Published The Advocate, July 30, 2005


MANY leadership courses emphasise the need for teamwork, and team leadership models are sometimes drawn from nature. Look up ``leadership’’ on the Internet and you will find supposed insights based on the behaviour of buffalos, geese, ducks, turtles, snakes, penguins, peacocks, starfish and seagulls. From this menagerie, it appears many zoo creatures have leadership styles far superior to humans. There is a lot to be said for teamwork. A team often provides workable solutions. But teams are not so good at coming up with brilliant ideas. Great literature has never been written by a team, nor great music. Beethoven’s 5th Symphony was not created by a committee. Hollywood’s classic action heroes are not teams. Superman, Spiderman, Arnie Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood – they are The Loner versus The Many. And The Many always lose. Or take those reality TV programs such as Big Brother, My Restaurant Rules or Survivor. Some people show natural leadership skills; some do not. That is just the way it is. The eventual winners are not the humblest or the kindest; nor are they the bossiest or the cutest. The winners, more often than not, are those who exude a solid, dependable, self-aware confidence. These are the people we want as leaders. Sporting analogies are often used as leadership examples. In football, the "out and out superstars" of the game are players like Essendon’s James Hird and Nathan Buckley of Collingwood. Such is their on-field brilliance, they have been made captains of their teams in recognition of the large gap between them and the playing abilities of their team mates. However, the odds are against them becoming great coaches when their playing days are over. Very few successful football coaches were stellar players. Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse and Essendon’s Kevin Sheedy were not superstars. They were hard, tough, football journeymen who never reached the elite level where the TV commentators gave them the dubious accolade of "freak". The lesson is those feted stars who lead by example are unlikely to translate their special gifts into team performance as a coach. Indeed the superiority of a Hird or a Buckley may act as a barrier. The talents that made them so good – particularly their athletic flair and uncanny anticipation – may make them bad coaches of people with lesser talents. Watching others fail at a task is not easy when your expectations are higher than the players can deliver. The team leadership model I prefer is the Tour de France bike race. Multi-Tour winner Lance Armstrong never led all the way every day for the three weeks of the race. He didn’t have to. He let his team do all the grunt work. His team set the pace, provided support and even fed him along the way. The team members exhausted themselves for Lance. They protected him and made him look good. Lance could not win it by himself but by the end, he took all the glory. No-one remembers the names of the other team members. Now that’s leadership.