as a child who saw a lot less of his father growing up than any of his mates, dad’s absence from the home I attributed to the demands of the uncompromising world of elite sport. It was not without cost. My parents had separated the year before, adding to the complexity of the discussion we were now having.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he then asked.

“Yes”, I said.

Idea:

There are no guarantees. No ultimate formula.

I look down.

In my hand is a tie.

It is blue, with two thin red stripes which bracket three intertwined letters in the timeless type-face of a thousand ‘old-worldy’ sporting clubs.

The letters are the M, F and C of the Melbourne Football Club, the most ‘old-worldy’ of all football clubs, still playing the game it invented 120 years earlier.

The tie had been given to me a few minutes earlier by Dick Seddon, the Melbourne CEO. He did so with ceremony, even though it was just the two of us in his office, a large room with an open fireplace in an old terrace house up the road from the MCG.

I was now officially the Assistant to the Football Manager of the Melbourne Football Club.

Only thirty minutes earlier, I’d been sitting in the club’s reception waiting to be called into Dick’s office. A large black-and-white photo of Norm Smith, the legendary Melbourne coach, dominated the reception space. The ‘Red Fox’, in action, earnest and imperious, coaching from ground level at the MCG.

Displayed in a glass cabinet is Norm’s old club blazer. Embroidered on its breast pocket above the MFC monogram are the numbers 55, 56, 57, 59, 60 and 64; the six Premierships teams he coached, the dynasty he led.

Norm’s image watches over, in judgement of those who enter his football club. It is their responsibility to carry his legacy, although I doubt he would see it this way. It is a heavy burden and getting weightier by the year for no Melbourne team has won a Premiership since Norm was famously sacked just months after coaching the 1964 Premiership.

The great Ron Barassi, Norm’s protege, had only recently returned as coach of the Demons. The expectations were very high. Having left Melbourne having played in Norm’s six Premierships, he’d gone on to coach four of his own at Carlton and North Melbourne. There was no bigger name in the game.

My Job Description in those early days was typical of any office junior, but it might as well of read:

“Do anything Ron Barassi asks you to do.”

It might just be the best job description I’ve ever had.

In his first year, the size of the challenge became apparent when the Barassi coached Demons won only one game by one point, with a Robbie Flower goal late in the game.

For the Melbourne supporters of this era, their consolation was “at least we’ve got Robbie Flower”, as they left the MCG after suffering yet another loss. He was more than enough to bring them back next week, and for the best part of 15 years, almost the only reason Melbourne supporters would go to the football.

Over the next few years, my role evolved into recruiting players, given this opportunity by Ron Barassi, who saw something in me I hadn’t seen in myself.

I was the Recruiter when we made the finals for the first time in 23 years and the first time since Norm Smith was coach. We won our way through to the Preliminary Final in what would be Robbie’s final season, and as it turned out, his last game. A Gary Buckenara after the siren kick costing Melbourne a place in the Grand Final.

I remember sitting in my car in the Waverley Park carpark after the game sobbing uncontrollably.

It would not be the last time the Melbourne Football Club brought me to tears.

I would spend fifteen years working for the Melbourne Football Club. Half my working life. It included two stints as CEO, sitting in the same office where Dick Seddon gave me the tie. I was also sacked twice from this role.

I was part of ‘near-death’ experiences for the club, many almost moments, and formed friendships that have lasted decades. There was also the loss of great Melbourne people who had so much living to do, including three players who played in that Preliminary Final. Robbie Flower himself and the products of the ‘Barassi Irish Experiment’, Sean Wight and Jim Stynes.

Twenty years later, Jim would ask me to come back to the club as CEO when he became President of the club.

The MFC has given me many of the most important lessons of life, and I have spent time looking for the right word.

I hope I have found it.

The Melbourne Football Club taught me perspective.

I learned that there are no guarantees, no ultimate formula for success. Hard work isn’t enough. In sport, we are on a perpetual quest to make hard work easier in order to make space for more hard work.

I think about the mistakes I made. The errors of judgement. There were many, and at times, I have allowed them to define me. I now think differently.

If not for my mistakes, failures, and setbacks, I have no message worth sharing with you.

They are a gift.

Perspective.

On Saturday, all could well change. Fifty-seven years on, and in its 163rd year. The 2021 Demons are a terrific team, playing the game as it should be played. They are great to watch. They have a wonderful team ethos, playing with flair and for each other. There is joy and love, having been on a journey together, worked through some tough stuff, asked themselves the hard questions, and found the answers.

“Out of the hottest fire is forged the strongest steel” somehow feels appropriate for these Demons.

May it be a day to remember.

Go Dees.

Quote:

“If it is going to be, it is up to me.”

Ron Barassi

Recommendation:

‘When it is all said and done’ – Neale Daniher

Neale Daniher is the last Melbourne Coach to take the team to a Grand Final. It was 2000, beaten by a powerful Essendon team, coached by his old mentor Kevin Sheedy.

As CEO, I had appointed Neale three years earlier.

In 2013, Neale was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease – an incurable condition. He had a choice. He could spend his remaining time focusing on himself or seize the opportunity to make a better future for others.

Neale’s charity FightMND has raised millions of dollars, investing in medical research, and from recent reports, the signs have been positive, a sense of progress, a light at the end of an otherwise long, dark tunnel.

I have quoted Neale Daniher many times in my writing and speaking, and from his book “When all is said and done”

The book started as a letter to the grandchildren he’ll never get to know beyond their childhoods. And then he kept on writing.

I loved it, and ended up with pages of notes.

You will too.

…and a timeless song lyric:

The Melbourne Theme Song – The Grand Old Flag

The little known second verse.

Oh, the team played fine in the year Thirty-nine,
We’re the Demons that no one can lick,
And you’ll find us there at the final bell,
With the spirit of Twenty-six.
Every heart beats true, for the Red and the Blue,
And we sing this song to you,
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
Keep your eye on the Red and the Blue.

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I Still Draw Horses

My grandfather Edgar Taplin served in the air force, the RAAF. He wasn’t a flyer but a courier who rode a motorbike, delivering messages between the lines. We only know his function because there are photos that survive him.

He was my mother’s father who migrated from the UK to Australia in his 20’s a couple of decades earlier.

His grandchildren called him Puppy.

He and I were close. I liked it when people said we were similar, commenting on our looks and mannerisms.

He would laugh freely at my kid jokes.

Idea:

We still had talking to do

My parents were born in the early 1940s, amid the Second World War.

My mother did not meet her father until he returned from war and wondered who the strange man in the house was.

The war was the backdrop to their childhood and remained an omnipresent yet unspoken part of their growing years.

My memories of Puppy are a caring, purposeful, smiling yet slightly taciturn man who taught me how to draw, mostly big sheets of butcher paper with the thick oily tradie pencils from his outdoor workshop. He showed me how to draw horses. He was patient and generous with his praise. I felt good being with him.

I was fascinated by his RAAF cap, which I found one day when digging through some old stuff in a spare room at his home. While he would reluctantly place it on my young head when I badgered him, he refused to put it on his own, and I wondered why.

I learned later he didn’t march on ANZAC Day.

In my teens, I was gifted Puppy’s RAAF cap after he died suddenly from a stroke.

It was my first real experience of death. I treasure the cap.

As I have got older, I see the likeness that people spoke about and feel good about him and where I have come from.

A daily reminder of my grandfather.

Quote:

Yet another David Whyte quote from his book Consolations:

“Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work; a future.”

Recommendation:

How to draw a horse.

The following video is my lesson on how to draw a horse, the same lesson my grandfather taught me when I was a kid.

