Ep 005 - Ric Charlesworth

Wed, 10/21 3:24PM • 43:11

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

coach, people, played, players, win, team, athletes, game, rick, captain, fremantle, conflict, thought, australia, good, years, australian, sport, world, matches

SPEAKERS

Paul Barnett, Ric Charlesworth, Transition, Intro, Eddie Jones, Jim Woolfrey

Intro 00:01

Welcome to the great coach's podcast. To me, being perfect is not about that scoreboard after this is a chance. You can understand the dressing you can work towards a common goal. We are all on the same team. Now you do it to the issue of focus on the fundamentals. We've gone over time and time again. Your defenses got to be better. We've known great moments are born. Great opportunity.

Paul Barnett 00:34

My name is Paul Barnett and you are listening to the great coaches Podcast, where we interview great sporting coaches to try and find ideas to help all of us lead our teams better. Our great coach on this show is the iconic and legendary Ric Charlesworth, Ric is an Australian Sports coach and former politician. He played first class cricket for Western Australia and international field hockey for Australia, winning a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics. He also served as a federal Member of Parliament from 1983 to 1993. And on top of that, he is a medical doctor. He was appointed coach of the Australian women's hockey team in 1993, leading them to Olympic gold medals in 1996 and 2000. He later coached the Australian men's hockey team, leading them to win the World Championship and a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games. He has also worked in consulting roles with the New Zealand national cricket team, the Australian Institute of Sport, and the Fremantle football club. Rick has been awarded a Member of the Order of Australia and an Officer of the Order of Australia. And to top it all off, was awarded the Australian team coach of the year in 1990 490-697-9899. And again in 2000. Rick is an icon of coaching in Australia and it was an honor to interview him there are many many nuggets of insight that he shares. But it was his thoughts on mining for managing conflict, and homosexuality and female versus male sport that really resonated with me the most. I hope you enjoy discussion,

Transition 02:08

the great coaches podcast.

Paul Barnett 02:11

Ric Charlesworth, thank you for joining us today.

Ric Charlesworth 02:14

It's a pleasure.

Paul Barnett 02:15

And just for the record, where in the world are you?

Ric Charlesworth 02:20

I'm in Perth, Western Australia, and life in Perth, even in this time is back to normal. Hopefully with our fingers crossed.

Paul Barnett 02:30

Rick, I'd like to start this interview if I could by talking a little bit about Shakespeare because i've i've read that your favorite quote comes from Measure for Measure. Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we often might win by fearing to attempt and there's the book there. Could you can you talk a little bit about what this quote means to you?

Ric Charlesworth 02:53

Well, I suppose you know, when I was when I was a coach, you're always wanting to say things in another way use other messages. And so you know, I was always using quotes from, from politics and from other athletes and coaches. And Shakespeare, if you like was the first psychologist in English literature, the first person to put meat on the bones of these characters in a way in which they were they were described, and they were flawed and and in many cases, damaged. But But he really put character characterization into into literature if you like. And I suppose that that do allow outside traders, it makes us lose the good we might win by fearing to attempt and I'm trying to think of the context in the play, I think it was about the the woman who was trying to save her brother who had got into trouble and she was intriguing to the prince. But it's, it's really it's something that that's a time time old message in sport, you know, you were you better have a go You have to risk failing to to try and succeed. You have to risk losing to win. And mostly all lots of times in life. We don't take that risk, we run away from the possibility that we might fail and so we don't go for it. And I think it's an important message for any athlete. [PB1] And so it came from there. But like, I remember in my first book, I used a half a dozen quotes from Shakespeare. And I was on a, a TV program in in Australia, way back and they were comparing my book with Shane warne's and they said, well, Shane hasn't used any of Shakespeare and his but you've got half a dozen. The mine was a much more erudite publication. But yeah, you know, sweeter the uses of adversity is another one you need. You need to draw by fire is important if you're going to succeed if you're gonna if you want to go in To the golden, then you've got to probably been in there before, you know,

Paul Barnett 05:03

let me ask you about self doubt. I mean, many athletes suffer from it. A lot of coaches also suffer from it. What advice do you have for coaches who perhaps are dealing with some self doubt?

