Vision lesson Final

Thu, Jun 01, 2023 4:05PM • 20:53

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

vision, coaches, people, team, dream, good, achieve, win, game, vision statement, change, football club, world, idea, talk, leadership, write, aligned, execute, operate

SPEAKERS

Briony Akle, Tim Walsh, John Hamlett, Hugh McCutcheon, John Buchanan, Eddie Jones, Neil Craig, Simon Jones, Ric Charlesworth, Eddie Bolger, Paul Barnett, Heyneke Meyer, Gareth Baber, Tamsin Greenway

Paul Barnett  00:00

Welcome to the lessons from the great coaches podcast.

00:04

I've learned that you don't do it alone, you learn so many different things from so many different coaches. That's an elite learning environment. How you deal with how to be resilient, how important it is to infuse joy in the process of learning. To be a good candidate, you've got to do more than you take. What an interesting way it is to be a leader.

Paul Barnett  00:28

My name is Paul Barnett, and you are listening to the great coach's podcast, where we explore leadership through the lens of high performance sport, by interviewing great coaches from around the world to try and find ideas to help all of us lead our teams better. We started this podcast because we wanted to have better conversations with our families around the dinner table. In a social media world with the goal is often to be the star of the show. We wanted to change the conversation and talk more about selflessness, leadership and responsibility. And the people we knew who best exhibited these qualities were great sports coaches. As the podcast has grown, the great coaches we've interviewed have shared so much insight and wisdom that we decided to create episodes dedicated entirely to the lessons that have resonated with us the most. Today's episode is on the topic of vision, and it features audio quotes from a large array of great male and female coaches from all around the world. But lessons from the great coaches podcast, one of the most famous vision statements, in my humble opinion, is this one.

01:37

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created.

Paul Barnett  01:57

But I have a feeling that within my lifetime, this one from Elon Musk, even though he doesn't have the same resonance as Martin Luther King might become as if not more famous, who become a spacefaring civilization and a multi planet species. This episode is on vision, the statement that describes the future that the team is going to put all this energy into pursuing and having a vision is a critical part of leadership. Here is the legendary coach, Rick Charlesworth, who has coached at the elite level across multiple sports. And being a member of the Australian Parliament.

Ric Charlesworth  02:38

And leadership, it is, in my opinion only about two things. It's about real definition about where you want to go, knowing what you want to achieve where the endpoint 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 tactic, and by gathering evidence and a whole range of ways to convince people that this is the way we want to go. But at the same time you do that in the sporting context, you also have to look at the athletes who are 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.

Paul Barnett  03:32

All teams began small neither vision. Manchester United's vision is to be the best football club in the world, both on and off the pitch. While Pinnacle FC, a local football club in Canada's vision is we believe in developing a first class football club that will provide the tools for everyone to succeed in the beautiful game. Here is Tamsin Greenway.

Tamsin Greenway  03:58

Whenever you're in a team, that has to be a bigger picture, it can't just be about one individual, even if it's the best star player, it can't ever just be about

Paul Barnett  04:05

having a vision, or as Eddie Jones told us, being clear on where you want to go, is also a trademark of great coaches.

Eddie Jones  04:15

Well, I think they're very clear on what they want. So they, they see the game. They got an image of the game, and they know what is successful in the game.

Paul Barnett  04:27

New Craig built on this idea by explaining how great coaches are also able to break down this vision into a roadmap to achieve it.

Neil Craig  04:37

They bring a vision and they're the keeper of the vision, which is really important, because we all drift as human beings and every now and again they have a real feel of winter aligned when to realign individuals or groups of people back to the vision they're on. So they have they have this picture in their head about where they're going what that looks like. But just as importantly this this right roadmap of how to get there, what and what's important to get there? And how will we know that we're getting there?

Paul Barnett  05:07

Tim Walsh, coached the Australian Rugby Sevens women to an Olympic gold medal. And he also echoes Neil's thoughts, as he explains that you need to be able to take the vision down into execution in order for it to be successful.