…and a timeless song lyric:

Street Fighting Man – Rolling Stones

Always enjoy a good protest song, and also celebrating the remarkable life of Charlie Watts:

Ev’rywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy
‘Cause summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy
But what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock ‘n’ roll band
‘Cause in sleepy London town
There’s just no place for a street fighting man, no

Hey! Think the time is right for a palace revolution
But where I live the game to play is compromise solution
Well, then what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock ‘n’ roll band
‘Cause in sleepy London town
There’s just no place for a street fighting man, no

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If It Is Undefined, It Is Unknown, And therefore Untapped

If not for my mistakes, failures, and setbacks, I have no message worth sharing with you.

The times when you truly learned about who you are, and who you are capable of becoming.

I share these stories, and people share them back. Trust is formed, and when people talk about the experiences that define them, they inevitably refer to a time of struggle.

The time they went inwardly deep, to outwardly grow.

The world constantly reminds us that we might not be quite who we thought we are, and as painful as it is, we are somehow grateful.

We find wisdom.

Such is now.

Such is leadership.

Play on!

Idea:

Turn Pro

 Look around. Everywhere you see ambiguity and uncertainty. You feel the friction. The polarisation of views, mainly as it relates to decisions of which we have little control.

This anxiety is being amplified. Daily. There is no escaping it, and we become drawn to it. An excuse to be distracted.

Leaders at all levels are carrying a great weight, and they have probably never felt less able. The struggle is palpable.

They need to go deep. Find something.

Going deep is hard, and there is a playbook of excuses not to. For starters, there are plenty of people to blame. Deflect responsibility by pointing critical fingers at distant leaders who may or may not be, depending on who you ask or where your bias sits, doing what needs to be done.

Your blaming, criticism and deflection will find friends easily, get plenty of ‘likes’ for your LinkedIn post or your Twitter feed, but offer nothing for those who need much more from you.

To be better. The role expects it of you.

As Steve Pressfield says, you need to “Turn Pro”.

 “The amateur tweets. The professional works,” he says. 

The professional works hard, no doubt, but they always seek means to make hard work easier to make space for more hard work. They do not wait for motivation to strike; they operate in expectation of it. They are ready for it. They have a system.

It begins with a small action. Start now. Space to think, but real thinking hasn’t happened if a pencil is not scratching paper, a marker is not sliding along a whiteboard, or fingers aren’t tapping a keyboard. Be intentional. Be purposeful. On purpose to find purpose.

Write down the question:

“What does this situation expect of me?”

Then write down four words:

1. Humble

2. Brave

3. Calm

4. Compassionate

Record your thoughts under each word. For example:

Do you have the humility to stay curious? Knowing that you don’t know what you need to know to go to a place that is unknown and unknowable.

Are you brave enough to take that uncomfortable step, a step often only you know you need to take?

Are you calm enough to allocate the appropriate amount of emotional response? Pause. Take a breath. Let the anger subside. Don’t press send! 

How about your compassion levels? Starting with you. Look at yourself, and like what you see.

The future vision requires imagination, what Owen Eastwood describes as the creation of ‘forward memories’, to ignite, motivate and bond individuals into teams through a shared future and journey they will undertake together. This is a fundamental responsibility of leadership, so often left to chance.

Imagination requires courage, and therefore a need to cross a bridge called vulnerability.

Pete Carroll, coach of the Seattle Seahawks, describes it succinctly by asking his team this question:

“If it was really good…what would it be like?”.

There is an opportunity to share the responsibility with your team. Not as an abdication of your leadership responsibility, but a means of connecting them to the vision, so it becomes part of them. They will bring the colour, the nuance that will be critical to its achievement.

We only ever bring one set of eyes and ears, but most significantly, one imagination to any situation.

Then, with every interaction, reference and remind the team of where you are heading, celebrating the ‘small wins’ as you build the capability to achieve it.

Remember, ‘if it is undefined, it is unknown, and therefore untapped’.

This is your responsibility.

This is what the moment expects of you.

There has never been a better opportunity for leaders to lead.

Quote:

“If you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback. If you have constructive feedback you want to give me, I want it… But if you’re in the cheap seats, not putting yourself on the line, and just talking about how I can do it better, I’m in no way interested in your feedback.”

From Brené Brown: Why Your Critics Aren’t The Ones Who Count

Recommendation:

Turning Pro – Steve Pressfield

From the book:

How your life changes when you turn pro?
When we turn pro, we stop running from our fears. We turn around and face them.

How your day changes when you turn pro?
When we turn pro, everything becomes simple. Our aim centers on the ordering of our days in such a way that we overcome the fears that have paralyzed us in the past.

How people change when you turn pro?
Turning pro changes how we spend our time and with whom we spend it.

How your mind changes when you turn pro?
Turning pro is like kicking a drug habit or stopping drinking. It’s a decision, a decision to which we must re-commit every day.

…and a timeless song lyric:

The Cruel Sea – Better Get a Lawyer

I wasn’t doin’ nothin’
Anyway

Just what is it that I’m supposed to have done?
With bloodshot eyes and bleedin’ hands
I put my new suit in the cleaners again
I took the first bus
I didn’t look back
Lungs long blowin’ like a smokestack
Hair fallin’ out as the wind blows through it
My horse ran second
Just like I knew it would
Overflowin’ ashtray
Yeah
Oh yeah

Then the officer said
Better get a lawyer, son
You better get a real good one
Better get a lawyer, son
You better get a real good one

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I Want To Do This, And I Am Willing to Give up That

“You cannot outperform your leadership”.

A basic yet overwhelming premise for those with whom leadership is vested.

Defining the ‘right’ way as it relates to the organisation and, with that, the rich and diverse mix of individual behaviours that form a collective mindset and belief system we call culture.

Yes, leaders need to be able to read the environment and focus on fundamentals such as vision, people and standards, but with the overarching view:

“How do I, as a leader, create the environment to unlock the best of this group, individually and collectively.”

The idea of ‘best’ will always require definition, but in broad terms, it will relate to some form of performance of the team or organisation in combination with the emotional well-being of the people.

Too often, this balance is weighted to the former at the cost of the latter. But I sense that there is a movement righting this balance.

Elite sport, in many ways, has shifted this.

Individuals and teams that have proven you can win, test what you’ve got, do so in the spirit of the contest, but not lose the joy that attracted you to the game in the first place.

It is finding a new way.

Play on!

Idea:

If it is undefined, it is unknown, therefore untapped.

Inevitably, it will come down to trade-offs. Where we spend our resources, where we don’t. When we opt-in, when we opt-out. Who we choose to be, who we choose not to be.

I want to do this, and I am willing to give up that.

Our response to behaviours considered outside of expectations often focuses on the individual rather than the person’s environment. It is much easier to point the finger at someone, demand they change, rather than look at the environment in which they are trying to fit.

We need to accept that environment is the majority influence on a person’s behaviour.

As leaders, when assessing the environment, we are turning the finger back on ourselves, but this is such a critical capability to develop, and it needs to be both courageous and intentional.

There are powerful forces at play for teams and individuals in elite sport, binary judgments based on outcome. There are very big and seemingly definitive scoreboards: winners and losers, heroes and villains, heaven and hell.

In this environment, if we allow it, there is little pleasure in winning.

It is winning to avoid loss.

Joyless.

The Golden State Warriors in the NBA, under the coaching of Steve Kerr, who played in the great era of the Chicago Bulls with the ultimate alpha athlete Michael Jordan, including their celebrated Last Dance, has institutionalised joy as one of four core values. The other three are mindfulness, compassion and competition.

Values are developed to align behaviours related to the organisation’s objectives, and winning games is clearly a key indicator of the success of a sporting team. Steve Kerr’s teams have won championships with only one of the values, competition, making broader reference to this objective.

This is not a universal view, but there are some very strong and respected voices pushing the conversation forward, the ‘new’ way, whilst the voices of those who hold onto the ‘old’ ways are having their influence diminished.

