- The Great Coaches: Leadership & Life
- Posts
- Liam Sheedy
We believe that there is no algorithm for leadership and so we interview great sports coaches from around the world to try and find ideas to help all of us lead our families, our colleagues, and our teams better.
The best ideas from those interviews are in this newsletter.
We hope you find one or two things here that you can bring to your dinner table, locker room or boardroom table for discussion.
Latest Interview
Our Great Coach this week is Irish hurling manager and former player, Liam Sheedy.
Liam's life-long involvement with hurling began at a young age, playing through the juvenile and underage levels at Portroe club. Having achieved championship success with the Portroe under-21s, Liam would go on to play 13 senior games with Tipperary over the space of 10 years.
Liam's time as a player came to an end with his retirement in 1999, and in 2002 he transitioned into coaching for Tipperary's youth teams. In 2007 he was appointed senior coach, and in 2010 he led Tipperary to their 26th All Ireland victory against Kilkenny.
After taking a year-long break from coaching at the highest level to spend time with his family and coach local teams, Liam returned to Tipperary in 2018 and in his 2nd year led them to win another All Ireland final.
This interview with Liam was a great reminder of the importance and value of gratitude, positivity, and creativity - three incredibly important things that can sometimes take a backseat while we pursue success. Some personal highlights for me included:
Liam’s decision whether to focus on the setback or the bounce back, and how this idea flows through his story and coaching career.
His belief that the perfect day is one in which you give back to someone who may never be able to repay you.
The importance of creating an environment that allows others to flourish.
Why Liam believes that Great Coaches are innovators, focused on getting to the future before anybody else.
Make sure to give the full interview a listen - I’d love to hear which parts resonated the most with you.
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Leadership Insights
As a leader, it’s important to establish clear standards that everyone in the team understands, recognises, and works to achieve. Equally, it’s important to put in the effort to continuously maintain those standards and not turn a blind eye to situations where standards may have slipped.
In this clip from our Youtube channel, cricket coach John Buchanan shares why leaders need to “lead by example”, and his belief that it’s everybody’s responsibility to stand up and speak out when standards are not being met.
If you like this, you can find more than 1200 other insight videos on our website, covering a variety of leadership topics such as setting up new team cultures, establishing team values, or helping others with their inner voice.
All of the insights are indexed, searchable, and can be downloaded to share. Some may require a one-time purchase or subscription - check the individual insight’s description for more information.
Leadership Skills
The Great Coaches that we interview often speak about both personal and team values.
When values are shared amongst a team, community or family, it helps everyone to understand where they belong, the role they play, and the goal that they are working towards. Establishing common values helps to reduce potential conflict, set standards and expectations for conduct, and cultivate an environment where each person feels comfortable, fulfilled, and able to achieve their full potential.
But how do you decide what values to hold and share with your team, and what should you be doing to ensure that the values are upheld?
In this lesson, you’ll hear 22 Great Coaches speaking on the topic of values and sharing their own personal experiences and advice for establishing and upholding values within a team.
Some of the points that are covered in the episode include:
Why identifying personal values and recognising the behaviours that both support and detract from them should be considered a vital starting point for any leader.
How to find balance between pushing your values onto a team and working with the team members to co-create values that represent the organisation’s aspirations and history.
Ways to cultivate the camaraderie required to ensure that values are upheld by everyone.
Want to find more content like this? You can find lessons on a wide range of leadership-related themes and topics on our website:
Ideas
When netball coach Stacey Marinkovich took on the responsibility of coaching the Origin Australian Diamonds, she faced quite a bit of scepticism and pushback from fans, reporters, and commentators alike. Considered by many to be a “surprise appointment”, Stacey faced an uphill battle to prove that she had what it takes to lead the team to success.
Fast forward to 2024 and the Diamonds have just achieved their ninth consecutive series win at the 2024 Nations Cup.
This fantastic article from ABC shares the ups and downs of Marinkovich’s time with the legendary team and highlights the hard work and effort that she has put in to proving that she was the right person for the job.
If you’re looking for an inspiring story to read this International Women’s day, then look no further.
The Great Coaches at Your Next Event
If you’d like to bring the wisdom and voices of sport’s Great Coaches into the room at your next event, then we’re here to help.
Check out this short video to learn more about how we can help you to inspire both the current and aspiring leaders in your team, organisation or group.
Partners
This newsletter is brought to you by Macquarie University Business School’s MBA program. Designed to empower, challenge and transform, the Macquarie MBA gives you the business skills and knowledge you need to succeed in an evolving global economy.
The program bridges the gap between theory and real-world application, bringing together world-leading professors, executives and industry partners to teach you how business can be used for good.
I have started working with the team at Macquarie on some projects and can attest to the quality of the people and material. To find out more, search for Macquarie University Business School’s MBA.
Find out more: https://www.mq.edu.au/macquarie-business-school
Contact Us
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