Ric Charlesworth 05:15

No, Doubt is good. That's normal doubts as it should be. If you think you know the answers, then you're probably tricking yourself or getting yourself and you may be wrong. And so doubt is if you like the foundation of all knowledge, it makes us curious, we wonder about whether or not we've got it, right, we explore our motivations, we look at our solutions, and we we try to develop ways of doing things that are foolproof, so that's a good thing. And and, and we all have it. I mean, I remember listening to Roger Federer, when he was undoubtedly the best tennis player in the world before the Australian Open would have been more than a decade ago. And he was saying, I don't know how I'm going to go in the final gonna be very hot. I don't know whether my preparations been good enough beforehand is not going as well as and, and is this guy, any one the final The next day, preparing himself for that, but he's got that everybody's got them. The best player in the world has them. But those apprehensions are also one of the things that fires you to compete[PB2] . And permelia our greatest runner in Australia probably said he ran on his apprehension, they were the things that fired him. And I think that, that that it's a good thing, and let's face it in a sporting contest, you can never never be sure what the outcome will be. I know that sometimes the Pakistani bookmakers think they know the answer. But But indeed, that's the reality of sport.

Paul Barnett 06:50

Rick, you were coaching as a teenager, I believe you played cricket in the Australian National Competition. You represented Australia in the field hockey, and most interestingly, you had the pm as a boss for a while when you're in Parliament. From all of these experiences, what do you think it is that the great coaches do differently?

Ric Charlesworth 07:10

Oh, god, that's a hard question. Well, you don't learn much about coaching and teamwork, from your time in politics, I think. But I think what you do learn in politics is about persuasion. And leadership is is, in my opinion, only about two things. It's about real definition about where you want to go, knowing, knowing what you want to achieve, where, where the end point is, where you're heading. And then it's about being able to persuade people and take them with you. And you do that in all sorts of ways. You do that by the example, you set you do that by your rhetoric and tactics, and by gathering evidence, and a whole range of ways to to convince people that this is the way we ought to go. But at the same time, you do that in the sporting context, you also have to look at the athletes or in your team or the people in your team. And you have to make the most of them, you have to discover a way which utilizes their skills and abilities. So I think the great coaches know where they want to go, they have definition about that. They never accept second best, they always insist on on quality. And they look at the people that they've got available to them. And if they're good enough, then they have to find some others but and they find a pathway which helps those people deliver and gives them a feel like the opportunity to display what they can do.[PB3] The other thing, I think that, you know, I coached for 14 years national team men and women in the end, the I started, as you said, when I was a teenager, because it was the thing you did in our Hockey Club, we expected you to coach the juniors and and I got involved in it early on. And I gradually work, you know, at a higher level. I coached the national team for 10 years, and I never yet met a player who knew how good they could be. And my my job was to lift the bar and extend them into to really broaden their horizons. You know, the same thing I think applied to myself. I mean, I started I played because I loved it. But then the world opened up and more and more possibilities became evident. And I think that as a coach, you do all of that. But what you do is you stretch the people who are working with you, you challenge them. You take them to a place they didn't think they could be.[PB4]

Paul Barnett 09:36

What's the best piece of coaching advice you ever received. I know you've given a lot, but I'm interested to see what you can recall as being something that stuck with you

