James Kerr - Lessons on Leadership from the All Blacks

Thought Leader – James Kerr

Christ’s College Sunday 2 September

Lessons in Leadership from the All Blacks

The All Blacks – the legacy is leaving the jersey in a better place.

In this moment, this present – what will your legacy be? How will you leave the world in a better place than when you found it.

Wayne Smith : Leadership – exceptional success requires exceptional circumstances.  Create the right environment first.   Performance = capability x behaviour.    The results will then take care of themselves.

Living your values out loud – so they become human actions.

Character.   Ethos.  The Greeks – two sided coin (one side our values / the impact that it makes when it hits the page).   For the Greeks this is indivisible.  

Red vs Blue.  Keeping a blue head.

Ownership and inclusion = self motivation.    Ensuring that the people in the organization feel they have some ownership and say in the vision.

3 CORE VALUES OF THE ALL BLACKS:

Humility – never be too big to do the small jobs.  Don’t be thinking you are special.  Stay humble.  Stay hungry.

Excellence – to be the best team in the world and win every game.

Respect – begins with self respect and then respect towards others, the game, the jersey, the history.

The flying geese vector formation. 

AKA Satchi and Satchi clip on youtube.  

The leader sets the direction, the pace.  Creates uplight for those who come behind.  The players honk in encouragement to help that leader on.   If one bird falls behind the others fly in to help.      When the leader has done his job / exhausted his role, the next bird flies in to lead the flock.  

Creating leadership at every level.   Pass the ball.    Create a psychological safe environment for others to grow.

Dependent mindset – entitled, used to having everything handing to them, what can the team do for me?

Independent mindset -  what can I do for this team?  Ritchie McCaw embodies this.

Empowerment actually means giving power away and empowering others.   The courage of leadership is the courage to let go.

Self determination Theory:

Three things that people really want – Mastery (being good at what they do), Autonomy (the freedom to do this without being micromanaged) and Relatedness (stuff they love with people they love).  Autonomy comes with responsibility.

GOOGLE Overall intention for the company.

Small self directed teams with own autonomy and projects.

SAS Big boys rules.  If you have self discipline, you don’t need rules.  Humility and a sense of humour.

ETON.  Creating a level of trust by empowering boys early.

High performance environments are only ever positive.  They build on strengths not correcting the weaknesses of people. 

Focus on excellence.  Be the best you can be.  Own it.  Take personal responsibility.  Keep it flat.  Avoid power relationships.  Stay humble.   Have a laugh.   Enjoy what you are doing.

Māori proverb – aim for the highest cloud, because even if you fall short you will land on a lofty mountain.

Brad Thorne. “Champions do extra.”  Try to do a hundred things one percent better rather than one thing a hundred percent better.  

Sean Fitzpatrick “Excellence is modest improvement, consistently done.”

Sustainable Leadership - James Kerr

My reflection on this presentation:

How can we use the school values and the strength of the relationships we have created to ensure the flock stays together and capture a genuine feeling of self-relatedness.  The common pursuit of excellence (the results) will then take care of itself.

A challenge for me – look to grow others, avoid micro managing and promote autonomy and associated responsibility and help people to do what they love (the reason why they got in to teaching).

Using strength based theory to help grow my staff to be the best they can be.   Building on the individual strengths of each individual.  What going well for you?  What have you identified as your personal strengths?  Innate individual strengths? How can we build upon these using a goal setting framework?   PD to reflect this.  Developing a personal journey for each person as part of appraisal model (graphic to follow ….) 

What can you bring to this team?

What are you prepared to sacrifice for this team?