Rugby World Cup lessons on leadership

I have written a lot about leaders recently, and in these rather ego driven times, it is trendy to link success, or should I say results, with the leader.  If you remember England’s rather inglorious exit from the Rugby World Cup, the papers decided to barbeque Chris Robshaw, as if he were solely responsible for their results.  As a keen rugby fan & Englishman, of course I was disappointed by what happened.  However, if I step back, and put on a more objective hat, then I always knew that New Zealand were the best team in the world, I strongly suspected that Australia would contest the final too.  Most people who knew anything about the sport would have said that South Africa would be a safe bet for the quarter finals, leaving every other team contesting that fourth slot.  So realistically, England, Wales, France and Ireland were all battling it out for a single place, and we have yet to win the 6 Nations recently, so it has to be said it was reasonably predictable that this result was on the cards.  So why was it one man’s fault? 

The answer of course must be that it was not.  You can certainly question whether the critical penalty call in the match against Wales when Robshaw chose to go for a line out and glory rather than going for a more conservative, safe choice of kicking for 3 points.  Both courses of action had a chance of failure, kickers and throwers both miss.  He consulted some of his senior players and they agreed, go for glory.  He is a man who always gives his all, and no one was more upset with the final outcome than Chris. 

My main point is, regardless of the rugby, this result was the consequence of how the collective performed, not simply the choices of one man.  Rugby, like businesses is dependent of key people stepping up and leading in their specialist areas.  A business requires everyone to do their best, to focus on the plan and deliver their bit of it.  Most leaders, like everyone else, have areas of their job they are good at, that they enjoy, and others which they tend to neglect or do worse at.  To some extent, they are then dependent on their team to compensate in these areas to ensure that they are properly covered.  A good numbers person, needs a people person at their elbow, and so on.  You may or may not like your leader, but you need to play your part in the team if you want to be part of a win.

Tags: Leadership, Rugby World Cup, Teams

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2015 at 08:00 and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.