TEAM WORK

Ray McLean has worked as a leadership and management consultant for the last 20 years and is the founding director and principal facilitator of Leading Teams . Ray conducts team performance and leadership programs for a number of AFL, NRL and NBL Clubs and also works with a wide range of corporate, educational and community organisations. His first book, Any Given Team, was published in 2006. Ray first recognised his ability to work effectively with teams when he spent five years in the RAAF as a training and leadership officer. He was also a physical education teacher for eight years. He lives in Geelong, .

Leading Teams is the largest and most successful provider of leadership and team alignment programs in Australian sport. They specialise in the delivery of teamwork and leadership programs for elite sporting and corpo- rate organisations, aligning teams by creating shared vision and behaviours that empower all members of the team to engage in open dialogue. Leading Teams develops leaders who model and defend the behaviours that the team identifies as non-negotiable.

For more information visit leadingteams.net.au Praise for Ray McLean’s Performance Improvement Program

‘The culture at our football club is one we are all proud of and one we have worked very hard to achieve . . . it would not have been achieved without Ray McLean’s direction and guidance.’ Paul Roos, AFL Premiership Coach,

‘It’s pretty confronting, but [Leading Teams] go straight to the heart of what behaviours are unacceptable. It had to be done for us to improve our performance and move on.’ Tracey Heenan, Principal, St Kevin’s Primary School

‘I don’t think it matters whether it’s a sporting organisation, a business or a charity, you still need to find a way to effectively lead people to where you want the organisation to go. Anyone can benefit from this program.’ Mark Evans, General Manager,

‘There are a lot of similarities between success in sport and business . . . The Leading Teams program challenged people and opened up previously closed communication channels.’ Allan Morris, Executive Director, RMIT University IT Department

‘Working with Leading Teams has been instrumental in equip- ping us with the capacity to cope with the huge impact of the bushfires on this organisation and this community.’ Bill Forrest, former CEO, Nillumbik Shire Council ‘Leading Teams helped us understand that each individual is accountable to the school as an organisation and to each other as members of the team. We now understand how powerful the collective capacity of the team is to improve outcomes for us all.’ Viki Miles, Principal, Trafalgar Primary School

‘Ray McLean is expert in assisting organisations to develop their culture and values. An outstanding facilitator and com- municator, he emphasises the importance of individuals taking responsibility and becoming leaders to achieve better team results.’ Brian Goorjian, the most successful coach in Australian basketball

‘[The Performance Improvement Program] is a very important part of what the players still do. It’s the simplicity of it that is the strength of it, I think.’ , General Manager of Football Operations, Geelong FC TEAM WORK Forging links between honesty, accountability and success

RAY MCLEAN with Adam McNicol Text copyright © Ray McLean 2010 Diagrams copyright © Ray McLean 2010

First published in 2010 Reprinted in 2015

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Published by Leading Teams Australia Pty Ltd J95, 21 Hall Street Port VIC 3207 (03) 9654 3744 [email protected] www.leadingteams.net.au

Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press, Melbourne

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-­in-­Publication data:

Creator: McLean, Ray J., 1959– author.

Title: Team work : forging links between honesty, accountability and success / Ray McLean with Adam McNicol.

ISBN: 9780994438409 (paperback)

Subjects: Teams in the workplace. Leadership. Organizational behavior. Psychology, Industrial.

Other Creators/Contributors: McNicol, Adam, author.

658.4022 For Sally who continues to be my greatest source of inspiration.

For my children Courtney, Jackson and Jesse who continue to support me in my endeavours

and to all at Leading Teams who have enabled me to make my vocation a vacation. CONTENTS

Foreword x Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Empowerment 8 Chapter 2 Culture 34 Chapter 3 Framework 64 Chapter 4 Relationships 90 Chapter 5 Genuine conversations 114 Chapter 6 Holding your line 132 Chapter 7 Individual responsibility 152 Chapter 8 Warning bells 176 Chapter 9 Living the program 192 Conclusion 202 Further reading 208 Acknowledgements 211 FOREWORD

Having worked with Leading Teams for several years, I wanted to write this foreword by way of thanks. As I sat down to write it, I reflected that 2009 had been the most tumultuous period in my twenty-­five years in local government. As CEO of Nillumbik Shire, situated on the north-­eastern out- skirts of Melbourne, I’d started the year with a new council, the majority of whom were not on the previous council, although this is not an unusual occurrence. The seven new councillors between them had fourteen and a half years’ experience in local govern- ment and were charged with setting the strategic direction for a $65 million organisation with over 100 programs and services. Then came the 7 February bushfires, which burnt 25 per cent of the municipality and resulted in forty-­one fatalities. One con- tractor (a former manager) died, and six staff members lost their homes. The majority of the staff live in Nillumbik or adjoining

x FOREWORD municipalities, so everyone knew somebody who had been killed. In this atmosphere of grief and loss the organisation had to lift its performance to an unprecedented level with round-the-­ ­clock services in response to the tragedy. Then, to top it all off, at the end of the year the council decided not to give me another contract of employment as the CEO. So what’s all this got to do with Leading Teams? Well, I’d spent the previous four years working with Leading Teams to improve performance in our organisation. We’d chosen them not because I was an avid fan of football (explained by the fact that I barrack for Richmond), but because our HR manager had worked with them in a not-­for-­profit drug and alcohol agency. Leading Teams came in at a point where I’d recently been promoted to the position of CEO and most of my direct reports in management positions were new to the organisation. We pretty much had to build a new team, and I found Leading Teams’ prac- tical focus on behaviours and values to be the best glue to hold together such a diverse organisation. Over the next four years the management team worked very hard, and I firmly believe that this work has been critical in the high performance of the organisation in such a resource-­ constrained environment. We deliver a suite of services similar to most councils in the state, and do it 40 per cent more efficiently, both in terms of staff numbers and expenditure. Our work with Leading Teams also proved to be critical in the development of resilience in our organisation, something we discovered through the tragedies of 2009. The ability of our managers to have hard conversations with each other about their behaviour in a time of extreme anxiety and pressure was critical to an effective response to the tragedy.

