Lesson #15 - Proven - The Leader’s Limp

We make our way into the MCG and along the concourse below the stadium. I am unsure where we are going, but when you are holding your dad’s hand, it doesn’t matter.

Dad is in uniform. He looks like Saturdays. Match day. Early in the morning, he would put on his black club blazer, with a heavily embroidered growling tiger on the pocket, and his black and yellow tie, readying himself for his day ahead.

When dressed for match day, it normally meant an early morning goodbye, a kiss on the forehead and a chorus of “Go Tiges!” and he would be gone. I then wouldn’t see him until the next day, when we would sit and watch “World of Sport” with plates in our laps, eating fat greasy sausages and rice-a-riso, our Sunday staple, most likely celebrating a Richmond victory, Dad just a little bleary-eyed.

But on this day, I am joining him, at least for a while. I will soon be passed over to someone with kids my age to look after me and watch the footy.

My father is Alan Schwab, Secretary of the Richmond Football Club. If he did the job now, he’d be called the CEO.

Every so often, when home alone, I would sneak into my parent’s room, open the wardrobe, and look for the blazer, which would also have the tie wrapped around the wire coat hanger. I’d rub my fingers over the embroidered tiger, feeling its texture. The blazer is now in my wardrobe at home.

Dad stands out as we walk along the dank walkway. It was more than the uniform; he had somewhere to be. It felt like the game couldn’t start until Dad was reassured that everything was in order.

The crowd seemed to part for him. People recognise him and say, “G’day Schwabby, big game today. Can’t drop this one.”

Dad would keep moving but always slow to acknowledge people with a one or two-finger wave, a quick word and thanks. Smiling. Giving respect, like you do when someone lets you into traffic.

Sometimes he would be stopped by a supporter, the opportunity too much to resist for an oh-so-brief conversation with someone with their hands on the levers of their footy club, a ‘powerbroker’ as they were known.

Dad would listen to a flurry of questions.

“How’s Barry Richardson’s knee going? Reckon it will hold up? Dicky Clay is looking the goods down back. Do you think he will stay there? Gee, young Balme looks a good player. He’s a big boy. You stole one there, eh Alan?”

Dad would stand patiently, answering each question with a smile, thank the person for their support and excuse himself.

“I am going to meet with Tommy Hafey and the boys in the rooms now, I will pass on your best wishes”, shaking the man’s hand, leaving his inquisitor feeling great about their footy club.

There were gates along the concourse with uniformed men standing sentry. They would see Dad coming and ask people standing in line to step back. We would go straight to the front of the queue, thanking those in line, and we would be allowed to pass without having to show badges like the others. The uniformed men would say, “Best of luck Mr Schwab” and Dad would know their names and thank them.

As we got closer to the Richmond changerooms, a man was standing at the doorway talking to the doorman, Roy Webb, an Oliver Hardy shaped fellow who held great power on match-day. To get into the rooms, you must first pass Roy, who took his role very seriously.

When the man speaking to Roy saw Dad, he immediately finished his conversation and walked toward us.

He was a hobbled, thick-chested man, walking as though carrying a big can of paint. Dad would let go of my hand to shake his. Heavy gnarled mitts, oversized butcher-shop knuckles, with one or two fingers at angles not where they were intended. I gawped at the grisly hand which swaddled my father’s as he struggled to match his unforgiving grip.

This man was much older than Dad, his clothes were similar, but looked weary, desultory and, from another time, struggling to contain the body mass within their confines. The old man had a hairy, red capillary nose and multi-layered dustings of dandruff on his shoulders, conspicuous against the faded black of his blazer. He smelt of must and mothballs.

The old man leant into Dad as he spoke, still gripping his hand, pulling him closer, faces almost touching. The older man would look around to make sure no one was listening but hoping people were watching.

I saw spittle leave his lips as he spoke out of the corner of his mouth, finishing his story with a burst of breathless laughter like he’d told a dirty joke. Dad would laugh with him, but I knew he didn’t really think it was that funny because it wasn’t what his actual laugh sounded like. He unclasped Dad’s hand, tousled my blond hair, and gave me a dewy wink as though I had been privy to something important and perhaps just a bit naughty.

With a straight-legged limp, the old man lurched away. I looked back to see him resting against the painted concrete walls of the MCG concourse, head down, alone, catching his breath and finding the resolve to climb the stairs to wherever he’d watch the game from.

Dad’s soft hand would again find mine, reassuring, as we made our way into the rooms.

Dad explained who the old man was. He was a footballer from an era now well past, who once wore the yellow and black jumper, just a few games, forgotten and consigned by most, but not by Dad.

Dad would tell me stories of what the game was like in their time, playing in the Depression or War years, men who’d nail leather football studs into their work boots for matches and training when a game of league football meant food on the family table.

There was respect in Dad’s words and tone.

“We are not here without them. Blokes like him kept the club going when it could have died. They were very tough men. They have nothing to prove.” he would say.

As I listened, I tried to reconcile this busted man with the lean and muscular athletes soon to run out on the MCG who had become the centre of my world.

Dave Grohl

Last year I read Dave Grohl’s autobiography “The Storyteller”.

Actually, I listened to it on Audible. 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’.

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.

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

Dave Grohl was 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 paralysing 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. Without expectation, he sang his own songs and played all of the instruments, ending with a shoebox of cassettes 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, so different to the laid-back Heartbreakers, 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 relaxed professionalism and camaraderie, so different from the manic experience of Nirvana, but understanding that he would always be known as “that guy from Nirvana”, or does he go back to the shoebox of cassette tapes.

He goes with the box of tapes.

We all have a shoebox full of cassette tapes.

You need to do the real thing.

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 ignorance and 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, and invite a different perspective. Listen. Allow the counterview to replace yours long enough to know whether you need to change something or stay the course.

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

You learn a language by speaking it. Every day.

You are only a leader when you lead.

You need to do the real thing.

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. They are more likely to make an 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 is 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 stuff.

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 consciousness, character and capability, which people will connect with.

And 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.

To make change happen, you’re in charge.

Go find that box of cassettes.

Let’s write some tunes.

“Who you are is what you settle for, you know?” said singer Janis Joplin.

The better coaches I have met in football 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 the women’s game needed, and her legacy is profound.

These people 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, more interested in what we can become than who we think we are already. And we, the lovers of the game, 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.

They have written their own songs, and they have the leaders limp as evidence of their efforts and proud of it.

They’re proven.

Play on!

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