Letting the tide out

Trent Cotchin captained Richmond through three premierships. Triple best and fairest. Brownlow medallist. But before any of that, he captained them through 2016, the year the club nearly broke, and the year he nearly broke with it.

The noise was deafening. The anger had a name. And he thought he had no alternative but to take the punches himself. That's the way he was back then.

The Ben Crowe call

It starts with Damien Hardwick pulling him aside. Dimma had recently engaged with Ben Crowe and encouraged Trent to reach out. "I remember calling Crowe within an hour or two and spending an hour on the phone with him. I think it was that moment where we realised we didn't have to do it alone and we were still worthy of going on the journey."

That appetite for the truth, the willingness to let the tide go out and see where the rocks are, changed everything. Not because it made the problems disappear. Because it gave them permission to acknowledge they existed in the first place. And once you know where the rocks are, you can dial up a curiosity to navigate your way through it.

This is who I fucking am

Trent spent most of his life trying to be the best version of all the people he aspired to be. That's a lot of weight. And it was never going to be a reality. "When I actually realised that I had so much good within me and I just needed to bring that to life, that was a really special place to be."

The chapter title in his book says it plainly: This is who I fucking am. Not the persona. Not the performance. The person. Leadership stopped feeling so hard when he stopped trying to be someone else's version of what a captain should be and started being himself, imperfect, vulnerable, human.

Big paddocks, strong fences

One of Trent's favourite metaphors for leadership now: "I think in every organisation that I see now that are operating really effectively, they have really big paddocks, but they have really strong fences."

The conditions and expectations are tight. That's what keeps people within the parameters. But the space they get to play in is huge. Dylan Grimes picking up the phone before a final and handing it to Daniel Rioli saying, "it's for you." Pure joy. Pure personality. That only happens when people genuinely feel like they can bring their own flavour to the environment.

"Everyone has a story and everyone has a journey that they've been on, and they're motivated by different things." Empathy, learned from his wife, tested through living with Dusty, refined through the hardest conversations, became the unlock.

The St Rose Cafe

End of 2016. Trent and Jack Riewoldt sit down at the St Rose Cafe. Jack made the trip from the south side of the river to the north, which is very rare for him. They spoke about the year they'd just had. What they wanted the future to look like.

And then something shifted. "It was genuinely a shift from it being about us and what we wanted to do in our careers to then going, alright, well, the reality is we're probably not going to have the ultimate success. But in that conversation, we spoke about how do we be part of creating an environment where Daniel Rioli does have that opportunity?"

Twelve months later, they were holding the cup.

For Trent, it comes down to three things: trust, empowerment and alignment. Trust is built on relationships. Empowerment is realising you have a gift to give people, sometimes it's space, sometimes it's a role. And alignment means walking out of the room committed, even when you disagree.

This is a conversation about what happens when a leader stops performing and starts being. When the tide goes out. When the armour comes off. When leadership stops being about you and becomes about how you help others.

Notebook ready.

Play on!