xi TEAM WORK

I’m proud to say that we got through the year without one WorkCover claim for stress, despite the enormity of the task and the grief that individual members of staff were feeling in the lead-­up to the first anniversary of the tragedy. The work we have done with Leading Teams has enabled both myself and my colleagues to grow personally and professionally, and for this I am most grateful.

Bill Forrest, former CEO, Nillumbik Shire Council December 2009

xii INTRODUCTION

The focus of my first book,Any Given Team, was to allow people to gain an insight into how Leading Teams, the business, came into being. In some ways the book was a self-indulgent­ project because it also enabled me to reflect on my personal journey. For that project there was little collaboration, other than with a hard-­ working editor, Paul Conroy. Without his work the book would not have seen the light of day. The concept of the second book really began at a staff meeting we conducted at Leading Teams in 2006. We were having some broad philosophical discussions about our business, its place in the market and our product, which we have named the Per- formance Improvement Program (PIP). Thanks to many tweaks over the years, it has become a way of transferring much of the responsibility within an organisation to the staff, or in the case of sporting teams, to the players. This is done through a process of

1 TEAM WORK empowerment, whereby a manager/leader/coach recognises that the rest of the team has a great deal of expertise and knowledge about the running of the team. At this point it is important to note that empowerment is not a fluffy, new age management theory, but is in fact a hard-edged­ philosophy about aggressively improving team and individual performance. Our program is a behaviour-­based decision-­making framework for managing the entire life cycle of any given team, from a member’s induction to their eventual exit from the team. It aims to develop an environment within a team where its members can play a role in developing the team’s values and the behavioural guidelines that best achieve its goals. Our model challenges, very strongly, the Henry Ford notion of workers bringing their backs to work but leaving their brains at home. At the time of our staff meeting, I made it clear that there were a million similar programs in the marketplace dealing with leadership development and team-building.­ So I asked, ‘What can we be best at so that our program stands out from all the others?’ While we all agreed that the PIP was simple, flexible and appli- cable to any given team, this wasn’t enough to set us apart from the many other groups professing to know the keys to leadership and teamwork. So we concluded that what we needed to be best at was facilitating the program. That was where we could make a real difference. Most of the people at Leading Teams oversee the running of the PIP within a team, hence their titles as facilitators. When our people begin working with a group, it is vital that they begin with no assumptions about where the team is at. They cannot afford to be judgemental. For our program to make a successful start, the facilitator must allow the team members to decide what issues

2 INTRODUCTION are affecting performance and what strategies they need to imp­ lement. Then the facilitator helps to create an environment where all the team members can take part in honest discussions about the team’s performance. The next step is to help the team move from those broader-­level discussions to actually taking action. In each chapter I discuss a different phase or element in the Performance Improvement Program, outlining the theory behind it and illustrating it with detailed case studies. We have deliberately chosen case studies that feature teams from various walks of life, including community groups, local government organisations, schools, grassroots sporting teams, elite sporting teams and both large and small businesses. However, it is important to remember that, just like the indi- viduals who comprise a team, all teams are different. They have different dynamics and will often expect different outcomes, depending on their overall goals and the way they fit into the world. The intent ofTeam Work, therefore, is to allow you to digest the case studies and ponder some challenging questions that you can apply to your own teams. It is not to provide you with a step-­by-­step guide to creating a great team, as there is a very real danger that you could cause harm to co-workers­ if they’re not ready for the honesty our program encourages. A Leading Teams facilitator must first be convinced that the environment in which they are working is safe enough for team members to have open conversations about their team’s performance and behaviour. I have seen one example where a team leader had a brief look at how we run our program then got his team members together and said, ‘Let’s tell each other what we think of one another.’ Not surprisingly, the team environment was not ready for such

3 TEAM WORK a challenging discussion. The intentions were good but the method was all wrong. In this case, the leader himself attempted to facilitate the discussion, resulting in some staff being immedi- ately mistrustful and suspecting a hidden agenda. The leader also hadn’t taken into account the discrete relationships he had within the team, which created even more friction. The discussions, once started, quickly became personal, rather than about the team’s development. The sad part was that once Pandora’s Box had been opened, it was very hard to mend the relationships that were dam- aged. Leading Teams was subsequently called in to work with the group to help repair the damage. From this brief example you can understand why we believe the only way our program can be properly run is for a person from outside the team – ​an external facilitator – ​to conduct the sessions required. When we begin working with a team it is like entering into a partnership. We provide a framework and our facilitation skills in trying to assist leaders and teams to improve their performance. The facilitator becomes like a mentor, support- ing a team through the change process. The example above shows just how challenging the role of a facilitator can be. They certainly don’t take their responsibility lightly. This book is also an opportunity for all the Leading Teams facilitators to share their experiences, which is useful on two levels. Firstly, their case studies are useful for readers who are interested in seeing how other workplaces have engaged in the performance improvement program, giving them food for thought and a talk- ing point for opening up discussions about change in their own workplaces. Secondly, and on a more personal level, these case studies are an acknowledgement of the important work our facili- tators do. I have been involved with the training and development