There is a ‘right’ way to win, and for that matter, a ‘right’ way to lose, such that your value as a person is not diminished.

A couple of years ago, I listened to a podcast, “The Howie Games”, where Mark Howard interviews then Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley. He talks with openness and vulnerability, such as his relationship with his father, including the letters his dad, a Vietnam Vet, wrote when he was at boarding school in country Victoria, having grown up in the Northern Territory.

The conversation moves onto a period a few years later when every AFL club is chasing Nathan, the young tyro footballer, then playing for Port Adelaide in the SANFL. Buckley is asked about a ‘brown paper bag’, an old-time recruiting technique when a player is handed cash, literally in a brown paper bag, in this case, $10,000 in a cafe in Adelaide, as an incentive to sign with a club.

They reflected on how times have changed and what massive news such a move would be today had it been found out.

Nathan then reflects, “I sometimes think, at times you can get caught between eras, between the old way and the new way”.

He then pauses.

“No, we are always between the old way and the new way.”

Quote:

“Turning pro is free, but is not easy. You have to change your mind”

Steve Pressfield

From his book Turning Pro

Recommendation:

David Astbury retires

I have been privileged and moved by the retirement speeches of many great players over many years.

I have seen none better than David Astbury’s moment.

It is a wonderful example of the new way. It is fifteen minutes of humility, courage and compassion.

Some takeouts from David:

“Externally my career will be validated by three premierships and over 150 games, but not for me. I’ve hit far more hardship, and milestones, far less acclaimed that I’ll reflect on, and I’ll be more proud of, which is enormous for me.”

 “It really is a dream to be completely content with what my career consists of and be really proud of that.”

 The respect he shows:

• The people he grew up with, in Tatyoon in country Victoria (population 130)

• To those who invested in him – the coaches, the administrators, the medical team, and the leaders of the club

• Those who taught him about life – the women in his life, his psychologist, meditation coach, and his indigenous teammates (the brothers)

• His family

• Of course, his teammates.

 “This group has delivered hope, purpose, connection and joy to our people – the Richmond people. It is really special, and I am proud of that.”

…and a timeless song lyric:

Changes – David Bowie

I remember walking past my sister Jennie’s bedroom, and I could hear her playing the album Hunky Dory.

I became a Bowie fan. So many levels and layers.

It has been something the both of us have been able to share since.

Still don’t know what I was waitin’ for
And my time was runnin’ wild
A million dead-end streets and
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I’ve never caught a glimpse
How the others must see the faker
I’m much too fast to take that test

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange

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Making Room For Who You Might Be

The work I do starts with a simple intention.

I write it down, a ritual of intention if you like.

Rather than listing a ‘To-Do’, I write an intention.

I remind myself of the intention each time I am in conversation with leaders and their teams.

To honour the role.

“I am a coach, mentor and teacher, not coaching to who the leader is now, but who the leader can be, meeting people where they are now, and finding out where we can go together. I will channel my inner Tom Hafey.”

I use Tom Hafey as my coaching archetype. There is romance in this given the folklore role he played in my own life, but mostly, it is the way he made people feel.

Whenever I speak of Tom Hafey, people love to share their Tommy stories. Their eyes light up as they explain where, how, and what they talked about and the impression he left. Most often, it was a single meeting, a country footy club he was speaking at, or jogging past in his speedos along the St Kilda foreshore as he did pretty much every day of his life – rain, hail and shine.

The Tommy meeting is embedded as part of their story. They tell their yarn well, and I sense they’ve shared their Tommy encounter with many others and most likely will for the rest of their lives.

There are leaders you get to meet who make you feel good about them. What separates great leaders, is how they make you feel good about you.

They become unforgettable, fixed firmly in who you are.

The magic of Tommy Hafey is there is no magic.

Tommy made you feel good about you.

Play on.

Idea:

You are the coach and player of your own life.

My conversations with leaders start with a simple question, one that relates to ambition:

“What is it that you seek to do?”

Having got a sense, often unclear and vague, which is perfectly fine and probably expected, as it is their uncertainty that most likely led to this conversation, I will then follow up with:

“Who is it that you seek to be?”

We are making room for who the leader might be. I have Pippa Grange and her book ‘Fear Less’ to thank for this powerful idea.

Leadership is not only something to do, it is something to be, but you must do the doing, to be the being.

I don’t coach to who the leader is now, but who the leader can be.

To embrace the expectations of their role, welcome pressure as a privilege, a right they have earned, and be energised by the opportunities it provides.

It starts with the understanding that the leader is both the coach and player of their own leadership lives.

How do they get the best from themselves as leaders, and execute in a manner consistent with their values, philosophies and unique capabilities?

They will need to change and to make change happen. They will be in charge of the direction their leadership lives take.

They will learn to borrow freely and combine uniquely to build on their learnings and those of others, to find their distinctive leadership voice.

To achieve this, I guide, mentor, cajole, challenge, remind, refer, teach, calm, push, prod, encourage and provoke leaders to be the change they seek to make.

To see leadership in a different way.

To see leadership as a craft.

A craft for which they can leverage and build a leadership game that is a full expression of who they are.

To see leadership as a ‘get to’ thing, not a ‘got to’ thing.

They ‘get to’ craft themselves, make their own art, not as an outcome-based pursuit, but by following their own imperfect path, and in doing so, make things better.

They then ‘get to’ play a role in the lives of others, help them to make themselves better.

There is never one ‘right’ answer, no perfect outcome. It will always feel uncertain, which is most likely, the most important skill leaders learn.

They have made room for who they might be, and made space for others to do likewise.

Quote:

“What change do you seek to make?

Why bother to speak up or take an action if you’re not seeking to change someone or something?

It makes some people deeply uncomfortable to imagine that their work will change someone else. What right, we wonder, do we have to take that on? What authority do we have to show up with any intent at all?

If there’s no intent, it’s likely that there’s no change either. If there’s no intent, it’s unlikely that things will get better.”

Seth Godin, from his highly recommended book ‘The Practice’.

Recommendation:

Pick up a guitar.

Any guitar.

Tune it. It is easy. Used to be tricky, a learned skill.

There is no magic required any more. There is an app for everything.

As a teenager, whenever my guitar went out of tune, I’d take it to a mate’s house down the road. His older sister played guitar. She had long fingers and could play Cat Stevens and Carly Simon, fingerpicking songs, and singing tunefully with her eyes closed. To me, she had ‘the gift’, she was some kind of musical and guitar maven.

She would take my nylon string guitar, which was actually my older sister Jennie’s, and happily tune it for me.

My stage of development was single-string riffs, very much stuck in the ‘Smoke on the Water’ phase which many get to, and few go beyond.

My maven understood this. Whilst it was was hard to believe, she was once in this place.

She took my left hand and placed my first three fingers on 2nd, 3rd and 4th strings I now know to be the B, G and D strings, gently twisted my hand a little, then took my right hand and strummed the guitar, and my life changed.

The chord she had just shown me was Am, and it took me on a journey that is still with me over 40 years later.

She then took my little nylon string guitar, strummed the Am, then closed her eyes and played “Ain’t No Sunshine” and I was in love, with the guitar, the song, and no doubt, my mate’s sister.

I had no idea my guitar was capable of this sound.

My recommendation, learn Am.

Good things happen.

…and a timeless song lyric:

Ain’t No Sunshine – Bill Withers

Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
Only darkness every day
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
And this house just ain’t no home
Anytime she goes away

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To Make It, We Have To Learn To Write Our Own Songs

Eagle’s frontman, the late Glenn Frey, tells of a conversation with the old rocker Bob Seger on what it takes to make it in the music business:

“You have to write your own songs,” Seger told him.