Tim Walsh  05:21

A most people have a vision, but the ability to execute it is what is the difference between I think, a successful coach, and a good coach. So I think everybody has the technical knowledge, like we all played the game and we study the game and we love it. So the technical side of things. So it's how do you move from having this this vision or this idea to actually then executing it. So like in business, you have all these business ideas, but no one could not nobody, but the real people can actually execute it. So they're very passionate and true and authentic to themselves. And then they have the have the ability to manage the situation, and adapt.

Paul Barnett  06:03

Briony Arkell has coached multiple nipple premierships. She makes the point that a vision needs to be connected to a how to and a feeling of confidence.

Briony Akle  06:14

I think it's really important that you have a vision for your team or your whoever you lead and back that with a really good how to, I think a lot of people just wish for things to happen. But I had to give them those skills and instill that confidence in them that I knew that they could be the world's best and I knew that we could win the Suncorp super netball so yeah, I think it was a definitely just a change in mentality a change in language, even how we stood at training, how to champion stand, do they stand with their shoulders high? Do they get over if you make a mistake, how quickly you get over that and move on and not dwell in those situations. So all really good, coachable moment and giving feedback in the moment I think really helped this plane group to achieve that championship that year.

Paul Barnett  06:57

One important thing to remember, though, is that your vision needs to be aligned with the stakeholders in your organization. This ensures collaborative effort, and does not cause unnecessary conversations that can distract attention from the key task of execution. Here is gold medal winning Rugby Sevens coach, Gareth Baber.

Gareth Baber  07:17

I think I think one of the biggest things and I know that gets talked a lot about in terms of coaching is a vision of what you want it to be whatever that may be, if you're within the business organization, sort of aligning it to what that vision of the business might be and how you want to bring the rugby to life. And

Paul Barnett  07:34

John Hamlet was a colonel in the army, and over 30 years has coached five winners of the grueling comrades ultra marathon. In our discussion, he shared the wonderful quote from Proverbs, people perish due to the lack of vision, and explained how a vision takes over when the initial motivation fades.

John Hamlett  07:55

Discipline brings us to the one motivation gets us on the road. So we know that motivation is just an initial thing. And that kind of gives us our goals. And then you got to teach him to understand what his actual vision is, you know that all statement people perish due to the lack of vision? Well, I do believe that's the case with most of our runners, lots of especially Ultra distance runners, perhaps with the exception of the Japanese, most of our exceptional Ultra distance runners, they kind of run and hope they do well. They go from year to year, they run pretty much the same, because they're Ultra distance runners, they might across the field often. And they just an exceptional, unique bunch of people. very hardy, which really suits me as an old Colonel. It's like hardcore people, and they not gonna wind down and they're gonna whine when it's sore, and they're not gonna cry when it's a bit Ouch. They're there to do what they need to do. And there's an internal monitor drives into this. And this is wonderful working with people.

Paul Barnett  08:59

The idea of vision, giving energy to people and the team to help them continue driving forward was also something that the rugby coach Hynek Amaya talked about.

Heyneke Meyer  09:10

I think the most important thing is to have a vision for the team. When the bigger the vision, the bigger the energy. You have to have a vision that inspires people. And I always say to young coach, I like working with young coaches. It's like a magnifying glass. If I take a magnifying glass and I don't have exact exact same vision, there is no energy now we play this style. We do this style. We want to say that we stand for this, this is our culture and you change every second day. If you're going to sit, sit sit vision written in stone so everybody knows exactly what you have. But I want to achieve and everybody's focused in the same same direction. You focus with a magnifying glass you put it on one spot, everybody's focused, you have enough energy to start a fire that can destroy everything.

Paul Barnett  09:54

A vision can be unconstrained and represent your dreams and aspirations. It can be audacious and compelling enough to sustain morale through periods of low performance in the way that a North Star can offer navigation guidance. Here is cricket coach, John Buchanan.