4 INTRODUCTION of most of my staff, and have seen them flourish. Witnessing the personal growth and professional development of the people in our team has been a significant motivator in my working life. You’ll notice that some of my anecdotes concern the work I continue to do with the Sydney Swans. The Swans have become one of Leading Teams’ highest profile success stories and our work together formed a large part of Any Given Team. A couple of years after I began running the PIP, under the watchful eye of senior coach Paul Roos, the Swans won the AFL premiership in 2005, and again reached the grand final a year later. Since then, Leading Teams has increased its profile thanks to the work of my business partner Gerard Murphy at Geelong. Gerard’s role in helping the Cats break their long-standing­ prem­iership drought in 2007 has been widely acknowledged. He certainly played a big hand in the creation of strong, open and honest relationships within the club, enabling the players to drive themselves further and reach three consecutive grand finals, win- ning another flag in 2009. Gerard is now expanding our business in Europe, where he took over from Trent Hotton, a former AFL footballer with Collingwood and Carlton, who returned to Aus- tralia early in 2010. Trent gained a great insight into the culture of English sport by working with teams in soccer, rugby union and rugby league. While Gerard has not been able to make a huge contribution to this publication, many of the other facilitators have, including my second business partner Kraig Grime. Kraig has put together a case study around his work with the Hawthorn Football Club – ​ AFL premiers in 2008 – ​and a number of local government and corporate clients. This book also contains contributions from former elite athlete Craig Biddiscombe (he played for Geelong

5 TEAM WORK and Richmond), who is now responsible for a wide range of our corporate clients. As a member of the leadership group within our business, he has a significant influence over its direction. Other former elite athletes who have chosen to join Leading Teams are Justin Peckett, Jim Plunkett and Simon Fletcher. Justin played over 200 AFL games with St Kilda, and not only looks after a large number of our clients (along with raising seven kids), but also managed to coach the local footy team where he began his career as a youngster. This has allowed him to test our program in a grassroots setting and the results, which he will talk about in a later chapter, have been most interesting. Jim spent a number of years playing footy with the and Carlton. He came to us with a teaching background and, along with running the program at the , has taken responsibility for a lot of our community-­based work, particularly that which involves indigenous communities. Simon began his AFL career in his home town Geelong, before spending time at Carlton and Richmond. He managed a broad education program for the AFL Players’ Association before leav- ing us to become the first player development manager for the new AFL Gold Coast team. Martine Walsh is another important member of our team. She came to us from a teaching background and while she has focussed her work in the education sector, running the program with both teachers and students at a number of schools, she has also worked with a range of women’s elite sporting teams. Bryan McCormick is one of the newest members of the Lead- ing Teams staff. He has taken on a number of challenging clients, including the many people who work at the Victorian Magistrates’ Court. Another relatively recent arrival is chief executive Garie

6 INTRODUCTION

Dooley, who has provided the fascinating story about how we let our staff interview him for the role. Both Garie and Bryan have added some diversity, which Leading Teams has probably lacked in the past. Bryan was a lawyer for more than twenty years, while Garie has come from a strong corporate and sales background. Now that I have sparked your interest in the business of team- work, there are two pivotal questions you need to answer:

• Does your team have a clear purpose for existing? • Do you believe working better as a team will lead to better results?

If you can answer yes to both of those questions, then you are ready to consider the true value of putting the health of your team before the doing of your work for long-­term gain. By reading the case studies in this book, I hope that you will be able to think more objectively about how your team is going, that you will start to realise what you don’t know. I hope that you will not only have enough clarity to assess your team’s current position, but also enough insight to create the road map to guide it to success.

7 TEAM WORK

CHAPTER 1 EMPOWERMENT

‘One of the things I’ve learned about empowerment is that you can’t stuff around with it. You’re either going to do it or you’re not. If you are going to do it, you must believe the people you’re empowering have got some intelligence and responsibility.’

8 So what makes a good team? For us, the key to a successful team of any kind is that its individual members believe they have been empowered to take full responsibility for their role. They must be confident that their opinion counts and that they can make decisions without having to be micro-­managed. So, when Lead- ing Teams begins implementing our Performance Improvement Program at an organisation, our aim is to help create such an environment for all its members. Over the years I have found empowerment to be a misunder- stood term. Many people think it comes about when a leader says, ‘I empower you.’ But in reality, it is more about a follower saying, ‘I feel empowered.’ It’s about trust, about valuing people’s view and believing that their level of engagement improves performance. Empowerment is not, as I have heard it described, ‘the lunatics running the asylum’. In an empowered environment, staff or players still understand there is structure and that the leader is ultimately responsible. The principles of empowerment from Leading Teams’ experi- ence (what we call the Empowerment Model) can be applied in any team, anywhere. The following case studies show just how well empowerment works.

9 TEAM WORK

CASE STUDY: Lake Wendouree netball team Leading Teams facilitator: Ray McLean

In early 2007, my wife Sally was coaching the Lake Wendouree senior netball team, which plays in the Football League Netball Association. The team contained plenty of talented net- ballers, but had in previous years struggled to overcome its biggest rival, Sebastopol, which had won four consecutive premierships. Early that year, Sally asked me to conduct a session with all the Lake Wendouree netballers, including those who usually lined up in the reserves team. The aim of the session was to develop a framework to create a more empowered environment. The ulti- mate aim, of course, was to improve performance. However, before we had even begun our first session, the team found itself accelerated into the Empowerment Model. In March 2007, Sally was diagnosed with cancer. Much to our shock, she was ordered to begin chemotherapy almost immediately because the cancer was very aggressive. Before she started her treatment, Sally went to netball training and informed her players of the situation. It was clear she would be unable to coach them in the traditional sense for most, if not all, of the season. Soon after, I held the session with the girls as planned. During this session it was agreed that a new coach would not be appointed to replace Sally. Instead, the players would take more responsibil- ity for the management of their team – ​the lunatics would run the asylum! Suddenly, the situation became a kind of experiment in which my theories about great teams being able to make their coaches almost redundant could be put to the test. Casey Frame, the goal-­attack, remembers how the process began.