“What if they’re bad?” Frey responded.

“Of course they’re bad; just keep writing until they’re good,” Seger told him.

Your definition of ‘make it’, well, that’s up to you.

Define your path, or allow ‘the world’ to define it for you. It is a choice.

Fear will kick in. It might be fear of change, or perhaps fear of regret. Either way, we do nothing. There is a ‘sunk cost’ bias. It feels safer to ignore our own ignorance, to default to what we know. Cling to an answer, even though the question may have changed.

Find your own voice. Have an opinion. Speak to your opinion; put it out there. Seek the counterview, invite a different perspective.

Listen. Allow the counterview to replace yours for just long enough to know whether you need to change something, or stay the course.

As Scott Belsky, Founder of Behance, said, “When 99% of people doubt your idea, you are either gravely wrong, or about to make history”.

To make change happen, you’re in charge.

Let’s write some tunes.

Play on!

Idea:

The ebb in the flow

For the past few years, I have read and heard often about the concept of ‘the flow’.

“You need to find your flow”, I have read, like when you are shopping for a new bed, testing out the mattresses, until you find the one that is ‘just right’.

It was T.S. Eliot who said, “If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”

In the tides of life, it is about the ‘ebb and flow’. There is no flow without the ebb.

The idea is to take yourself from the “What I know?” to “What I don’t know?” but also getting out of your head by taking yourself from “Thinking” to “Doing”.

The language in the model above is deliberate, and thank you to Dr Jason Fox for the inspiration.

It might be the competitive nature of elite sport and the often desperate need to seek advantage, even for one game (or one quarter).

Still, it is an environment very energised, almost obsessed, by the “What I don’t know?” mindset. Leaders, mostly coaches, are prepared to ‘brood’, think deeply, ask better questions, experiment and invite different perspectives, go with a ‘hunch’.

The better coaches have shaped their teams such that they have shaped the way the game is played. It hasn’t always been pretty or popular, but it has put silverware in their club’s trophy cabinets and forced other coaches to respond, and the game shaping continues ad infinitum.

The great coaches have taken it a stage further, seeking to shape the sport itself, having a vision for the game that few could see at the time. Ron Barassi and Kevin Sheedy are icons of the sport for this reason. Debbie Lee is the evangelist that the women’s game needed, and her legacy is profound.

These are people who look at the future of the game and see radically different things from most. They are happy to sit at the frontier of what is known and unknown, seeking to turn the unknown into the known if only to reveal another unknown. They are more interested in what we can become than who we think we are already. And it is us, the lovers of the game, who are the beneficiaries, as much as we tried to fight it at the time.

These are brave people. Prepared to hazard themselves for the possibility of fulfilling the promise of the sport.

They also speak openly about how the game has shaped them. How thankful they are for the lessons the game gifted them, always prepared to put themselves in deep and diverse conversation to satisfy their relentless curiosity, being at ease with not-knowing.

Always trying new things, often getting it wrong, comforted by the understanding that, when the healing is done, loss and heartbreak are temporary states and essential for growth.

I am sure they have experienced flow, but it is the ebb that took them there.

Quote:

“Who you are is what you settle for, you know?”

Janis Joplin

Recommendation:

Your first game

Maurice Rioli Jnr learns that he will play his first game for the club he grew up loving, that his late father Maurice Snr represented with mastery.

One of my favourite lines is, “When you get to understand what truly matters, you get to enjoy what seems to matter.”

This is a truly matters moment.

Pippa Grange describes it wonderfully in her book Fear Less.

“Winning deep, or winning shallow.”

This is what winning deep looks like.

In the words of his coach Damien Hardwick:

“All we want you to do is bring your strengths. Your defensive pressure. You are going to inspire your teammates by the way you play the game.”

“I want you to make mistakes because that’s the way you learn, play as hard as you possibly can. So excited to give you the opportunity, you have worked so hard for this, and you are finally going to get the reward, brother.”

“Could not be prouder of you.”

“We love the way you play, and we can’t wait to watch you play.”

“Enjoy the moment.”

…and a timeless song lyric:

Janis Joplin – Piece Of My Heart

And each time I tell myself that I
Well I think I’ve had enough
But well I’m gonna show you, baby
That a woman can be tough
I want you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby

The YouTube of this song has had 34 million views. Extraordinary

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The Best Mistakes You’ve Ever Made

There are leaders in football who seek to shape the game. Inevitably, it is the game that does the shaping.

You do not need to go looking for adversity. It will find you. It is unavoidable. When it does, you then have a choice. You can either value or ignore its lessons.

Last year I read actor Matthew McConaughey’s excellent book Greenlights as I tried to get my head around a cancer diagnosis, surgery and its repercussions.

This book has proven an unlikely and valuable source of wisdom.

He speaks of the ‘angels of truth’. They are there always. Everwhere. Knowledge, insight, and in particular, the circumspection of others and their lived experience. But the angels are mostly hidden in plain sight, lost in the noise of our own distraction, and we only tend to access them when we are fucked.

Be fair to say, I have been hunting those ‘angels’ since being diagnosed, but wonder why it took cancer to permit myself to tune into their wisdom.

New beginnings are difficult, as they require a clearing of our own reluctance.

To find the quiet time.

I have reflected deeply on what a lifetime in football taught me. The stories it tells me, and those I tell myself.

The game left me before I was ready to leave it, but not without reason. I accept this. I had my chances. I am comforted that I’ve had a lifetime shaped by the game I fell in love with as a child. I have been very fortunate.

To go deep in order to go forward, and I have felt the momentum change.

The game now having left me created the greatest opportunity of all.

To change something in me. To uncover something that was always inside.

I like to draw, write and teach. To make things.

From our constraints come our opportunities.

Play on!

Idea:

Press conference to announce my appointment as CEO of the Richmond Football Club

Make the best mistakes you’ve ever made.

Changing something in you.

Ostensibly those attempting to shape the game, seek to give their club the best chance of success. In many ways, it’s an expectation. That is what leaders do. But too often, it is a play for power and influence, personal identity, rather than what’s best for club and game.

I have been that person.

The difference is often indistinguishable at the time. Such is the cacophony of judgment as people are quickly assigned hero or villain status when they are something in-between.

We tend to see the world as winners and losers, heaven and hell, and it is presented to us in this way. This binary attitude forces us to seek out the quick win, almost knowing that it is can be corrosive to our longer-term growth.

Our desire to create perfect outcomes, or the perception of perfection, takes priority over opportunities for self-expression. Find your voice, define your path, or allow ‘the world’ to define it for you. It is a choice.

This is my charcoal portrait from an Art Room life drawing class.

You might notice the ‘ghost lines’, the mistakes of my previous drawings underneath the finished portrait.

With each iteration and each unsuccessful effort to produce a drawing I was satisfied with, I rubbed them out, but not completely, layering up until the final picture emerged, using the mistakes of the previous effort as a guide to the next attempt.

With art, as in life, our failures are our best teachers. It is the foundation of our work.

Don’t be disheartened by previous failures. Be proud of your ‘ghost lines’ and start over.

Start drawing, start writing, start leading. Start something.

Make mistakes.

Rub them out.

Go again.

Make better mistakes.

Go again.

Make the best mistakes you’ve ever made.

Quote:

“I shut my eyes in order to see.”

The Post-Impressionist artist, Paul Gauguin

Recommendation:

A little app takes highlights and notes from my Kindle and sends ten (you decide the number and frequency) to my email. I have used a Kindle for years, and therefore there are years of highlights and notes for it to access.

Readwise

It is a daily reminder of the investment you made at a point in your life. Layers of learning, most of which you’d forgotten.
These emails have often encouraged me to revisit a book and reminds me of the gifts that brought me there in the first place.

