Lesson #24 - Define reality. Give hope.
The danger of the work I do with leaders is that it is reduced to a kind of ‘project’, with distinct timelines and expectations. But leadership is a practice, not a project. The most important practice is reflection, ensuring awareness of your role and its demands.
Lesson #23 - Figure out who you are
It wouldn’t matter if it was football or whatever; the essence of being as good as you can be is to figure out who you are.
Lesson #22 - Begin Again
A key lesson I learned the hard way is that no matter how good your culture and strategy seem at any time, all solutions are temporary.
Lesson #21 - Letting the tide go out
What I do know is this. Leadership, if you’re prepared to embrace all its expectations, will pick you up somewhere and leave you somewhere else.
Lesson #20 - Growers and arrivers
I have learned that discomfort marks the place where the old way meets the new way. It is a place of vulnerability and courage.
Lesson #19 - Constraints make the art possible
To draw the energy or inspiration from somewhere to bring something into existence that was not there before.
Lesson #01 (Reprise) - Ron Barassi: “If it is to be, it is up to me”
Over the past thirty years, whenever I saw Ron, he smiled that broad grin under his now grey moustache, put out his hand and said, “It’s Cam-aulenko”.
Lesson #18 - The strongest steel
Richmond achieved something generations of highly equipped groups of players, coaches, and administrators had failed to accomplish, not because they weren’t good enough, but because it is fucking hard.
Lesson #17 - Can you coach effort?
Mechanics and dynamics, the science and art of leadership, to create the conditions of high performance.
Lesson #16 - The Leadership Promise
It is impossible to have a conversation about leadership without talking about power.
Lesson #15 - Proven - The Leader’s Limp
You will make mistakes, but if you own them, you learn, and by sharing your learnings, and your vulnerability, so do those around you.
Lesson #14 - Loyalty
Where is your heart, Ron?* he is asked. Ron Barassi puts his hand on his chest. “Right here, Mike”, he says with a smile.
Lesson #13 - The game does not give up its rewards easily
Good leadership is its own reward when you find it, and it is well worth the journey of discovery.
Lesson #12 - You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf
Try and make the best mistakes you’ve ever made.
Lesson #11 - Failure is a bruise, not a tattoo
In these moments, your ‘failure’ is being defined for you and not by you. Now the real work starts.
Lesson #10 - Give it your best
“Don’t cry Cameron, don’t cry Cameron”, I thought to myself, desperately trying to hide my disappointment to feel appreciative.
Lesson #09 - When there is no art in the deal
I am in the car driving home, and a voice in my head asks. “What the fuck were you thinking?”.
Lesson #08 - The stories we tell ourselves
I couldn’t look at him, let alone tell him it wasn’t okay. It can’t be okay. It would never be fucking okay.
Lesson #07 - Heroes are human
He was a hero to so many people, but he also exposed what a vexed human concept having and being a hero represents.
Lesson #06 - Culture is an experiment
I have learned that culture isn’t some form of endowment you receive; it is something you have to work for.