Ric Charlesworth 09:46

guys and questions, Paul, huh, Jesus? Well, I think I had a lot of coaches when I was an athlete and in my formative years and all of them offered something different. The first coach I had at school just said, Look, let's go out and enjoy this and have fun. Then I, there were people who taught you things technically. Our first coach for the national team Merv Adams was a great motivator. And he was from the subcontinent. And when we couldn't beat the subcontinental James, he said, Yes, you can. And we believe ourselves. And Arthur Sturgis was much more tactical. There were a range of others, Richard agis was a build teams, Frank Murray was very, very tactical. They were they were they were all, they all offered something. I think though, the most important lesson for me was it never accept. second best, you have to insist on quality, because in the end, your players need to have reproducible skill under pressure. And you've got to equip them with that most of the decisions and judgments that are made on the field are made by players in real time, not by coaches. But unless they have the equipment to do that, then they're not going to be able to handle the situations that come along. And I think making sure you equip them with that is critical. Because if you keep making errors, if you get keep making skill errors, no tactics will work. And in the game, like hockey, scoring a goal is a very hard, complex, difficult thing to do. It's very crowded, there's not much space or time. So you've got to have exquisite skill, if you want to be able to do it at the highest level. And so you've got to, you've got to training is critical. You've got to deliver that training.

Paul Barnett 11:35

I'll try and ask you a simpler or an easier question, then Rick, I'd like to talk. I'd like to talk about conflict. I was recently listening to Lisa Alexander, the Australian football coach speak. And she said, how you were the first coach in her mind to embrace honesty and conflict rather than avoid it. So could you talk about the role of conflict in your coaching philosophy?

Ric Charlesworth 12:01

Well, I think that you better anticipate and expect in mind for conflict, because it's out there. It's just whether or not it's evident, I took over the National Women's team and everybody said, Oh, God, you know, coaching women will be really impossible. They're difficult, whatever. There's always sort of all these stereotypes, which, you know, I found, we're probably wrong. My approach was, look, the game's the same for men and women. Yes, there's not as much speed and tempo, but relatively, they're playing against escalate to a, you know, of the same physical level. And there's the skills and the rules, and everything is the same. So I'm going to treat them as hockey players, whether they're men or women, or doesn't worry me. And people said, Oh, you'll they'll be bitchy, you know, they're terrible. They're, and I, I, I'd only ever coached one women's team before, that was my daughter's under 15. Team. And, and indeed, they were lovely the girl. So that was good. Anyway, I started in the job. And I didn't find any of that stuff that people had warned me against what I found was a group of athletes who were who were talented, hardworking, ambitious, and, and, and came to improve, they wanted to be good. They wanted to be world champions. And that was a fantastic environment in which to work. But the other thing about it is that I was new to it. And the beginning of the first year, I the tradition was that you wrote a report to the selectors about each player. And I did that, you know, it's been a week after sort of, I went to broom, in fact, and set in the hotel room, and I wrote reports about each of the players. And I sent them off to the selectors. And now I thought, well, let's good, done that. I thought this silly of send them to the selectors. So then I sent the reports to the players, each individual voided the phone start ringing, then you said this about a year. That's what I think I've been saying that to your year, you just haven't been listening, maybe you don't want to hear it or whatever. This is what I believe. So it was evident to me that the players appreciated knowing and wanted that sort of feedback. And, and it was, while I didn't like it sometimes it was important. And and so for me increasingly, that became an important thing to do to be to have real candor. And over the period of time that I was the coach then increasingly, Canada was, in my opinion, the most important thing that you needed, you had to say what you think, and I was happy to lucky to work with a very good sports psychologist. And she used to say to me, you know, this is this is what it's about. You've got to tell people what you're thinking. And they will appreciate it even though they might not like it. And so that became if you like, one of the things that I was constantly vigilant about doing[PB5] . And there are there are lots of conflicts in a team, there's lots of you don't get 34 people together, and they will like each other, and there's no friction. And my thing was, I'm not going to treat you all equally. But I'll treat you fairly. And depending on the particular circumstances that you're in, or anyone else's in the criteria, which are measured, what I'm going to do is, is this good for the team. And so that's that was the standard, if you like, by which I operated, I'll treat you fairly. And I'll do it in the interest of the team, because the team is number one. And I think that that was a pretty good set of rules to operate by. And what I found with the girls, is that, well, that they weren't bitchy, they were just honest with one another, much more so than in men's teams, lots of things in men's teams are subterranean. And so men have bigger egos. And there's more friction, if you like, but it's all subterranean. And so what the girls were just more honest about it, and stuff came out and they talked about it. And here's a here's an example for you. I mean, there's I know 700 footballers, in the AFL in Australia, by 800, maybe 1518 clubs is right under no one and maybe I don't know, and none of them a guy. But we know that's not true. Kinsey's right in then is 70, or 80, or 100, or moot guy. So there's a whole bunch of them that are living a lie, they can't really even be honest with their teammates about that sort of stuff in the women's game isn't a big deal. Who cares? And so, I think that and it's still the same I mean, you know, we have football for girls now and it's they're openly gay, but none of the meaner what the hell. So and and my experience with with male athletes is that is that a lot of this stuff, as I said, is hidden people. And you really, it comes out and bite you at the worst time. Under pressure, when there's conflict and difficult circumstances, these frictions appear. So you better have dealt with it beforehand, you better get out, get it open and out there. And my final comment on jack welch, she's no longer with us was the CEO of General Electric wrote a very good book of business book called winning. And he devoted a whole chapter of it to candor, although he spelt it wrong, because he's an American. But he, he said the biggest dirty secret in business is lack of candor. It stops good people being promoted, it stops good ideas coming forward. It clogs up your organization and slows down decision making and the business, the business of business and in families in sporting teams in business. You know, people don't say what they think because they don't want to upset someone. Well, once you starting to do that, then you really not dealing with the things you need to. Yeah, conflict is good. And it's out there, and you better acknowledge it, and you'd better mine for it. And indeed, my some of my worst experiences in sport came when we drifted and didn't deal with it. And it came up at the worst time.[PB6]

