Brian Goorjian: The Culture of Green & Gold

Hello and welcome to the Great Coaches: Leadership & Life newsletter!

March is a busy time for sports: the NCAA’s ‘March Madness’ begins, the MLB has its traditional ‘Opening Day’, and rugby fans will be able to see the final of the 2025 Six Nations Championship take place this weekend. Depending on where you live, this may also be a time for local sports clubs to resume training after a seasonal hiatus — a great time for coaches to consider their approach to leadership and set goals for their own development. More on this below.

If you like our content, then you’ll probably want to explore our Great Coaches annual membership. For just $4.50 USD, you can enjoy a year’s unlimited to access to all of our existing and upcoming content, including more than 1,800 leadership insights and our library of leadership lesson episodes. It’s a great resource for leaders, coaches and parents alike. Find out more on our website.

Establishing Cultures of Success With Brian Goorjian

This week’s interview with Basketball coach Brian Goorjian provides a fantastic look at the topic of team culture — something that many leaders in both business and sport find particularly difficult to establish and successfully maintain.

Brian is a coach who has had his fair share of experience joining teams, establishing cultures and realigning towards success. During our interview he shares the story of how he worked to rebuild the culture of the Boomers (Australia’s national team), ultimately leading the country to their first ever Olympic medal in the sport of Basketball. He also reveals a number of insights and lessons that he has learned over his impressive career, including his understanding that team culture is far more powerful when it is player-driven, rather than being driven by the coach. 

New and aspiring leaders (and even those with years of experience) will no doubt take inspiration from what Brian shares about the value of work ethic and how he utilised it to launch his Australian coaching career, ultimately creating teams that have experienced long periods of sustained success. 

Inspiring, encouraging and highly-applicable, I hope that you’ll take a lot of insight and value from this week’s interview. 

Listen Now: Apple | Spotify

This Week’s Guest

Californian-born Brian Goorjian came to Australia at the age of 24 to teach at a high school and play basketball. In 1984 he was the inaugural captain of the Melbourne Tigers in the NBL, and upon retirement he decided to transition into coaching. 

In a career that has spanned over 20 years in the National Basketball League, Brian has won a total of six championships with the South East Melbourne Magic (two wins), the Sydney Kings (three wins), and the South Dragons (one win). He has also spent time overseas, coaching in China, Japan, and the Philippines. 

Brian’s career has included two stints leading the Australian national team, the Boomers. Famously, he led them to a bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In 2013, he was inducted into the Australian Basketball Hall of Fame in recognition of his many career achievements.

Brian is currently the Head Coach of the Sydney Kings, a team he last coached in 2008. 

On Leading By Example

In each issue of the Great Coaches newsletter we share a different short lesson on leadership, inspired by the insights and ideas shared by our podcast guests.

In the last issue, we looked at collaborative decision-making and how leaders can walk the line between indecisiveness and being overly authoritative. This week let’s look at a a skill that all leaders and coaches - from the CEOs of large corporations to the sports coaches of children and young people - can (and should) utilise: leading by example.

As a leader, the people around you will be looking at you to demonstrate how they should approach unexpected situations, pressure, and performances. Your team will look to you for reassurance when things are difficult, and they’ll follow your lead when it comes to meeting expectations and standards.

The way you conduct yourself, both in your emotional responses and the dedication you bring to your work, should set an example for those around you and give them an opportunity to see team values and standards in action. Similarly, if you’re an over-emotional leader who lives by the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ philosophy, then your team will pick up on this and you’ll soon find it impacting their performance, work ethic, and responses.

In this clip, Great Coach Greg Cannella speaks on the importance of being yourself and leading by example — a great lesson applicable to both business and sports.

If you’re looking to further develop your own leadership skills and ability, then make sure to head over to our website. For an annual cost of just $4.50 USD, Great Coaches members can access more than 1,800 clips, 30 special lessons, and more great content designed to help them become better, more effective leaders.

In Case You Missed It…

In The Words Of Gareth Southgate

Once you’ve finished listening to this week’s episode of the Great Coaches podcast, take some time to listen to this episode of BBC Radio 4’s famous ‘Desert Island Discs’. 

In this episode, host Lauren Laverne is joined by the former England national team coach Gareth Southgate OBE to talk about his life, career, and the challenges he overcame to become one of English history’s most successful football managers. 

During the interview Gareth also speaks about the book “The Chimp Paradox” by Dr. Steve Peters, and shares how it personally helped him. 

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