The other benefit, the highlights are automatically added to Roam Research which I use to write, record notes, plan, strategise etc.

…and a timeless song lyric:

I often have Bruce Springsteen playing when I write.

It is the storytelling.

I love the song Youngstown.

I always thought “Sweet Jenny” was his girlfriend, but I now understand it was the Jeannette Furnace, the blast furnace of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Brier Hill Works.

The story is a second generation steelworker talking about the collapse of the way of life that he and his family had gone to various wars to fight for, the blue-collar America he was so proud of, “Them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do”.

Well my daddy come on the Ohio works
When he come home from World War Two
Now the yard’s just scrap and rubble
He said, “Them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do”
Yeah these mills they built the tanks and bombs
That won this country’s wars
We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam
Now we’re wondering what they were dyin’ for
Here in Youngstown
Here in Youngstown
My sweet Jenny, I’m sinkin’ down
Here darlin’ in Youngstown

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Never Blame The Player

Any coverage of elite sport seeks to capture the ‘response’.

The immediate aftermath of the error. Something happens, a mistake, the consequence putting the outcome at risk, or at worst, losing the game.

The camera turns to the coach, hoping to capture a clipboard fling, a drink bottle hurl, or a double-fisted desk thump.

It then turns back to the head-in-hands protagonist, the consequence of their error now bearing down on them.

The demeanour of player and coach is mirrored by the response of the fans.

The jumper the player wears always feels heavy, but at this moment, it threatens to bury them.

Play-on.

Idea:

Never blame the player

I spent 30 years in coaches boxes. I have felt all of this frustration, the immediate anger towards the player who has made the error pulses through you as though it was some form of deliberate action to cause you pain. It is such nonsense.

We seek out blame, knowing it will find friends easily. You will not need to go searching, there will be a cheer squad of finger-pointers in support of your attribution.

We seek to personalise our pain, give it a name, in our effort to reduce it.

These are conditioned responses. Human nature. Instinct overwhelming logic.

“The best players are better than human nature” the great Ron Barassi once told me

I heard the very impressive England Manager Gareth Southgate speak of the need to “reduce the weight of the shirt”. As a former representative player, he understood the honour of representing his country is diluted by out-of-control expectations that come with it. He also understood this impacted performance. A vicious circle. Cause and effect.

In these moments, by responding in this way, we have just added kilos to the load the player is carrying. We talk of errors as an opportunity to learn, but in these moments we behave like spoilt children.

Hence the formula for leaders:

Situation Happens (SH) x Response (R) = Outcome (O)

Your R is most important when the SH is most challenging, and often it’s when leadership gets personal when your behaviours are being questioned.

Leadership isn’t what you preach; it is what you practice, and often underestimated, what you permit.

As leaders we must become experts in cause and effect.

Any strategy you seek to execute will require a behaviour, the collective behaviours forming the rich ‘soup’ we call culture.

In my experience, as tricky as strategy often is, it is easy when compared with human behaviour.

You can only push people to the level of trust you have with them, the depth and strength of your human connection. As leaders, this responsibility sits with us and it takes work.

Blame is a trust killer.

Remember, the highest level of performance requires the deepest level of trust.

If human behaviour is not meeting expectations, ask the bigger questions, knowing we are the reason the player is out on the field in the first place.

Our processes. Our decision. Our responsibility.

Start by looking into the mirror, then look under the bonnet.

Quote:

Opinion

“You’re entitled to your own opinion if you keep your opinion to yourself. If you decide to say it out loud, then I think you have a responsibility to be open to changing your mind in the face of better logic or stronger data. I think if you’re willing to voice an opinion, you should also be willing to change that opinion.”

Adam Grant on rethinking your position

Recommendation:

When people say “I’d like to think about it”, when asked for a view or opinion on an issue you are discussing or debating and there is a fair-minded expectation of a contribution to a decision making position, a reasonable next question is:

“How are you going to think about it?”

If thinking about is confined to time in the car, or standing in the shower, that is not enough.

If a pencil is not scratching paper, marker not sliding along a whiteboard, or fingers aren’t tapping a keyboard, real thinking hasn’t happened.

The very process of writing “In the Arena” brings clarity of thinking; for me.

The brain buzzes with a million thoughts, some connect, and when they do, write them down in a safe system so you can come back to them, add layers, build on your thinking, create your own wisdom.

I am using the software Roam Research to record my thoughts and to write.

Then share it, voice it, be generous, and as per the Adam Grant quote above, have the courage to have your mind changed.

…and a timeless song lyric:

“Skinny Love”

Always loved the Bon Iver original, but the Birdy cover adds its own flavour.

And I told you to be patient
And I told you to be fine
And I told you to be balanced
And I told you to be kind
And in the morning, I’ll be with you
But it will be a different kind
‘Cause I’ll be holding all the tickets
And you’ll be owning all the fines

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The Most Important Person

Watching the football last week.

Geelong versus Western Bulldogs. Two contenders, playing for the opportunity to contend. Talented football teams, well-led and well-coached.

The final siren sounds. The Western Bulldogs are a point in front. In this crazy game invented over a century and a half ago, someone decided the game is not always over when the final siren goes.

This is one of those occasions.

Seconds before the siren, Geelong’s Gary Rohan stands under the ball to take a pressure mark. It is now a simple equation. He kicks the goal, his team wins.

It is a tough kick. Forty metres out, on an angle. Tired legs, slippery conditions, high stakes.

Idea:

The most important person in a club is the one with the ball in their hand.

The broadcast turns to respective coaches boxes as the reality of the moment hits Geelong’s Chris Scott and the Western Bulldog’s Luke Beveridge. The outcome is out of their hands. Hours of preparation from the coaching and support teams, there is nothing they can do, nor can the 41 other players who have just given everything for the past two hours of intense, high-quality football.

They can only watch on, reduced to spectators, the same status as the thousands in the stadium and the half-million people watching from their loungerooms.

The ball is in good hands.

Gary Rohan has a system for kicking goals, and that is all he thinks about, blocking out the noise and pressure of the moment.

As James Clear says in his excellent book, Atomic Habits:

“If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.”

Gary Rohan kicks truly.

His team wins.

And the Geelong team celebrate, no more so than Chris Scott, a man who, from time to time, gives us insight into the emotional highs and lows of his lived leadership experience in professional sport and all the expectations that come with it.

What Chris knows, as does any coach, is:

“The most important person in a club is the one with the ball in their hand.”

The reason, decisions should be made at the level of the organisation where there is the most knowledge and information.

This means knowing when to pass the ball and when to hold onto it.

The art and science of leadership.

Our role as leader is to teach, grow and empower individuals who can be trusted in any given situation, and find out how they handle the pressure of the moment, by passing them the ball.

Quote:

“If you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback. If you have constructive feedback you want to give me, I want it… But if you’re in the cheap seats, not putting yourself on the line, and just talking about how I can do it better, I’m in no way interested in your feedback.”

Brene Brown

I’ve used this quote before, but it seems appropriate.

I struggle with the concept of leadership coaches who have never led.

“Never trust a leader without a limp”.

Recommendation:

“Formula 1: Drive to Survive” – Netflix

To keep fit, I cycle on a road bike. Yes, I am a MAMIL. Cycling gets tricky in the winter months, and I’m not one to take too many risks on wet and dark roads, which undoubtedly are wetter and darker living in Daylesford.

I therefore safely negotiate a virtual ride on Zwift or TrainerRoad on a Wahoo Kickr Smart Trainer, all of which I recommend, which gives me an excuse to binge on whatever viewing takes my fancy.

I confess, I’ve never had any real interest in motorsport.

I have received a heap of recommendations for Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive, but was reluctant given my lack of interest in the sport.

I started watching, and I am in.