Paul Barnett 18:27

Rick and I talked a little bit about the women's team. He coached in the 90s. I, I know that they were number one in the world. But what I'd like to talk about is the sustained success they had over eight years. And I'm really interested to know how you managed to keep them focused and moving forward without a sense of entitlement.

Ric Charlesworth 18:46

Well, I got lucky, because I became the coach on really know how good the players were. And after about three months, I thought God Almighty, I've been lucky here because this is a terrific group of athletes. They're good. As I said, athletes, they're motivated, they're hard working. And they're ambitious. So I thought, after six months, I thought we can win things. Now my aim was always to win at the Olympics or to win the World Cup to win the Champions Trophy. We won the Champions Trophy on penalties. I think in the first year, it was interesting, because the young players in the team took all of the penalties, none of the senior ones and it was like, so it was fresh and new. But we were trying a bunch of new things. The rules have changed, and there was interchange, and we embraced into change and none of the other countries did. So we were able to start to play at a higher tempo than anybody else. The best thing about the interchange was that right from the beginning, I said, Okay, we're playing with 16 every game we're not playing with 11. And after a couple of years, I had 30 players in the squad at all played 50 or more games, and they all believe they could do it. And what's the worst thing you could do as a coach or sit someone on the bench and not use them because what's the message, you're sending the message I don't believe in you, you know, good enough. They got in my squad, they played games they got in the team. And when they got in the team they play[PB7] . And here's a little story. I think it's, I talked about this in my latest book, but I remember going to the national championships in Melbourne. And I was watching the games, and I saw a young girl who was from Melbourne. And I said to the selectors, she looks interesting. What about her? You know, we should consider her and they said, Oh, she's not good enough. And I'm like, Oh, really? Yeah. She used to be in the team before you were the coach. She was there for two years, we've dried her actually not good enough. And I watched it for another couple of Days and Night, while the game was going on, I went down, I sat with her. And I said to her, tell us your story. And she said, Oh, I used to be in the AI. So I came to Perth, I was there for two years, I've been overseas and I with the team five times. And I've played 11 minutes she'd been overseas, she'd been set on the bench in the last couple of minutes. Again, they put her on. Anyway, in the end, I convinced them to put her in the team, or to bring her into our squad. And she got an injury a year or two later. So she didn't have a very long career, her last game in 1996. She's a gold medalist. And I think that i think that that, you know, one of the important things you do is you give people opportunities. Now, once we created this environment where we had 25 players that all played 15 matches, they all believe they're good enough. So they started competing against each other. And so it was an internally competitive environment to get into the team. And that just lifted the standard, because they were training hard with each other regularly. And so the the quality of the training, and the standard just rose, and we already had a bunch of very good players. And then the ones who came in the younger ones, they went into that environment and and they became ambitious. And so it fueled itself. And we won the World Cup, the next year, and we won the championship, and then we won the gold medal in Atlanta. And then we'd won four things in a row four years, four years at number one, and everybody said, Oh, fuel, that's it, you've had you go, someone else's turn now. And I kept thinking, well, doesn't need to be anybody else's turn because we were heading to Sydney, and they were all motivated about being there. And so if we keep working hard, and we keep learning more than Why can't we continue to be successful. And that's the that was the motivation. Now, when you're a coach, you have to keep changing yourself, you can't that message gets a bit dull after a few years. So I was fortunate to have a group of people around me who were able to do that I had very good assistant coaches. And in 1999, for instance, I mean, I set on the back, back bench a lot, and other people did the coaching. And so I was refreshing myself for the Olympic year. And I think eight years as a coach is a long, long time, I previously thought six is probably about your limit. But because it was Sydney, because I had good distance. And because the team kept changing that the coaching team, I was the only one who was there for the whole eight years. But there are a whole range of other people coming in and out Who, who refreshed it and who had different ideas and who shared them. Then we created an environment where the athletes eventually, I believe could have coached themselves. And if you really do a good job coaching and make yourself redundant. And you want to be in some ways, because as I said, once the game starts, the players have to sort out things and do it for themselves. The coach sits on the sidelines and gets anxious.[PB8]