John Buchanan  10:13

And from there it is about dreaming. I think, certainly in business, certainly in life, certainly in sport, I don't think there's sufficient time allowed for dream it just what could be what's possible, not be constrained about impossibilities and all the reasons why not, but don't be constrained, just the free and dream about what can be. And obviously, that's what JFK was doing back in the mid 60s without putting a man on the moon. There's a wonderful sort of YouTube on that. And it just seemed to me that that is so important to what a coach can do. Because with that vision, it means that then everything that you do, irrespective of results, is hopefully taken a step in that direction. And if you don't dream and you don't vision, then I think, one, you're limiting your current capabilities or capacities, but you're certainly putting a limit on how are you going to deal with the future? How are you going to stay in front of the game? How are you going to potentially win games, win tournaments, where events win over a long period of time? What are the type of people that you need to help you chase down that dream? What are the type of support systems that you need to support those people and support yourself to be better at what you do? I don't think all leaders are visionaries. But I don't think that's necessarily good, bad, indifferent from a rod. But I go back to what I was saying before, as coach of the Queensland team, what I had to do was work out my philosophy, and part of my philosophy is always about creating a vision. I knew that's what I did with people, teams business. Right. And that was a central part cornerstone to my coaching philosophy. So that's what I would bring always to teams that I coach, and that's certainly what I still do with my corporate business these days. And not that I necessarily can dream for a company, but try to get and understand the power of of dreaming, envisioning and allow them to try to do that themselves. And it's not easy, because I think we do tend to operate in in mindsets and constraints that direct us in a certain in a certain way. And a lot of times when people put their vision statements together, or whatever, they want to call it like a call admission, or get tied up semantics, but it's almost something that can just be cut and paste and put into another organization just as easily. And it always seems to me that the vision has got to have the capacity to do for in GI Vu from what else in the marketplace. Because in the end, if you're not differentiated, if you're not different than you'll do the same as everybody else does. And how is that going to gain you some competitive advantage? Or how's that going to place you in a position to gain competitive advantage over a long period of time? So it does seem to me that I think I mentioned it before. And sitting underneath vision, I suppose is this notion of always trying to change the game, don't accept the status quo, which is never satisfied. People look at just ways of being different inside the rules and the regulations that others see operate inside any environment, any industry, there are those rules and regulations. So but inside that, why do I need to play or what is it about me to play the game the same way as everybody else, there are different ways to do and so we need to explore and experiment and find those and then try to apply those that execute those in Go.

Paul Barnett  13:57

Simon Jones builds on John's ideas, by making the analogy with the GPS, and how it guides you when conditions change. He goes on to explain that he believes in planning, but not necessarily the plan. Given the rapid speed with which conditions and competitors can change.

Simon Jones  14:15

I think you've got to create a vision for the future. But we don't know what's going to happen. We live in this complex world but without a destination to aim for. So just use it like getting in the car you go in, we use off maps got GPS now and the GPS kind of guides us there. And you've got to change direction maybe based off of the traffic conditions or in a while stop along the way. And in a simple analogy. That's what coaching does. It's about understanding the destination. It's about kind of working out the route and the journey, the resources required, but we got to stop and take a picnic on your journey. You basically got to work out what you need to do to get your destination. So I'm a big one for planning. But it's not about the plan because I think people have to stick to the plan then don't absorb new information and then iterate the plan and because we live in this complex world it's ever changing. So those people have to stick to the plan. I think getting a comfort zone, everyone think, oh yeah, I've got a plan and we're on track and they're not able to be, because absorb new information, I still think I think you're constantly learning. So planning is you never stop planning people think they write a plan. And that's it. Now you plan is always a live document that you adjust, adjust with data information, athlete insights, competitor information, and it's a living, it's a living document.

Paul Barnett  15:25

When you have your vision, Heineken, my believes you have to write it down, so that you stay committed to it. He also makes the correlation between financial success and the presence of a written vision.