It epitomises decision making in a high-stakes and unforgiving environment and all the consequences that go with it. It is excellent, and I am becoming a Formula 1 convert.

…and a timeless song lyric:

Supertramp – “Fool’s Overture”

I do enjoy a song that builds.

This has the added dimension of Winston Churchill’s famous “We shall never surrender” in the intro.

History recalls how great the fall can be
While everybody’s sleeping, the boats put out to sea
Borne on the wings of time
It seemed the answers were so easy to find
“Too late, ” the prophets (profits) cry
The island’s sinking, let’s take to the sky
Called the man a fool, stripped him of his pride
Everyone was laughing up until the day he died
And though the wound went deep
Still, he’s calling us out of our sleep
My friends, we’re not alone
He waits in silence to lead us all home

Spotify

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Bringing Out Your Best When It Matters Most

If not for ambiguity, we do not need leadership.

Leaders are in the ambiguity business. If we are not doing ambiguity, we are not doing leadership.

And it is not what happens that counts most. It is how we respond.

Bringing out your best when it matters most. Good at ambiguity, most likely good at leadership.

Leadership is a skill. You learn it, you teach it. Highly focused and purposeful. Modelled every day. Mistakes made and owned. Lessons learned and shared. Change and growth.

A ‘get it right’ mindset’ not a ‘being right’ mindset.

Learner vs Knower.

We get to choose.

Idea:

SH x R = O

Success as a leader is not determined by the situations we experience but our response to those situations.

We do not control the events of our lives, but we have power over our response. It is a daily practice, a learned skill, checking in on what is happening inside you in response to what is happening around you.

Virtual Leadership Masterclass

Hence the formula for leaders:

Situation Happens (SH) x Response (R) = Outcome (O)

Your R is most important when the SH is most challenging, and often it’s when leadership gets personal when your behaviours are being questioned.

Leadership isn’t what you preach; it is what you practice, and often underestimated, what you permit.

Yes, there may be some understanding, albeit fleeting, for what is happening around you.

Perhaps there is some empathy for what is happening inside you by the few who may have this insight.

But as leaders, we are measured by how we show up.

Difficult situations can cause us to drift away from our proclaimed principles and beliefs.

Noisy and weighty, we become distracted and tired. It is so easy to get caught up in blame, criticism and deflection, responses that find friends easily and offer no solution, no way forward.

Leaders must rise above this. Be conscious and thoughtful. Make your R better than any O
that is thrown at you, and it starts with how you talk to yourself.

Find your voice and all of its power to cut through the noise.

It starts with pressing your personal pause button. Quiet the mind. Take out a pen and paper, write down the question:

“What does this situation expect of me?’

Then write three words underneath with some space in between:

• Brave

• Calm

• Humble

 Now write down a sentence next to each of these words related to the context and content of the SH.

 For if nothing else, as a leader, the situation requires you to be calm, humble and brave.

 Poor leaders allow adversity to ruin them, good leaders survive it, the best leaders are better for it.

 And you can learn it.

 Virtual Leadership Masterclass

Quote:

“What we love reveals who we are.”

From “Give yourself permission to be creative”, Ethan Hawke on TED

Recommendation:

Four minutes of Ricky Ponting, coach of the Delhi Capitals in the IPL, trying to bring a team ethos into a group of supremely talented players who will work together for a short time in a pressured, high stakes environment.

He focuses on four simple words:

• Attitude

• Effort

• Commitment

• Care

With a particular emphasis on care as the differentiator between the great teams he has played and coached.

Care as the prerequisite for performance.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1379816744110465026

Thanks to Ryan Fairclough for sharing with me.

…and a timeless song lyric:

…and a timeless song lyric:

Breathe – Pink Floyd

A song I never get tired of.

Dark Side of the Moon is still my go-to album whenever I write.

Breathe, breathe in the air
Don’t be afraid to care
Leave but don’t leave me
Look around, choose your own ground
For long you live and high you fly
And smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry
And all your touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be

Spotify

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You Cannot Outperform Your Leadership

Leadership finds you wherever you are now but never leaves you where it found you.

Leadership will change you, different in so many ways you will sometimes struggle to relate to the ‘pre-leader’ version of yourself.

I remember a well-known, somewhat outspoken AFL footballer who coached his own team at state league level after retiring as a player. I heard him speak after two years in the role where he made the statement:

“I’d like to publicly apologise to every coach I’ve ever had”.

Leadership had changed him, finding him somewhere and leaving him somewhere else, and if this statement is anything to go by, a more humble and generous place.

Given the multi-faceted challenge of leadership, and its transformational forces, how do you ever know where you are at and where you are going? The sense of disorientation can overwhelm and with that, the fundamental need to remain grounded.

There is an element of ‘buckling-in for the ride’, understanding any effort to control the many factors that will forge their independent and often random paths is exhausting and mostly futile.

In response, I often hear leaders speak of the need to find ‘clarity’ and my first thoughts are “Well, you’re in the wrong caper”.

There will always be ambiguity, the very reason we need leadership. Leaders are in the ambiguity business.

And remember always, you cannot outperform your leadership.

Idea:

“Do I believe in my people and do they believe in me?”

There is no more important question. You will require a system to work it out, and you need to do the work.

Set aside an hour or so every month, a fresh journal page and a pad of sticky-notes.

Start with you. The leader.

At the top of the page, add the date, and then write down the simple question:

“What makes me believable?”

Then set about answering it with a deep work mindset.

Take a 360-degree view, from the perspective of all of those with whom you require their belief. Your Board, your boss, your fellow leaders, staff, and even your customers and key stakeholders.

A checklist could include questions relating to your leadership:

• Do you always bring positive energy?

• Are you a teacher or a teller?

• Are you focused on getting it right, or being right?

• Are you consistent in your attitude and motivations?

• Do you do the right thing, even when it’s hard?

• Have you established well-understood performance expectations and do you model these? After all, it is not what you promote, it is what you permit.

• Are your personal, team and organisational strategies aligned, compelling and makes the best use of scarce resources?

• Do you have the functional capability to be believable in your domain?

• Are you building a track-record to support your assertions?

• Etc etc

For each of the questions, ask yourself:

• What are two of my behaviours that support this value?

• What are two of my behaviours that are outside of this value?

• What is a leadership habit that will allow me to embed this value more consistently?

A high-performance culture requires high-performance behaviours, which are established via high-performance habits.

Quote:

“What we love reveals who we are.”

From “Give yourself permission to be creative”, Ethan Hawke on TED

Recommendation:

Make a mood-changing playlist.

As a leader, regardless of what is happening inside us, what is happening around us, we are measured by how we show up.

The energy you bring.

Here is one of my energy inducing playlists on Spotify…very nostalgic, and aptly titled:

“Mood changers when I’m feeling f…ked”

It is playing as a I write this, and doing the job.

…and a timeless song lyric:

“Lonely Boy” – The Black Keys

Well, I’m so above you
And it’s plain to see
But I came to love you anyway
So you pulled my heart out
And I don’t mind bleedin’
Any old time, you keep me waitin’
Waitin’, waitin’
Oh, whoa, oh
I got a love that keeps me waitin’

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We will treat your information with respect and not take this privilege for granted.

Bumps

You often hear leaders talk about the ‘imposter syndrome’.

This ‘condition’ has been deeply analysed.

My take is relatively straightforward.

Leadership is hard.

This is particularly the case when trying to match often elevated expectations with capability.

You will fail often.

But let us remember, failure is our greatest teacher.

A couple of years ago I heard USA basketball coach Gregg Popovich, when facing the media having been beaten by the Australian Boomers in an historic loss/win (depending on where you sit), say:

“We are a better team than the start of the game because of the knowledge we have gained.”

He is effectively saying:

“We are better for having lost”.