Paul Barnett 23:33

I want to pick up this idea of redundancy, because you've also said very, probably very early on one of the first coaches to say the role of the captain is also outdated. Can you talk about the leadership structures that you've put in place with your athletes in various sports that have replaced this role?

Ric Charlesworth 23:52

Yeah, well, I mean, that was the other we embrace the interchange, we played everybody. And we looked at leadership, and I've been the captain of the national team. And I think at different times, when I look back on it, I was involved, you know, I did things that were in my interest rather than the team, sometimes. It's human nature. And my view was, if your team is going to be successful, you need a critical mass of leaders, not just one one person doesn't embody everything you want. And so I wanted to develop a a leadership group and to develop leaders. And we had captain's and co captains and as many as six in the group, all through the first four years. And then after that, we extended it even further, you know, so we had as many as eight. And and when we were two years out from the Olympics. Again, my approach was well, do we need a captain at all somebody who is the captain if you like and one of the you know, there was a there was a practical element to it because we had a lot of players have been successful. Well known it was stunning to, they had status. And they all they all wanted to be captain. And and my, my view was as soon as I said, we're not going to have a captain, then all of that politicking stopped because there was no and and but what I want you to do is be a leader and now I expect everybody in the team to be a leader, and to make decisions and judgments accordingly.[PB9] You know, when you look at any game, I mean, in rugby, sometimes the captain sort of because the game is slow, and it stops, you know, and he's pointing and deciding where we're going to kick the ball and all that sort of stuff. But in most other games, in a game like Australian Football is where's the captain out there? I mean, they're all doing stuff, the guy with the ball, who's providing the leadership in a cricket team, even if, you know Ricky Ponting is the captain, but he's not betting Then who's setting the tone in the tempo. The guy who's betting on the ball has got the ball in his hand. He's not thinking about what punting on say, am I gonna get this guy out? People have to show leadership themselves. And so my view was that, yeah, we want that. And, and not everybody has all the stuff you want for leadership. For instance, some people set a tone at training that lifts the quality of training, some people will do inspirational thing on the field, someone in a social environment and social ureas that includes those on the periphery, someone else will put the hand up and say I made a mistake. And that's leadership, others when in the whole team wants to do X, they'll say, Well, what about y, that's also leadership, going against the grain having a different opinion, I think that all of them have something to offer. Not many of them have all of it. And so why not give them the space to show that.[PB10] And the last thing that we wanted in our team was what I would call social loafing, you know, which is we'll wait for someone to show us what to do. No, you take the initiative, you make some decisions, you get on with it. And so that's the approach that we took. And I think that that that that was an important ingredient in developing a cohesive group. In the Sydney Olympics. We played eight games we had eight different captain's someone had to wear the armband, but it didn't really matter. That wasn't the issue. The issue was, how are we going to get on with this thing and because we're going to change anyway, sometimes the captain was sitting next to me the one with the armband that day. So other people had to be had to be taking initiative.