Heyneke Meyer  15:37

You have to have a vision, everything started to meet a vision. And you know, 97% of people don't write down the vision 3% of people in the world have done this in America research 3% Write down the vision, and that 3% And more than a 97% put together. So you have to write it down. Because when the pressure comes on, you change every week. So just about vision, I can ever talk with you just about a vision and let's be big enough, like I wanted to go to my country with a lot. You have to believe in your vision.

Paul Barnett  16:07

With your vision set, aligned with the organization and written down, it can become a key part of your coaching message to the extent that the team are able to repeat it. Here is boxing coach Eddie Bolger. And what's interesting in this audio quote is how he finishes by talking about his personal vision, and how that connects to the one for the team,

Eddie Bolger  16:28

the same wavelength as our Irish, the Irish vision, you know, you should be looking to consistently put German boxers on European world and Olympic podiums, we're not looking for the top of those podiums, yet, we're looking for to be on those podiums consistently. So this is something that we're going to try. And this is our, our vision at the moment, we want to get this maybe under T shirts, maybe printed on the walls of the gym, and randomly at 630. In the morning, when we line up the striker first training session, you can ask somebody, what's our vision, and if they repeat it, and believe in it, then we can build that culture around. And we're really, that's why I'm so excited about this German team. No, it's a very, very good team. And they are so hungry to buy into these visions and visualization. And the culture will come into the last year of recycle. And my personal vision when I'm looking at things and seeing how things are developing. When we go to training camps, I want to make an impact. I want to make an impact as a national team.

Paul Barnett  17:32

To bring the ideas about a vision statement together. Here is gold and silver medal winning volleyball coach, Hugh McCutcheon talking about how he created a vision to guide the 2008 USA men's volleyball team to the gold medal in the Beijing Olympics.

Hugh McCutcheon  17:48

But I think when you're trying to achieve something significant, you need not just Well, how about this, just wanting it isn't enough, right? You mean you need some clarity, as well as conviction. And the thing that that document gave us was the opportunity to not only express the goal, but also to express a lot of the behaviors or at least behavioral expectations that were going to be around that. And even to some extent, a little bit of a vision statement woven in there about, you know, who we were going to become in terms of how we were going to manage the moment of competition. And there were two things that that happened that I thought immediately changed the way we were able to operate. One was this idea of clarity, right? This is what we're trying to achieve. But to there was this instant accountability mechanism that was built in. And so once everybody had signed off to this idea of, and we've probably didn't have any right to say, winning the Olympic gold in 2008, not that we were Dogmeat. I mean, we were a good team, but there were probably seven or eight teams that could have been vying for it. And the main teams would have been Brazil and Russia who were really good and Italy and any number of teams that were worthy of saying that, but once everyone had signed off on it, now we had this accountability piece, where if we're coming into the gym on Monday morning, and you've been out raging all weekend, and you're not super crisp, well, there's a pretty big space between what you're saying you want to do and what you're actually doing. So it just was we were able to get people to say, hey, you know, what if we are trying to be the best in the world at what we do, or how about that, if we are trying to become the best we can, can be with the hope of achieving this outcome, then we've got to act as if, and if we're not, then at the very least we're being seen as duplicitous.

Paul Barnett  19:33

We hope you enjoyed our episode on vision and found one or two things that you can bring to your own dinner table, locker room or boardroom table for discussion. The key lessons I've taken away on the topic of vision from our interview guests. Having a vision is a key part of leadership. It should be audacious and compelling enough to unite the team and motivate them. However, you also need to be able to deconstruct your vision into a roadmap Add a set of actions to be executed. This helps build momentum and confidence irrespective of performance. And your vision has more chance of success if it is written down, aligned with key stakeholders across the organization, and simple enough for the team to remember easily. Here at the great coaches podcast we are always trying to learn, so please let us know if you have any feedback. Just like one of our guests, Kevin Sharpe, who said, enjoyed our very challenging and thought provoking interview. It's always a pleasure to be able to share one's experience with others. Thanks, Kevin. The interaction with the people around the world who listen gives us great energy. And so if you have any feedback or comments, please let us know. All the details on how to connect with us are in the show notes or on our website, the great coaches podcast.com