Just listening to Stuart Lancaster deliver a webinar for IIBN. He shared his path to head coach of the England rugby team, the hard blow of falling out of the home rugby world cup, and his current role as part of the leadership of Leinster rugby club.
10 Necessary Ingredients of a Great Leader
- Be authentic – know who you are, know what you like and don’t like, learn to manage yourself.
- Develop Great Communications Skills – both 1-1 and to the large groups. Learn to speak well.
- Create and align people to a cause – you need every member of the team to move beyond their own wants and needs and be a genuine contributor to the team… for this there needs to be a meaningful cause that is bigger than “winning”. Stuart shared how he wrote to the parents of all the england team players and asked them to share what it meant to them to see their son play rugby for england. This helped him show the players how they represented something much bigger than rugby.
- Develop a point of view – people do not want to be led by those without a point of view on life. Develop an opinion on the questions that are important in your field. (A blog is a great tool to develop your opinions).
- Be good with people – learn what moves people and how to listen. Ask good questions.
- Sense the “mood in the camp” – build a good “radar” and surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth.
- Be trustworthy “DWYSYWD” – Do What You Said You Would Do”
- Moral courage to do the right thing – especially when it is hard.
- Great body language – you are never “off stage”.
- Build belief and “make performance meaningful” in yourself and others – it has to be more than “just getting the win” – why will this next win be meaningful?
Loved this from Stuart…
“Always want to Improve”
Stuart Lancaster
Extreme competence + extreme open to learn = Be here 😉
