- The Great Coaches: Leadership & Life
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- Mike Hesson
We explore leadership through the lens of high-performance sport by interviewing Great Coaches from around the world to try and find ideas to help all of us lead our families, our colleagues, and our teams better.
Our newsletter contains the best ideas from those interviews.
Latest Interview
This week’s Great Coach is New Zealand cricket coach, Mike Hesson.
Mike has been coaching since his early 20s, becoming Argentina's Head Coach in 2003 and then returning to New Zealand to lead Otago to the 2008 One-Day trophy and the 2009 T20 championship.
After some time as Head Coach for Kenya, Mike Hesson once again returned to New Zealand in 2012 to become the Head Coach of the national team, the Black Caps. By the time he left the team in 2018 he had brought them from a One-Day international ranking of 8th to 2nd, hit a record-breaking winning streak of 13 games, and cemented his place as one of the most successful coaches in the nation's history.
In more recent years, Mike has served as the head coach of Kings XI Punjab in the IPL and in 2023 became the head coach of PSL franchise Islamabad United.
Mike shared a number of well-considered and thought-provoking points during our interview, including:
The value of being comfortable with silence and using it as an opportunity for reflection, rather than pushing to fill every quiet moment with information.
How he uses the ‘right questions’ to unlock the potential of the people he leads.
Why he strongly believes in the need for authenticity in all interactions with his teams.
“If I want my players to believe in me and trust me and have relationship with me, they need to know that it's actually me rather than me trying to be somebody else.”
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Leadership Insights
In this clip, Great Coach Mike Candrea speaks on the importance of respecting the uniform and all that it represents.
Mike shares how University of Arizona softball players need to earn the “A” on their uniforms through self-reflection and feedback from their teammates, particularly in relation to their competitiveness, discipline, attitude, and preparation.
His words are a great reminder to all of us about the importance of being a good teammate and how much work truly goes into being successful.
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
There’s a lot to be said about purpose in the context of coaching and leadership.
We often hear variations of the idea that if we “find our purpose”, then everything will fall into place and we can reach success - but what is the term ‘purpose’ actually referring to, and how can we find, approach, and utilise it?
For this lesson, Great Coaches hosts Grant and Paul are joined by Dr Gavin Weeks, a Doctor of Psychology, an Associate Fellow at Oxford Saïd Business School and a Partner at the consultancy Thompson Harrison.
Together, they discuss and examine the overlap between coaching, the corporate world, and psychology when it comes to the topic of ‘purpose’; a topic that is gaining significant attention and discussion in all of these spheres at present.
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
This week I’d love to share a new book by previous Great Coaches guest, Damian McGrath. I myself read it over 2 sittings and thoroughly recommend it for anyone looking for a bit of inspiration this January.
"Can You Be Fluent In Success?
Damian McGrath has experienced a life of trial and success through a career coaching professional international rugby across the world.
In this book Damian looks back at his life and relates his wisdom and accomplishments, in coaching, to succeeding in life and business."
Timeless Leadership Insights To Share With Your Team
The World’s Great Sports Coaches have timeless insights on leadership and life to share.
In our presentations, we bring their voices into the room through video and audio to inspire your teams. Our content appeals to both men and women and across age groups.
Its timeless, authentic, can be tailored to your needs and delivered virtually or live.
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.
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