Paul Barnett 27:29

Your your books? Are they just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to building culture and high performance. But many, many coaches walk into organizations and the culture is bad. The word that's often used is toxic. If someone finds himself in that situation, then you in the job, what advice have you got for them about the first things they should do?

Ric Charlesworth 27:53

Yeah, it's really it's really difficult, isn't it? I I was after the Sydney Olympics, I was offered a job at the West Coast eagles, and the same time with a free male football in the inner winter Fremantle because they were a basket case. And I thought it'd be really interesting to see what's going on, I was a high performance consultant, and indeed, in everyone's got a black spot in their CV, and perhaps that's mine, you know, my year was two years with Fremantle. But it was interesting to go there. And, and we had the makings, I think of a good team in frio. But they lost a lot. And that that can be hard work. And I unfortunately, it was the coaching was very unstable with three coaches in the two years that I was there. And if you're a high performance consultant, and the coach doesn't really want you there doesn't really work. That wasn't an ideal environment. But But I think that it was, it was interesting to see what was going on there. My view is that you've got to have, as I said, when I talked about lives, you're gonna have definition about where we where we're going to go, and how do we want to be seen? And what are the what are the things that we would like our club to be remembered for. And, and then you've got to identify those characteristics, those behaviors and you've got to develop them and grow them in the group and convince the group that this is a place to be the same time you've got a win enough to keep going and hold on to the job and do all the other stuff, you know that this is a hard, hard thing to do. You got to juggle a few different balls, but I think it's about where do we want to get to what's realistic, and how can we how can we get there and and and how do we want to be seen judged and so you got to you got to map out if you're like a pathway and and then embark on it and you better Work hard, you better sit in the example. You better tell people that it'll be Rocky, not everything will go right things will go wrong. But we can find out why and hopefully measure progress. And you need long enough to be able to do that now[PB11] , I was only at Fremantle for two years. And after I left, they got to the finals and they started to play better. They, you could see that we're on that trajectory, if they hadn't made a few blunders along the way, they might have won a Premiership, because in the in the draft, the end of 2001, they had the first and the fourth draft pick, and they should have taken Chris Judd, and the, and the guy, Chris judge had never played for the Eagles, he should have played for the doctrine. But the guy and the recruiting guy want to judge, but someone else made a stupid decision to take a train quote from Hawthorne dumbest thing I can ever remember. But had they got those things? Right, they would have, they would have gone more rapidly and done even better.

Paul Barnett 31:10

You've said, Casey, you've come in, you set the journey, you've told everyone is going to be a bumpy road, you're on, you've taken a few first steps. And you've got this disruptive peer pressure within the team. Do you? Do you cut those people? Do you try to turn them around? How have you dealt with with that kind of negative influence in the past?