10 EMPOWERMENT

Casey Frame: We needed to delegate roles. We needed to work out who would take training, who would get every- thing ready on Saturday mornings, all the different aspects of the week. We had to try and fill all of Sal’s roles, which was tough. To make it work we decided to form a leader- ship group.

Before any decision was made about who was in the leadership group, I encouraged the players to think about how their opposi- tion teams saw them. Then I asked them how they would like to be viewed by their opposition – ​what their ‘trademark’ qualities would be. Lake Wendouree, the players decided, would be a team renowned for its unity, passion, consistency and honesty. We then developed the behaviours to support the team’s trademark. Four players were subsequently chosen as the leadership group. These were the players who best modelled the trademark, and could be trusted to challenge and support others to live these qualities, too. Kara Hart was one of them.

Kara Hart: All the players worked together to write some guidelines about what we expected from everyone – ​things like each player aiming to achieve a performance in each game that could honestly be judged as 7 out of 10. As a part of the leadership group you knew you had to lead by example. I think that made our performance a lot better as well. We rarely missed training sessions because we had developed the standards ourselves. We decided everyone should attend club functions and everyone did that. We really didn’t have to push too many people. We all became more accountable on-­court as well as off-­court.

11 TEAM WORK

From there, the leadership group began overseeing training. Although Sally’s health had improved enough to be involved in team selection when the season began, she allowed the leadership group to play a role in deciding which players would take to the court each week. It is easy to imagine such an arrangement ending in disaster, with infighting developing as players were dropped or promoted by their teammates. Instead, the honesty at the heart of the process galvanised the team. After all, the players had selected the leadership group themselves. They each had ownership of that process. And the players outside the leadership group knew they could raise any questions with the leaders, who were required, as part of the team trademark, to give an honest answer. Remarkably, Lake Wendouree finished on top of the ladder, and met Sebastopol in the grand final. By then Sally was able to be more heavily involved, but the girls continued to manage most aspects of the team themselves. As Sally recalls, this presented many challenges.

Sally McLean: We had one girl who was on the interchange bench for the whole finals series. That decision was made by the leadership group. We basically said we wanted to win the premiership and the best way to do that was to leave our starting seven on the court the whole time. That sort of thing would usually lead to a lot of heartache for the person on the bench and they might be unhappy and not return to play the following year. But Kate, who sat on the bench and was a quality player, was fantastic. She was as excited with the win as anybody because she had never been kept in the dark about why the decision was being made.

12 EMPOWERMENT

In the grand final it all came together, with Lake Wendouree defeating Sebastopol and winning the premiership. The girls achieved their goal and all of them believe that the process, which empowered them to make many of their own decisions, played a major role in the success. Sue Nalder, another member of the leadership group, believes it was the closest team she has ever played in.

Sue Nalder: The unity was a massive thing. On court, we knew if things weren’t going well we would all be really supportive of one another. Even if we were struggling in a game, we knew everyone in the team was doing all they could to win. We all supported each other so well. Having a leadership group chosen by the players made all that possible.

In 2008, Lake Wendouree backed up and won the premiership again, this time defeating Melton by twelve goals. In 2009 they played even better, and were undefeated, all the way through to another premiership. The team has become the benchmark in its competition and Sally remains committed to the model of player empowerment.

Sally McLean: I have learned it’s really valuable to the team if the girls can walk off the court and initiate the discussion about the game. In breaks, I speak to the girls for a short time then ask them what they think. The leadership girls have become very good at assessing the game and then giving feedback to the other players. I think all the players accept that really well.

13 TEAM WORK

Casey Frame, a member of the leadership group in 2007 and 2008, agrees.

Casey Frame: We’ve formed a real trust with one another. Sal will ask us about how we’re playing and we’ll voice our opinions. Sal will trust us if we think there need to be changes. The same goes when Sal says a change needs to be made. We will trust her judgement.

Casey’s observation describes accurately how empowerment works. It’s about a relationship between leader–follower, coach– player, which is focussed on getting the best results for the team. The Lake Wendouree example was a unique case where the coach already had an understanding and belief in the Empowerment Model. Perhaps being married to one of the owners of Leading Teams helped! Also, there was a crisis that propelled the players to seek empowerment. Most of the time there is no such critical event. It comes down to a leader deciding they want to improve their business’s or team’s performance. What the Lakers did was challenge the typical top-­down coaching approach that seems to dominate in netball, and they succeeded.

CASE STUDY: Crows Leading Teams facilitator: Ray McLean

In October 2005, I met with , who had recently been appointed Adelaide’s senior coach, after replacing as a caretaker midway through the season. It is important to understand that Neil wasn’t a coach who encouraged player empowerment.

14 EMPOWERMENT

In his earlier coaching life at Norwood, Neil’s style had been what I’d call ‘my way or the highway’. However, being naturally inquisitive and driven to find the best way to succeed, he began our meeting by asking questions about how our program had been used at the Sydney Swans. I asked Neil to reflect on this time.

