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I have your back.
Four of the most powerful words in the world.
Powerful words yes, but even more powerful actions. There’s an old saying, if you preach excellence and walk mediocrity, you are nothing but a common liar.
Words, of course, are cheap. Anyone can talk a good game. Walking the talk is the key.
In the end, it is what you do, how you act, that matters.
Steve Waugh knows how to act. He’s an example of a great leader.
In 1998, he pulled me aside at breakfast in the hotel restaurant in Hobart.
“Lang, I notice you’re a bit down and I believe it is affecting your performance,” he said. “I also know the media are calling for your head.
“For the rest of the week, I don’t want you reading the papers, watching the news or listening to the radio. I want you in the team, your teammates want you in the team, as does the coach and the selectors. Stand tall and show us what you’ve got.”
Underneath my Australian tracksuit top, my Superman shirt was starting to burst through. The captain is backing me in. He has my back.
A few hours later, spring in my step, I was walking back from the practice nets. Bat and pads under my arm, head held high, ready to stand up in the Test match the following day.
That was, until I walked past my captain who was being interviewed by a journalist. Waving his recorder in his hand he says: “So, Steve, have you got any advice for Justin Langer? If he fails again, you surely can’t keep picking him? Any advice for him at the moment?”
Again, the self-doubts crept back inside me.
I wanted the earth to open up, swallow me whole. That was until I heard Steve Waugh’s response.
Scratching his chin and looking the journo straight in the eyes, Steve responded: “Yeah, I have some advice for Justin Langer. Stop reading your s___.”
Great teams, businesses and families are built on stability and strong leadership. They don’t cannibalise themselves from within, and they have each other’s backs through thick and thin.
Not only was the captain backing me privately, but now he was backing me publicly as well.
As fate would have it, I played the greatest innings of my Test career a few days later against Pakistan.
Batting with Adam Gilchrist we were able to pull off a miracle win.
That result was also the second victory of our 16 consecutive Test victories under Steve Waugh’s stewardship.
Sure, the personal and collective result could have gone a different way. But the fact is, it didn’t.
I’m certain that knowing the captain had my, and my teammates’ backs, played an instant and sustained role in our successes. Just as I am certain the captain’s leadership was integral in the team becoming one of the best teams in cricket history.
Leadership is one of the most fundamental ingredients in successful teams, families and business. Great leaders help create miracles, build strong teams and develop other great leaders.
Poor leaders tend to create disasters. And they hurt people.
One of the traits of leadership that really matters is loyalty. Like leadership, honesty, racism, sexism and pregnancy, you are loyal or you’re not. You can’t be half loyal.
Just as you can’t choose to be a leader when you feel like it. You are, or you aren’t.
The same goes for racism, sexism and honesty. You are, or you aren’t. There is no in-between. Just like there is no in-between with pregnancy.
Loyalty isn’t blind. In fact, the hardest part of leadership is making tough decisions. That is why it can be so lonely at times.
But the best leaders understand the necessity of looking after their people.
A chairman once told me, “you have my 100 per cent support — until you don’t”.
Harsh philosophy? Maybe, but at least I knew where I stood.
But that’s the game. Leaders don’t always have news you want to hear.
A few years after Steve Waugh publicly believed in me in Hobart, he knocked on my hotel door in Birmingham, England.
He told me I had been dropped for the first Ashes Test match of 2001. In that moment I didn’t know whether to knock him out, or cry on his shoulder.
What I do know is that I admired the fact he knocked on my door, looked me in the eye and gave me the news himself. Respect works both ways. Not just in times of rainbows and butterflies. Loyalty is not blind.
When asked about the most important “behaviour change” leaders need today, Brene Brown, a world-renowned leadership and vulnerability professor said: “It’s going to be simple. Clear is kind, unclear is unkind. Stop avoiding the tough conversations because you think you are being polite or kind to people. That’s not kind.”
This week another example of “unclear is unkind” was played out in the public domain.
Ben Rutten, the coach of the Essendon Football Club, was sacked, amidst a fiasco of what seemed poor communication. From afar, it was another circus and another example of how not to do it. I hope they will learn their lessons.
Without knowing all the circumstances, it looked like a reactionary call.
Great leaders don’t react, they respond. They also have a clear vision for where they want to go. As a result, they rarely panic. They don’t succumb to the calls of people with self-interest, blind ambition or lack of understanding of a situation.
Sadly, it seems to be a growing trend. Our politicians, the leaders of our country, have set a very poor tone.
In the last decade we have had six prime ministers. Six prime ministers!
The Essendon Football Club have had seven head coaches in 12 years.
Just as the Essendon Football Club is in disarray today, it’s no wonder politics is on the nose.
Popular as Anthony Albanese is at the moment, he should be wary. Just as the next Essendon head coach should. Trends rarely tell lies.
The opposite of political messes, and the current Essendon FC, are today’s, and yesteryear’s AFL powerhouses.
Richmond held their nerve on Damien Hardwick. Their vision was clear. They had the courage to publicly declare that vision. They didn’t panic or succumb. Three premierships in five years. Respect.
Melbourne Football Club worked through a player revolt before a pre-season camp. Potential disaster.
Panic? No. Instead they backed in their coach Simon Goodwin. They sorted things out and the rest is history. Last year’s premiers and arguably the favourites to go back-to-back this year. Time will tell.
History is littered with miracles and disasters. Either of these outcomes generally comes down to the vision, loyalty, wisdom, experience and steel of the leader or leaders at the helm.
Great teams, businesses and families are built on stability and strong leadership. They don’t cannibalise themselves from within, and they have each other’s backs through thick and thin.
Simple, but obviously hard for some in today’s world.