Ric Charlesworth 31:30

Well, I mean, peer pressure, in my opinion, is your, your most powerful force for but can be a negative force against. And so you have to be able to you have to navigate that[PB12] . And I mean, I experienced if you like a period after we lost in London, in 2012, when I was coaching the men's team, that's my greatest disappointment. There was a lot of negativity after that the players used to give rankings to the coach, you know, I mean, when you lose at the Olympics, well, you know, we lost one match, I suppose. But it was a critical semifinal. You the coach gets the blame. And so all my rankings were down that year. And and we, we started to wait, Well, the first thing you got to do is get him to look at what went wrong and dry and mind for all of that conflict and all that negativity that today. And I reckon it took us a good six months to a year to sort of get through some of that, again, the defining position was whatever we're doing, is it the best thing for the team? And I gotta be honest about what's going on? And what do you mean by this? And what do you mean by that? And let's assess what went wrong, and how can we fix it? What are we going to do? And we went deeply into that mining for conflict looking for what was wrong? And yeah, there was there were still disruptors in that there were still people who they would say yes, but they meant no. And and there's many, there's many types of obvious, that are really Yes. But once you get a critical mass of them there, then I think you can start to build things positively.[PB13] We still had, we went to the World Cup in 2014. So two years after the Olympics, and we still had people there who weren't convinced to uh, who were not not as positive as they could have been. But in the end, the players were managing them. The other players were managing them, the other players, and we spent a long time everybody had a signature, how do you behave when you're under pressure when things aren't going right. And so you have to be aware for one another, how you're going to help each other, get out of this. And I think that that was one of the crucial things even on the day of the World Cup final one or two, these guys were giving us trouble. We got all the way to there. And it was still still in the background. But the players were managing it. And it's it's a bit like you look at the Australian cricket team, and I'm sorry to use these analogies, but I hope lots of Australians will be saying Shamoon wasn't the best team man around was he? He was difficult, but he was a brilliant player and you want him in your team and he he makes a difference. You can he can win your matches. Why did he work in that cricket team. He worked in that cricket team because he was surrounded by Langer and Hayden. And wore and McGrath and Gilchrist a whole bunch of people who were substantially stood for something and you know, shut up shine, don't be silly, get on with it. But if you put shine with a group of young, impressionable guys who, then you'll have chaos. And and I think that in the end, if you build the right sort of team and they're all looking at after one another and the peer pressure is a positive force rather than a negative one, then it was For you, and it's one of the most powerful forces there's the photo in, in that I sometimes use a halftime and the World Cup final. I didn't take it one of the staff took it. And at halftime there's a few of us coaches sort of sitting looking at something on a board thinking about what we're going to do and say, but the players are all in groups talking to one another, interacting with one another about what's happening, because they're the ones who got to go out there in the second half and deal with what's going on. And and it's a really good example of the of the interaction between the players because they're, they're working on it together. And then halftime, what do you say at halftime in the big match? Well, the first thing I used to say is what do you think? And if the players had the answers, then I don't need to say anything. But usually I had two or three things that I thought were important. If they said one or two of them, that's fine, I'll take them off. And we'll get on to the third one. But I think that, that in the end, they have to own it, you have to understand that they have to own it. It's like, as I said, right at the beginning, you've got to look at the players, and you've got to create an environment in which they can shine. And if you try and impose your tactics on on them, and those tactics don't necessarily fit that group of players in, that's not gonna work. They've got to own the tactics.[PB14]

Paul Barnett 36:18

I think I know why you therefore say, coaches don't change athletes, athletes change themselves.

Ric Charlesworth 36:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, someone's said all of you. And I said, No, I create an environment in which they change themselves. And let's face it, you're not good, you don't have an upright reverse, okay, this is something you need is a skill in a hockey player, then you can develop it, I can show you how, but unless you spend time, it won't be there. And, okay, you're not good enough at this, then you got to work at it. But unless you put in the time, and they have the interest in the in enthusiasm for it, you won't develop it. And and so that's exactly why teenage boys, and they're both hockey players. And I, I'm gonna be here because I keep saying to them, Look, if you want to be good at this, then you have to actually spend some time otherwise, you're a good player and whatever. But there's a difference between being good and very good and spatial. And it's, it is the stuff I suppose, of Erickson 10,000 hours, the the maestro's spent 10,000 hours playing the violin, the ones who ended up as music teachers been 5000 hours. You know, that's, that's the difference between being exceptional and being really good.