Neil Craig: With my coaching at Norwood I was very auto- cratic first-up,­ no question. I just told people what to do. When I took over the Crows, we didn’t want to bottom out [repeatedly finish near the bottom of the ladder to obtain the best draft selections]. Of course, there was no guarantee that we wouldn’t, but we didn’t want to do it deliberately, although it has almost been legitimised as a method for rebuilding your list. In terms of maximising teamwork and leadership, I felt that there had to be a better way than the one I’d been exposed to, which involved having a couple of senior play- ers – ​usually the best or most talented players – ​driving the whole thing. It had been about getting on the drink, forming a bond, and hoping you’d got a group of players who can stay together and win a premiership. There was no strategic planning.

Neil was also being directed our way by Alan Stewart, who had just taken on the job as Adelaide’s football development manager. I first met him when he was coach of South Australian state league club Central District back in the 1990s. It was Alan who gave Leading Teams one of its first big breaks, by putting my ideas about leadership and empowerment into practice. When I began working with the players at Central District, the club had

15 TEAM WORK never won a premiership. Since then the Bulldogs have become the powerhouse club in the SANFL. After winning their first flag in 2000, they have gone on to win seven more in subsequent seasons. Interestingly, Alan was another coach who had made the transition from autocrat to one who genuinely empowered his group. He reaped the rewards not only on the field, but created a culture of success. Alan understood that empowerment wasn’t about handing the reins to the players, but about developing that strong sense of ownership among the players that he knew would help him become a significantly more influential coach. This is the leap of faith a leader or coach must take – ​to seemingly relinquish power to gain power. Peter Jonas also played a part in Leading Teams getting to know the Crows. An assistant coach with the Crows, in previous years he had been involved with our program while in a coaching position at the Sydney Swans. The day I first met Neil Craig it felt like the Spanish Inquisition. He had a thousand questions. When we talked about how much scope we’d given players or workers at the Swans, Centrals and at the corporate level, he initially viewed the program with some scepticism. In the coming weeks I took the next step and flew to Adelaide to meet some of the club managers. I underwent further scrutiny and questioning about the model and how it could apply to them. At the time, Neil, Crows CEO Stephen Trigg and general manager of football operations, John Reid, all had reservations about the program, but they gave us the nod to start. When I came away from that meeting, I knew we had to prove that the program was going to be of benefit. Neil and others at the Crows had by then heard enough anecdotal evidence to push forward, but now they wanted results. The early sessions with the

16 EMPOWERMENT

Adelaide players and coaches were very challenging. I identified many issues, the most glaring being what I thought was a low expectation of leadership at the club. The leadership group, if one existed, was probably just the captain, . He was the only player to take any concerns to the coach. The Adelaide model was like a corporate model. It had a very clear hierarchy and any- one below the coach knew they had limited input. That was what I wanted to change. I wanted the people running the club to realise that the players, like workers, were a valuable resource – ​they knew how they could improve things and we needed to engage them as quickly as possible. The first session I ran with the playing group, coaches and key football people in Adelaide, in early November 2005, was an important event. The most significant moment was when we reviewed Mark Ricciuto as a leader. He was the all-­conquering sort of leader – ​a train hard, play hard sort of bloke. What some might describe as an old-­school leader. This was the first time the players had been asked to look closely at the behaviour of their much-­admired leader. Until this point, Mark’s methods had probably followed traditional football lines of ‘let’s get together, have a few beers and a few bets’, but the group was saying that this doesn’t fit for everyone. In fact, it can isolate some people. Can you imagine taking one of the most revered and admired people in your workplace and for the first time giving them genuine suggestions for their improvement? This is the confront- ing step that the Crows players were being asked to take. As a ‘centre of influence’ (I explain this in more depth later), Mark’s positive response helped all the players to buy into the program. The players now knew they would be held accountable for their

17 TEAM WORK own behaviour, but that they were expected to engage with their teammates and look for better ways for the team to function. This is what empowerment is all about. There was no place to hide, no way to sidestep the program. In the early days, Neil was no doubt frustrated by my constantly challenging the limited responsibility he gave the lead- ership group. For example, if there was a poor training session, the coaches would usually meet and work out what to do about it but I told Neil he should seek the players’ views. I reassured him that it wasn’t a matter of the coach’s view being unimportant, but that the players needed to be held accountable. Rather than telling the players what to do, I suggested he ask them (‘Why is this hap- pening? What are we going to do about it?’) and get their buy-­in to any possible solutions. The answers to these questions are not going to change the world, but they are important moments that are the building blocks of the program, gradually giving the play- ers confidence that their leaders trust their view. Neil was still sceptical, but encouraged by Alan Stewart and Peter Jonas, who had both seen it work before, he was willing to let the program run. I impressed upon Neil that it made sense for the players to assess the coach and that he needed to think along dif- ferent lines. ‘You’re the people who work for me, so why wouldn’t you be best people to tell me how I’m going?’ Neil remembers this idea being particularly challenging.

Neil: The most difficult thing for me was to have what I call legitimate trust in the players to make really good, strong, clear decisions that were not just for convenience. I knew they were intelligent, and had good solutions, but did I really trust them? As it turned out, the harsher the feedback

18 EMPOWERMENT

I got about myself as a coach, the more trusting I became. It was the exact opposite to what people would think. The strongest feedback from the players came a couple of years later and related to my theory that working harder was better. For me there’s a strong association between work ethic and performance. That was how I played my footy. I wasn’t a great player, but because I worked really hard I achieved most of what I wanted to. The players detected that the amount of work I took on wasn’t condu- cive to good performance. They told me I often seemed tired, that I took losses too personally, and that I tried to carry all the responsibility. These things flowed over to the playing group, as they became edgy when the coach seemed to be walking on eggshells. They told me I was los- ing my sharpness during the season and I soon realised it was true.

