Marcus Weise: Embracing Conflict

Welcome back to the Great Coaches: Leadership & Life newsletter!

Today we’re releasing our second interview of the year, featuring Great Coach Markus Weise. With 3 decades of coaching experience under his belt, Markus knows a thing or two about effective leadership — after all, he was the first person in field hockey history to win gold with both men’s and women’s teams.

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Finding The Line With Markus Weise

When most people think of Markus Weise, they probably think of him as a highly successful hockey coach. However, while that is certainly what he is most well known for, it isn’t the full story. In fact, Markus’ career has also seen him enter the world of football and, since 2019, take responsibility for talent in Hamburg in a sports director role. What’s more, he also has the record of being the first person in field hockey to see Olympic gold success with both men’s and women’s teams — no small feat, as many of our guests who have coached both sexes would attest.

We always make a point of saying that great leadership skills and techniques are applicable across all industries and environments, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to transition between them. Markus’ career is a testament to the value of learning your strengths, identifying the universals, and establishing firm leadership philosophies that you’ll stick to no matter what.

Listening to Markus speak about his career and experiences, it’s clear that he has invested a lot of time into improving his leadership skills and learning from his mistakes. He’s a coach who actively embraces conflict, rather than avoids it, because he understands and believes that conflict provides opportunities for learning. He also knows that there’s a line to be found between being too close and too distant from the people he leads – the sort of insight that comes from years of trial and error.

One of the highlights for me was listening to Markus discuss the distinction between success and performance goals, and how he uses both with his athletes and teams. It’s something that he initially learned from a book by John Whitmore called ‘Coaching for Performance’, and the lesson that “you can plan performance, you can’t plan success” is one that I think would apply to a number of us at work and in our own lives.

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This Week’s Guest

German-born Markus Weise is easily considered one of his country’s most successful sports coaches.

Markus’ coaching career began back in the early 1990s and has seen him act as the Head Coach of the Germany national field hockey team, coach the German women’s national field hockey team, and work with a number of other national German National Hockey Federation teams. He also spent a number of years coaching TSV Mannheim, a club in the German Bundesliga (1st Division).

Markus’ career has included a number of Olympic and European Championship wins. In 2004 he led the Women’s national field hockey team to a gold olympic win in Athens, and he coached the country’s men’s team to take gold on two separate occasions in both 2008 and 2012. This success made him the first person in the history of field hockey to win gold with both men’s and women’s teams.

On Receiving Feedback

In our last issue of the Great Coaches newsletter, we looked at the definition of leadership and encouraged you to think about how you would rate your own leadership skills and ability.

Of course, it can be difficult to be truly objective when doing self-reflection and assessment. Some of us have a tendency to be particularly tough on ourselves, and struggle to recognise our own positive aspects and attributes. On the other end of the scale, we might be viewing ourselves with an overly-optimistic perspective, and fail to identify our own weaknesses or areas for improvement.

In this clip, leadership and performance author Allistair McCaw speaks on the importance of asking for feedback, and why our attitude towards receiving feedback should be one that encourages a safe and open environment where opinions and thoughts can be shared.

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…

That Last Great United Side

We’ve spoken about Sir Alex Ferguson quite a bit on the Great Coaches podcast.

Widely regarded as one of (if not the) greatest managers of all time, Sir Alex has rightly inspired and influenced the world of sports coaching and management for decades and continues to do so even today.

This article from the BBC takes us back to Moscow for the 2008 Champions League final, exploring the several years’ worth of events and decisions that led to one of the most memorable games in Manchester United’s history — a game that came to define Sir Alex Ferguson’s time with the team.

A fantastic read that I hope brings some inspiration to your Friday morning.

Challenge Yourself with the Macquarie MBA

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Find out more: https://www.mq.edu.au/macquarie-business-school/