Paul Barnett 37:41

Rick, if I could ask one final question, and it would be around legacy. And the question is, what legacy Do you believe you are leaving? As a coach?

Ric Charlesworth 37:52

Hmm, well, I think that it's it's really interesting, isn't it? Because I was, I was watching a club game here in Perth on the weekend, we're really lucky, full on here. And I was sitting with a guy or went to the Olympics within Munich, he's 10 years older than me. So he's in his 70s. And he was, he was saying to me, Oh, it's so fast. The game is so good now. And people's people sort of yearned for the old days, the athletes now are better and more skillful. And, and it's terrific that we might have been given the opportunities that they've been given or whatever, but the game is much better than it was. And the athletes are wonderful. And I think that, for me, my hockey journey was a search for perfection, to get better and better and to keep improving and to do things that perhaps I didn't think was possible. And sometimes you had those moments, and it wasn't always in a match. It was often at training, where you thought, Oh, god, that was good. You know, I wish I could keep doing that. And I think, and hockey was a release and a freedom from everyday life, like you're driving to training. And all of the problems you've got at work or your study, or the exams, or whatever else is coming along, pales into insignificance when you arrive there and you get out in the field, you start playing and you lose yourself in that thing that you're doing. That's, I think one of the wonderful things about sport, my legacy is that I think anything's possible. I think you can talk about humans, people trying to be better than they thought they could possibly be. And that was the message that I that I always gave to my athletes. And I think the people who I coached, understand that continuing that and maybe that's the thing, that's a legacy, I suppose, you know, in terms of the performance of the team. The bit that I'm most proud of the fact that we were sustainably good with the girls and with the boys [PB15] Indeed, the winning record for the kookaburras is better than the whole Rose, but no one sees it that way. Because one day, in in, in July in 2012, we lost in the semi final to Germany. And so we couldn't win the gold medal there. But the hockey the cooker buyers won everything else over the six year period I was with them. But But I think that we played in. If you count the Commonwealth Games, it was 25. But if you don't count the Commonwealth Games, which probably is a level below if you count champions, trophy World Cup Olympics, we played 21 matches, which are the final semi final. So there's last chance, and we went 20 of them. And you know, when I played, I think I played in about 12 or 14 of those and we went half of them. And that's probably what's par for the course. That's the bit that that I feel best about the fact that when it came to those matches, we were we played well in those days.

Paul Barnett 41:01

Dr. Ric Charlesworth, thank you so much for your time today.

Ric Charlesworth 41:05

It's a pleasure. Thank you.

Transition 41:08

The great coaches podcast.

Jim Woolfrey 41:12

Hi, it's Jim. Doctor Ric Charlesworth was a childhood hero of mine. I played schoolboy hockey because of him and the guys on my team at times thought they were channeling him. He is someone I greatly admire. It was a real joy speaking with him. I really connected with Rick's views that the components into building a successful team must include creating an environment where people can change themselves, and that a team needs a critical mass of leaders to win. Rick's views on creating candor, and that a culture of being open, honest and sincere is a two way street, not only in sport, but also in the workplace. Rick references that no excuses get it done mindset of jack welch. In his book winning to great read and a great business book. There was so many insightful lessons here for me. I've already found myself coming back to listen to Rick's words a few times. Coming up next on the great coach's podcast. We have one of the most experienced and decorated coaches in world rugby. Eddie Jones

Eddie Jones 42:11

I remember one of the first sessions I did I'll give Suntory a plug since your with Ashai I do with sand Suntory. I said for the next 10 minutes, we got to be 100%. And after one minute a player stop stop being 100%. And I'll finish the session sending home said to downsale be that can the training anymore. Made it over exaggerated the problem and immediately I gotta behavior change in the group that we train for shorter periods but of the intensity we needed to track so theres no longer three hour session, shorter sessions where we train with a far greater application which then resulted in them playing better.

Jim Woolfrey 42:50

And just before we leave, if you know a great coach who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you. Please contact us using the details in the show notes.