From the outset it was clear that some players were not going to survive in the new environment. Once you’ve introduced this level of accountability into a group you can no longer ignore behaviour that falls outside the agreed boundaries. The same thing happens in the corporate teams we work with. Ultimately, some staff may ‘behave their way out of your organisation’. I believe this is what the Crows’ management saw as the program’s biggest risk. They wondered: ‘What happens if one of our best players doesn’t buy in?’ But as the program evolved, the concerns of the hierarchy were alleviated as they saw a consistently high level of team performance – ​in 2006, the first year of the program, they won seventeen games and finished the home-­and-­away season on

19 TEAM WORK top of the ladder. They could also see the development of play- ers within this empowered environment. was a classic case. Upon Mark Ricciuto’s retirement, Simon was elected captain and by 2009 he and the leadership group had significant influence in discussions around training, selection, list manage- ment (recruiting), the induction of new players and performance review. These types of milestones showed how far the team had come, and could still go. As Neil himself knows only too well, the program is never really ‘finished’, and the people involved in it are continually learning.

Neil: One of the biggest issues I still struggle with is that if something is not done to my standard, and with a sense of urgency, I just think, ‘I’ll do it’. So I’m still working on that. One of the things I’ve learned about empowerment is that you can’t stuff around with it. You’re either going to do it or you’re not. If you are going to do it, you must believe the people you’re empowering have got some intelligence and responsibility. Are they capable? If you don’t believe that, it won’t work. I found that hard with a few guys. But as your system gets better, those guys get weeded out. Still, a lot of coaches I talk to are sceptical. When I tell them about the players being intelligent and that I want to know what they think, and that I want them to help come up with legitimate solutions to problems, those coaches look at me and say, ‘That’s nonsense, Craigy. It’s too idealistic’. Like I said, the lesson for me is that you must have that belief in your people. Even now I probably don’t have unwavering belief in every single one of them. But I’m more at ease with that. I know the players can handle a situation

20 EMPOWERMENT

and I trust them fully. I felt more at ease during the 2009 season than I’ve ever felt because I’ve let go of some things. I’ve let the players take training on Mondays and I’m not even there. And I know that has made them perform bet- ter, because they have to design the session, a nominated person has to run it, and they have to give each other feedback. I think that will eventually flow over to the main training sessions. People have said to me that the trust I have in my play- ers means that they hold my coaching career in their hands. But I’m comfortable with that because of the trust I have in them. I’m fifty-three­ years old, and I’m still learning that the more you give, the more you get.

Neil’s observations in relation to trust are absolutely fundamen- tal in terms of empowerment. To add structure to this aim of building trust within an empowered organisation we have what is generally referred to as the Situational Leadership Model (see Figure 1). Within this model there are three areas you need to assess in terms of a person’s readiness to take more responsibility.

• Is the person confident and secure within the system? • Do they have the knowledge and skills required for that particular situation? • Do they have the willingness or motivation to take that responsibility?

You’ll also notice from the diagram there are both relationship and task axes. In the early stages, when a team member has a low level of readiness, the coach/leader/manager has more of a task focus

21 TEAM WORK

RELATIONSHIP

SUPPORTIVE COACHING ‘We Talk, You Decide’ ‘We Talk, I Decide’

High Relationship High Relationship Low Task High Task

DELEGATIVE DIRECTING ‘You Decide’ ‘I Tell’

Low Relationship Low Relationship Low Task High Task

TASK

Figure 1: The Situational Leadership Model and less concern about the relationship. In other words, ‘I will tell you what to do.’ As that team member develops their confidence and skills, the leader begins to develop a relationship while still having a firm focus on the task at hand: ‘We talk, I decide.’ As the team member becomes more skilled and confident, the leader can maintain a relationship but reduces their focus on the task. In this case, the team member could still check with the leader but is

22 EMPOWERMENT being given more responsibility for the task: ‘We talk, you decide.’ In the final stage, when the team member is fully confident and secure, has the knowledge and skills required, and is also moti- vated to do the task, a leader is able to fully delegate: ‘You decide.’ I’ve given a very brief overview of the Situational Leadership Model. There have been books dedicated purely to this subject. While I would encourage you to source these if you need more depth in terms of the theory, my preference has always been to look at actual case studies. Going into my second pre-­season with the Crows, the players were due to take their two-­week Christmas break. Traditionally, the head of the physical preparation team (a sports scientist) issued a training regime for each player to follow on their break. Players were usually warned that if they didn’t adhere to the program or came back in a physical condition that was not up to standard, they would be placed in a ‘remedial’ training group for extra sessions. In the early days it was interesting not only in the Crows system, but in most AFL systems I saw, that there was little dif- ferentiation made between the expectations on the players who were most likely to mess up and the players who we knew could be trusted implicitly to do the right thing. In other words, there was one set of rules for everyone with no reward for the trustworthy. Under the Empowerment Model, I suggested that the Crows’ leadership group should take a much greater responsibility for team management during the Christmas break. I recall meet- ing with the leadership group and outlining the basics of the Situational Leadership Model and suggesting to them that they needed to assess each individual player so they could adopt the best individual strategies for players in their break.