He understood “What truly matters”.

Play on!

___________

PS:

“Your team and organisation cannot outperform its leadership”

Facing into the year and thinking you might need leadership support for yourself, your team, or organisation to build a high-performance culture…

We have also locked in a schedule for our half-day Virtual Leadership Masterclass for the entire year for you and your team.

Unlock your leadership game. Go for it.

Idea:

“Bumps”

I like this quote from Steve Maraboli:

“For me, the most interesting people seem to have the bumpiest pasts. I prefer to connect with someone who has experienced the struggles, battles and casualties of life’s journey. There is beauty, wisdom, and truth to be found in the scars”.

Perhaps the quote appeals to me as someone who was sacked as CEO on a couple of occasions. I have no doubt it was these setbacks, personally challenging and heartbreaking at the time, that created the path to the work I now do.

Whenever I was in doubt, I referred to theses ‘truisms’:

• Leadership is Hard

• Change is Different

• Communication is Important

• Things get Complicated

• People are Human

• The Future is Tomorrow

They won’t let you down.

Quote:

“When you ask people what experience made them the person they are, they never say, “I really was a shallow and selfish jerk until I went on that amazing vacation in Hawaii.” No, people usually talk about moments of difficulty, struggle.”

David Brooks, from his excellent book “The Second Mountain”

We all have another mountain to climb

Recommendation:

I feel I am on repeat with this recommendation, but I rarely miss an episode of Dr Michael Gervais podcast, “Finding Mastery”.

This episode with Alexi Pappas, an Olympic runner and an award-winning actor and writer, talks of overcoming depression and seeing a grander version of what her future could look like. She has gone deep.

I found this episode profound as someone who has been challenged by mental health issues for most of my adult life, all while trying to lead in often challenging and complex situations.

Link to Alexi Papas on Dr Michael Gervais “Finding Mastery”

…and a timeless song lyric:

…and a timeless song lyric:

Hey Hey. My My – Neil Young

Hey hey, my my
Rock and roll can never die
There’s more to the picture
Than meets the eye.

Hey hey, my my.
Out of the blue and into the black
You pay for this, but they give you that
And once you’re gone, you can’t come back
When you’re out of the blue and into the black.

The king is gone but he’s not forgotten
Is this the tale of Johnny rotten?
It’s better to burn out than fade away
The king is gone but he’s not forgotten.

Spotify

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Stop Telling. Start Teaching.

Neale Daniher addresses the young Melbourne players before the Queen’s Birthday game against Collingwood a few years ago. It is a big game for the improving Demons – the promise of an 80,000ish crowd at their home ground, the magnificent MCG.

The man speaking to them is very familiar to everyone in the room. He is their old coach, and while few of the young Demons played under him, he is again their coach and mentor for those few precious minutes.

For Neale Daniher, every opportunity to speak is an opportunity to teach.

It is a beautiful lesson for leaders.

Our role is “build a child for the path, not a path for the child”. 

Idea:

“Stop telling. Start teaching.”

Everyone in the room understands that their old coach is dying. He has Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and has known his fate for several years.

And Neale’s response to his tragedy?

Firstly, give his disease a name, “The Beast”, and secondly, dedicate his life to building a not-for-profit to raise money to fight it.

As he speaks to the Melbourne players, he is asked the question, “Neale, knowing that you are dying, why aren’t you working through your bucket-list of stuff?”

Neale pauses, and while his disease has impacted his speech, in his very familiar Ungarie/Daniher drawl, he says:

“Because son, when it is all said and done, more is said than done.”

Neale well and truly understands that to find a cure for MND is to play a long game, and Neale doesn’t have a long time. His relentless efforts to slay “The Beast” are for the benefit of those who will receive the same heartbreaking news he and his family received a few years ago.

Neale’s charity FightMND has raised many millions of dollars, investing in medical research, and from recent reports, the signs have been positive, a sense of progress, a light at the end of an otherwise long, dark tunnel.

Neale’s commitment and that of the Daniher family has been nothing short of extraordinary. At a time when he could be forgiven for some selfishness and indulgence, he has created a platform to inspire and teach, as well as generate the kind of revenue that just might make the difference, perhaps be the tipping point, to help people he will never get to meet.

It is hard to imagine a more powerful legacy.

Please check out FightMND to see how you or your organisation can help Neale slay “The Beast.”

Quote:

“The best teams allow brilliant individuals to be just that, yet they also do it in the umbrella of a shared understanding and awareness. Equally, individuals feel responsibility to the team and so their actions are coloured by the motivation of the team. Their egos must come second to the team and the measure of every action is ‘was this good for the team, does this benefit the team’?”

Ric Charlesworth, Former Coach of the Kookaburras and Hockeyroos, voted Coach of the Year on eight occasions.

Recommendation:

Two books written by the men I have mentioned. Two wonderful teachers.:

Neale Daniher – “When all is said and done”
Booktopia

Ric Charlesworth – “World Best”
Booktopia

Have the notebook handy. You will find the “Teacher Inside”.

…and a timeless song lyric:

Rapture – Blondie.

Fab Five Freddy told me everybody’s fly
Dj spinnin’ I said, “My My”
Flash is fast, Flash is cool
François c’est pas, Flash ain’t no dude
And you don’t stop, sure shot
Go out to the parking lot
And you get in your car and drive real far
And you drive all night and then you see a light
And it comes right down and it lands on the ground
And out comes a man from Mars
And you try to run but he’s got a gun
And he shoots you dead and he eats your head
And then you’re in the man from Mars
You go out at night eatin’ cars
You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too
Mercurys and Subaru

Spotify

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I Take The Job Seriously, But I Don’t Take Myself Too Seriously

Anyone who knows their football understands the value of the chase.

The effort to run-down an opponent often seems futile when watching from the grandstand, even more so in the tight framing of our TV screens where the chaser may not even be in the same picture as the chasee.

In fact, a run-down tackle is rare.

Yet, still they chase.

It is because the run-down tackle is not the measure.

The chase is about pressure on the ball carrier, who may not execute as well as they otherwise would. A small, almost non-discernible skill error that allows the chaser’s teammate to impact on the next contest when his opponent has to slow to receive a ball they would have marked meters in the clear. Or the ball carrier might be forced a few metres wider, slowed, allowing the chaser’s teammate to fill a space and intercept, and now defence is attack.

The chase is often the difference.

It is serious stuff.

———————-

PS:

The designCEO theme for 2021:

“The defining characteristic of every great team is leadership. Leadership isn’t a difference-maker; it is the difference-maker.”

Facing into the year and thinking you might need leadership support for yourself, your team, or organisation to build a high-performance culture…

We have locked in a schedule for the full year of our half-day Virtual Leadership Masterclass for you and your team.

Unlock your leadership game. Go for it.

Idea:

What do you bring to the team?
What are you prepared to do for the team?

While not noticed in the grandstand, the chase is applauded in the coaches box and recognised in the forum that counts most, the game review meetings the next day.

In these forums, with only your coaches and teammates in attendance, you are judged not by what you bring to the team, but what you are prepared to give to the team.

Chasing is giving.

So what are you chasing?

What is your pursuit?

Leadership is a pursuit.

Pursuit of ‘what happened?’ What did I/we learn and how do I share my/our learnings? Set up your own game review meeting.

Pursuit of ‘what now?‘. What is the best of you, in this moment?

Pursuit of ‘what next?’. Where are you going with this?

It is the pursuit of belief, knowledge, hope, grace, calm, performance, humility, bravery…of what needs to change to ‘be’ these things, rather than just ‘do’ them, often unsighted and unrewarded.

Pursuit of something bigger than you.

Pursuit of purpose.

Quote:

I was talking to an AFL CEO recently, chatting about an issue that’d been the subject of public debate.