23 TEAM WORK

For example, we had a number of young and inexperienced players who, while motivated and willing, were lacking in confi- dence and knowledge. The directed approach was therefore best suited for this group. We also had a small group of more senior players who had the knowledge and the confidence, but lacked the willingness and discipline to follow the program without supervision. So again, a more directed approach was required. The leadership group identified players to mentor those who were lacking discipline and made it clear that the mentor would be contacting them on a regular basis through the break to make sure they were on track with their training. Naturally enough, we also had a group of players who were confident, trained and motivated. In this case, it was sensible to simply delegate to them the responsibility for their own off-season­ program. I recall at age nineteen being a part of this group. Clearly he had gained the trust of the group and coaches very quickly, so it made sense to accelerate his develop- ment by giving him this responsibility. The Situational Leadership Model enables us to more fairly assess the readiness of team members to take on more respon- sibility. In this case, the head of the physical preparation team was still responsible for the design of the off-season­ program, but the leadership group had the confidence, skills and motivation to manage its implementation. A further element in the Situational Leadership Model is the urgency of the task at hand. When the task is less urgent, for example when you have a lower intensity session during the week at a football club, you can take more time to develop relationships and build trust so your style of leadership may be considered to be more democratic or consultative. When the task becomes more

24 EMPOWERMENT

URGENT LESS URGENT

Task

Task

Group or individual

Group or individual

AUTOCRATIC DEMOCRATIC

Figure 2: The Urgency Diagram urgent, for example on game day in a sporting setting, as long as you’ve taken the time to build trust and relationships, the players will understand why you may adopt a more autocratic approach, with more of a task focus. In my view, the best leaders/coaches/managers are in fact able to modify or adjust their style. I think you can see that if a leader is always operating as though the task is urgent and is adopting a more autocratic style, they risk burning out their team and missing opportunities for player development. Conversely, if a leader always operates in a democratic/consultative way, they run the risk of not getting things done. I think Neil Craig is an

25 TEAM WORK outstanding example of someone who is beginning to manage this balance particularly well. On the days he’s delegated the running of the various sessions to other coaches and specialists, he can often be seen wandering through the workplace having more relationship-­based conversations with players. However, in the heat of the battle, on game day, he will consult quickly but be very decisive. Again, the key here is that when the coach/ leader/m­anager has the time to build relationships, the team is more likely to trust and understand them when a more directed approach is required.

CASE STUDY: A&L Windows Leading Teams facilitator: Jim Plunkett

The A&L Group is an Australian-owned­ manufacturer of windows, doors and screens that’s been in business for over thirty years. The group is made up of the three companies: A&L Architectural, A&L Windows and A&L Screens. In 2007, I began working in Adelaide with the windows part of the business after the managing director, Darren Moss, was introduced to our ideas at a business function where Adelaide Crows coach Neil Craig spoke about culture and team building. Darren contacted Leading Teams and we agreed to run the Performance Improvement Program initially with his executive team. Later, we cascaded the program right down through the organisation so that everyone developed a sense of ownership, helping devise a trademark and behaviours for the whole business. There were a few sceptical people, especially on the factory floor. They felt programs like ours had been used before and then forgotten, and that they rarely benefited.

26 EMPOWERMENT

It was a real credit to Darren and his staff that once the pro- gram got going it gained some real momentum. The staff became involved in feedback and review sessions and felt empowered when they were included in the discussions that led to linking the trademark and behaviours to their reward and recognition process.

Darren Moss: We had invested a great deal of money in process improvements, but weren’t seeing much change in employee behaviour or engagement. I wanted employees who actually want to be here rather than need to be here. I wanted them to develop a sense of ownership and to feel that they could have a say in how the business is run. After a six-­ to nine-­month journey, including facilitated reviews, we developed our trademark – ​best in field – ​and clearly identified the behaviours that underpin it.

It was a great experience for me to help set them up, and two years on, it’s really positive for me to hear that everyone is still driving the program.

Darren: During the summer of 2008–2009, when the tem- peratures soared to near record levels, my guys decided to stay on task when they could have gone home. As a result, I am sure we picked up three or four new clients because our competitors had to close during this period. To signal our appreciation and support for the guys, we invested in air-­conditioning and heating for the factory. I believe that our productivity has improved markedly because of this new sense of ownership and engagement – ​our lead times

27 TEAM WORK

are almost half the industry average. Our response to any tough assignment is always: ‘Well, guys, what would the best in field do?’ We have also established a leadership team whose principal responsibility is catching the guys ‘doing the right thing’. We have Leading Teams awards, milestones and recognition afternoons. The leadership team is also respon- sible for ensuring that the peer assessments are undertaken once a month, as the employees are now comfortable with the notion that feedback and improvement go together.

CASE STUDY: basketball team Leading Teams facilitator: Martine Walsh

Lisa Gordon, who sits on the Dandenong Basketball Association board, first heard of Leading Teams through a connection with the Hawthorn Football Club. Before I took over, it was initially Craig Biddiscombe who worked with the DBA management team and board members. He also spent time advising the coaches of the association’s two elite teams, the Dandenong Rangers, who play in the Women’s National Basketball League, and a men’s team (with the same nickname) that plays in the South East Australian Basketball League. Dale Waters, coach of the Dandenong Rangers WNBL team, remembers the early stages.

Dale Waters: The program Craig ran was certainly enlight- ening for many people. It was challenging for many of us, especially when it came to giving and receiving feedback. But we buddied up with people to help each other through

28 EMPOWERMENT

and we developed some really good action plans. It’s an ongoing, ever-­evolving process, so I don’t think you can ever stop and say, ‘Okay. I’ve mastered it.’ There’s always something you can work on. We all bought into the program from day one and I think it was really important that the program was embraced by the people running the associa- tion, as it meant everyone else, especially the players in our various teams, could see we were being held accountable for our actions. There’s nothing worse than a coach saying, ‘We’ve got someone from Leading Teams here, but I’m going to step away and not be involved with what they’re doing.’ I think a lot of the time, Leading Teams will work on the coach, the general manager, or the CEO first, as it probably then shows to the whole organisation that this particular person is prepared to make some changes to their behaviour and personal development to benefit the whole team.

My role eventually evolved into an arrangement where I worked specifically with the WNBL team. I helped the players decide on a trademark and agree on some behaviours that were vital for the team to perform at its best – ​we talked about being relentless, uni- fied and disciplined. I found that Dale was very willing to embrace the Performance Improvement Program and drove it really strongly. But it was a challenge to his natural style. He’d been an ‘I tell’ coach and found it hard at first to empower his players to take part in decision-­making. I’ve given him plenty of feedback about his coaching style and he has made some great changes.

Dale: One of the things we worked on during 2009 was getting more feedback from the players when it came to

29 TEAM WORK

planning training. The players would have individual or small-­group sessions and we made those athlete-­driven. We asked the players: ‘What do we need to work on that will benefit the team?’ We got them thinking about these things rather than just telling them what to do. Even when we trained as a team, the players would often call the plays and decide what drills we worked on. It was about them taking more ownership. , a player who was at the Australian Institute of Sport, embraced the Leading Teams program very well. She’s got a lot of really interesting things to say, although she hadn’t spoken up much. Caitlin Ryan, our captain, was also on a learning curve. The two shone out as natural lead- ers as the program got going. We have other players whose physical behaviour led by example, but it would be good to hear their voices. Making that happen became another challenge for our group. I think the program has certainly assisted Nicole and Caitlin’s personal development. Those two are natural leaders, and the program has provided a framework for them to speak up, which is really important. Whenever we’re going through a review, being able to assess how we are travelling as a team and as individuals by relating it back to our trademark and behaviours makes it much easier.

Due to having a young squad, the Dandenong Rangers struggled to win many games in the 2009–2010 season. This meant, at times, that it was a challenge for Dale to keep delegating and behaving in accordance with the team’s trademark. At one training session I noticed that when one of the assistant coaches was running an

30 EMPOWERMENT activity, Dale looked like an angry ant as he strutted around the court, growling at everyone. Part of the team’s trademark is about staying positive, so I challenged Dale’s negativity. He replied, ‘What do you mean? I’m trying to delegate, and it’s killing me!’

Dale: My difficulties with delegating probably come partly from the dynamics of our sport. The court is only 28 metres long, which means we are always close to the players and have a big involvement with the game. Contrast that with the AFL where the coach sits up in the box and only talks to his players in the breaks; the rest of the time the messages are being taken out by the runners. Martine has been work- ing with me on my ability to delegate. One of the biggest changes I’ve made to my coaching is that I now ask a lot more questions. I ask the players what they think. This has definitely engaged the players more and I’ve got some valu­ able input from them. But I admit that the development of my coaching is an ongoing process. Basketball coaches have a reputation for being very controlling, so we’ve got to be courageous to let go a little bit, and let the players find out a little more about themselves and the dynamics of the team and what makes them perform to a higher standard. That’s all a big challenge when you’re guiding a young and quiet group, which was the case with our team in 2009. Another challenge was a high turnover of players, something that seems to happen in teams like this. We had six new girls out of ten in our squad for the 2009 season, so it took them time to learn about each other and feel comfortable delivering and receiving honest feedback. We also didn’t have as much talent as some other teams.

31 TEAM WORK

The first month of the season we didn’t have a point-­guard due to injury. We played pretty well in patches, but halfway through the season we had a review and asked the group to reflect on our trademark. We asked them, ‘Well, what does relentless mean? What does unified mean when we’re play- ing? What does discipline mean when we’re playing? Who is displaying these things?’ We broke the players into groups and got them to share their thoughts. This was a good little process for us to go through. Everyone then knew what their peers thought of their performance. It meant they were accountable for their actions.

Empowerment: Implications For Your Team As a leader, you not only need to understand what’s required to create an empowered environment, but also to see if you have the stomach for the challenge. I recall a meeting with a first-­year AFL coach who asked me, ‘How much can you really empower people?’ The question not only implied doubt about the empow- erment process but also doubt about his capacity to manage an empowered environment. The best way to gauge empowerment is by looking at a team’s behaviour. A great example of this happened in my own team. I’d had a meeting with a prospective client attended by one of my business partners, Gerard Murphy, and Nikita Rae, our office trainee. Nikita came along to take notes and record some of the details. We always catch up for a quick debrief after such meet- ings, asking each other how we thought the meeting went. Nikita was first to speak, and told us she felt Gerard and I had used inappropriate language during the meeting and hadn’t detected the client’s unease. I was thrilled that Nikita felt comfortable

32 EMPOWERMENT enough to express her observations, and in fact, because of her insight, we were able to check with the client and make good some of the ground we might have lost. Clearly, both Gerard’s and my responses were critical. If we had dismissed Nikita’s view, we would have undermined the whole relationship and as a consequence undermined the empowerment process.

Questions for a leader • Do you have the understanding, the belief and the stomach to create an empowered team environment? • Are you prepared to put the time and effort into building the relationships and trust required for an empowered environment? • Are you prepared to ask your staff to honestly assess where your team is at now, and to share any reservations they might have about your capacity as a leader to engage in the process?

This last question is vital. You must engage the staff/team members in an honest assessment of where the organisation is at because, by doing so, you will reveal the organisation’s existing culture and, as you will discover in the next chapter, a team’s culture is critical to its performance.

33