Almost as a throwaway line, he said:

“I take the job seriously, but I don’t take myself too seriously”

I then thought of all the times I took myself way too seriously.

It is a really good line, worthy of sharing.

Recommendation:

I am often asked about digital art and my process.

I use an app called Procreate for drawing. It is a ripper. Great for someone keen to try a bit of art on their iPad with the Apple Pencil, or the serious artist looking to experiment with this kind of drawing.

The learning curve is not too steep, and you can take it as far as you feel comfortable with its deep pool of options.

I recently did this drawing, titled “Magic Hands” using Procreate.

The drawing is of former Collingwood captain, the late Terry Waters, who I remember as a strong marking player at a time I was falling in love with the game. The ‘magic hands’ is also reference to the old trainer rubbing out a corked thigh to allow the skipper to return to the fray.

…and a timeless song lyric:

Mike Brady’s “Up there Cazaly”

Still love this. Never been a better sporting tune.

Well you work to earn a living
But on weekends comes the time
You can do what ever turns you on
Get out and clear your mind
Me, I like football
But there’s a lot of things around
When you line them up together
The footy wins hands down

Up there Cazaly
In there and fight
Out there and at ’em
Show ’em your might
Up there Cazaly
Don’t let ’em in
Fly like an angel
You’re out there to win

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Building the Teacher Inside

Just a few years ago, after taking a sabatical to study Fine Art, I was in conversation with a senior AFL coach struggling with the weight of leadership and all its expectations.

It was a familiar conversation, bringing up many almost repressed memories of my personal struggles as a leader, and the feeling I had nowhere to turn.

I then had a thought:

“Can I create the leadership learning experience I yearned for in my 25 years as a CEO in high-performance sport.”

Hence designCEO.

As a leader, I was forever searching for learning and personal development experiences to match the expectations of the role.

It was more than simply filling a void. It came from a deep sense of purpose, and honour as I sincerely believed that the core responsibility of leaders is to design, motivate, nourish and lead an environment that:

• Enables people to thrive. Have the experiences they yearn.

• Achieve the organisation’s purpose, mission…however you seek to define ambition in the context of the team or organisation.

As a CEO, I failed often. I offer these experiences as matter of fact examples of how I came up short, even as it relates to the very thing I now teach.

Setbacks are an integral part of changing course, and leaders recognise their mistakes are opportunities to grow and learn, as well as display their humility.

Perhaps the most potent form of feedback and feedback is central to learning.

Leadership demands that you grow and adapt. You are building personal capability to match the demands of the role as well as your personal or collective ambition.

The designCEO offering builds on the simple concept:

“Leaders must drive their own learning. No one is going to do their learning for them.”

So how do we learn?

Idea:

Building the teacher inside.

Firstly, a warning. When you are committed to learning, there is always a sense that you are somehow ‘out of date’.

I was listening to friend and mentor Neil Craig recently on “The Great Coaches Podcast”, where he said, “The older you get, the more you realise you don’t know, and the more you want to know”. He described being driven by the “fear of missing out on a good idea”.

The “Teacher Inside” model is from my work with leaders; the idea being there are four ways we learn.

Make them deliberate.

Add them to your ‘to-do’ list.

They are:

• Put yourself in conversation with wise people. People who have been “In the Arena”. Generous individuals who have gone deep, who like to share ideas rather than advice. They have done a lot of the knowledge filtering for you, aligned it to their lived experience and are happy to share without judgement. Seek to add diversity – people who are different to you.

• Nourish the brain. The books we read, the podcasts we listen to. Be discerning. Then slow down to reflect, write notes and ask how you might apply it to your life, or share with another. It is not what we learn today; it is what we will teach tomorrow. Leader as teacher. “Borrow freely, apply uniquely” is another mantra.

• Make space for insight. Slow the mind. A practice of meditation perhaps, which I highly recommend. For me, writing is the key. I journal most mornings and try and write something like this every week or so. I call it ‘hard-fun’, digging deep into your thinking, making sense of your learnings and observations. Everything I teach comes from this process.

• Create feedback loops. Go looking for it. Ask people with insight and integrity who care for you and can back it up “How do you reckon I’m going?” Also, try new things. Be open-minded. A new endeavour. Experiment, find out if that new idea might work for you. While you are at it, strategically quit something you are doing now that is likely getting in the road.

Find the ‘Teacher Inside’.

Quote:

“If you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback. If you have constructive feedback you want to give me, I want it… But if you’re in the cheap seats, not putting yourself on the line, and just talking about how I can do it better, I’m in no way interested in your feedback.”

Brene Brown

Recommendation:

Looking for a good mediation app?

I use an Australian app called “1 Giant Mind” with Jonni Pollard, recommended to me by Natasha Mason, who I thank. Now meditating for 20 minutes each morning.

…and a timeless song lyric:

Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues

Johnny’s in the basement

Mixing up the medicine

I’m on the pavement

Thinking about the government

The man in a trench coat

Badge out, laid off

Says he’s got a bad cough

Wants to get it paid off

Look out, kid

It’s somethin’ you did

God knows when

But you’re doin’ it again

One of my favourite bands of the moment is the Lumineers. Their version is great. I challenge you not to jig a little when you watch or listen to this:

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Picture Their Face

Think back to a time.

A time when someone did something special for you that changed your life.

They set you on a path. Perhaps straightened you up, showed the courage to have the conversation you needed to have, even if you didn’t quite understand or appreciate it at the time.

Take yourself back to that time and place.

Picture their face.

Remember the conversation, deed or effort, and wonder, just for a moment, what may have become of you had they not made that effort.

Now, write them a letter.

Seems like the perfect time to do it.

Idea:

Your letter is not just any letter.

It will tell a story, written in your hand, pen and paper.

What they did, how it affected you, what it meant, and why you have never forgotten.

If it is a long story, make it a long letter. If you make a mistake writing it, so be it. You are human, trying to convey one of the deepest and most powerful human emotions, your heartfelt gratitude.

As I write this, I cannot help but think of those who would never receive such a letter from me.

I see my late father’s face. Alan Schwab, forever young, who always and unfailingly trusted me more than I trusted myself, but also without knowing it, taught me the most powerful of lessons as a young man – heroes are human, and that’s ok.

I see the wise face of the old coach Allan Jeans, who taught me “It is not how you got knocked down, it is how you get up”, but also put out his hand to help me find my feet.

I see Neville Crowe’s (in the picture above) wonderful moustachioed smile, the President of the Richmond Football Club, who appointed me CEO of Richmond when I was only 24, and took it upon himself to coach and mentor, but never made me feel young. A beautiful man.

Think of your letter, handwritten envelope amongst the bills and junk in the letterbox, carefully opened and unfolded.

Your hero will probably sit down to read it, smiling, then read it for a second and third time, perhaps even show it to a loved one such is their pride.

Kept forever in a safe place.

Who will receive your letter?

Quote:

“People who want to make a difference, usually do.”

Lisa O’Neill

Lisa also has a great line to get you started in the day with flourish:

“Get up, dress up, show up”

Recommendation:

An app called Ecamm Live for Mac users.

It has enabled me to deliver keynotes, workshops and leadership meetings on Zoom, Teams etc, in a fully seamless way. It is a subscription, but worth it if you are going to have to communicate in this way.

At the end of every presentation, someone will ask “How are you doing that?”

The answer…Ecamm Live.

Easy to install, and learn, with very good instructional videos.

…and a timeless song lyric:

Kashmir – Led Zeppelin

A song I can listen to any time, but at its best in the seconds before a major sporting event.

“Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face
And stars fill my dream
I’m a traveller of both time and space
To be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race
This world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait
All will be revealed”

The old boys rocking it out in 2012, losing none of its power:

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