The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

by Anita Bhogle

Mavericks

Consensus

You may disagree with a leader’s decision but once it is taken, and binding on the team, you give your best to make it possible.

colonisation.

Steve Waugh says that when he was captain, he treated players ‘equally but differently’. Since each person in the team is different and comes with his/her strengths and weaknesses as well as his/her own likes and dislikes, the leader needs to personalise his approach to suit the person. Yet, when it comes to team ethics, discipline, training and the like, the rules are the same, irrespective of whether you are the star player or the senior most team member. Those rules are the non-negotiables.

resentment

Players with a bad attitude, however talented they may be, can prove to be a burden on the team. While

As Neeraj Garg says, ‘If some people in the team believe that they bring more to the table than others, it results in a fractured team.’

camaraderie

Many years prior to this, after India had lost a Test match early on the fifth day in Melbourne, the hugely respected former Australian captain and later television broadcaster Mark Taylor, was walking back to the team hotel when he saw a group of Indian fans celebrating there. When asked what it was they were celebrating, he was told that it was in honour of a Tendulkar century (‘best batsman in the world, mate …’ they went). It didn’t seem to matter who had won the match as long as Tendulkar had done well. It was a powerful example of how we can sometimes glorify the individual ahead of the team. No surprise then that when fans recall Sachin’s 100th hundred at Mirpur, they don’t remember that India lost that one-dayer to Bangladesh!

paramount,

One thing is certain—adaptability and staying relevant would be the key to success.

‘My dream was to make Infosys a meritocracy like a cricket team,’ Narayana Murthy confided in us.6

At the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies, Adam Gilchrist was having a patchy tournament in the run-up to the final. He says that at the team meeting before the big day he put his hand up and admitted he hadn’t done too well. He was delighted when the team turned around and told him it didn’t matter how much he or his partner Hayden scored individually, as long as they kept giving the team good starts. It was not about Gilchrist or Hayden but about the partnership. It put him in the right frame of mind to demolish the Sri Lankans in the final with an unforgettable innings.

So the quality of the bench is a very good indicator of the quality of the side.

enviable

‘We were always aware of the fact that we were playing for the West Indies, that people all around the world were looking towards us to do well, and that was always there at the back of our minds’. In essence, it didn’t matter who took a wicket as long as the team won. It is a wonderful, almost unparalleled team story.

manifests

‘matey’

John Wright, former New Zealand captain, insisted that individual success be celebrated collectively when he became coach of the Indian cricket team. Sceptics may see this as forced behaviour, but in the long run it breaks down barriers and inhibitions and becomes second nature.

We’re all like that. We like people applauding us and when they do so, our resistance to applauding them diminishes!

There is a disconnect, as they are unable to connect the dots and see the big picture.

Finally, as Rahul Dravid says, the team is like a pot. Some people put into the pot, others draw from it. Who puts in and who takes out depends on the people as well as the moment. Ultimately, a team that has more people putting in rather than taking out is a happy team, a team more likely to win.

Inventories can be managed, but people must be led. —H. Ross Perot

reverential

perplexing.

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people. —Mahatma Gandhi

We asked Virender Sehwag, who couldn’t have been too easy to understand given the maverick he was (and actually is!), how he handled players when he was captain. ‘You have to understand them,’ he said. ‘For example, if Gautam Gambhir hadn’t scored runs in a few games, I would try and hurt him so that he went out to bat intent on proving me wrong. But with Dinesh Karthik (who played under him in IPL 1), I explained things, we talked about his strengths and weaknesses because that works for him.’1 These were people driven by different emotions and so as captain you can’t have a one size fits all approach to everyone. Again, like with Lloyd, Sehwag had probably taken the trouble to understand the person behind each player.

Under Sourav Ganguly’s captaincy, many young players like Harbhajan Singh and Yuvraj Singh flowered. He empowered them and gave them confidence so that they could become match-winners. Irfan Pathan tells of how he was nervous in his first game; the captain threw him the new ball but when he sensed the young man was getting a bit over-awed, he ran up to him to tell him how much he believed in him. Pathan said that if his captain thought he was good enough, he probably was! At the 1992 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, Imran Khan had made a public announcement saying he believed that a young man called Inzamam-ul-Huq was the best player of fast bowling. When they got to the semi-final after a scarcely believable, topsy-turvy ride, Inzamam told his captain that he wasn’t very keen to play since he wasn’t scoring enough runs. Imran told him that he hadn’t brought him all the way from Multan to Auckland to drop him. He said he had brought him along because he believed in him and so would play him. The young man played the innings that turned the semi-final around for Pakistan!

Gautam Gambhir, the Indian opening batsman, felt this need as a player in a team full of batting stars. ‘Gary (Kirsten, the coach) told me, he said, how much importance and quality I brought to the side. “You are the one who can anchor the innings, and at the same time you can attack.” When you get to know this from a person who has played more than a hundred Tests and who is the coach, then you tell yourself, look, even you are equally important. That has made me comfortable. Earlier no one ever told me what importance I brought to the side. I always used to feel, what I am doing in this side anyone else can do. Now, I realise I have my own role.’

ploy

clones

Deep Kalra of MakeMyTrip.com put it, ‘Team mates who ask you uncomfortable questions are actually your greatest allies.’3

Hussain was to experience this situation when England came to India under him in 2002 and ran into Sachin Tendulkar in top form. Unable to work out a way of getting him out, they decided to frustrate him by bowling a largely negative outside the leg stump line. The man assigned to do the job was Ashley Giles, a workmanlike spinner who kept things tight. For the next eleven overs he bowled outside the leg stump to Tendulkar, a tactic that drew much criticism. This did keep Tendulkar quiet and ended up frustrating him. ‘If you can’t bowl him out, bore him out,’ the critics said, but as Hussain suggested afterwards, it was a better option than letting Tendulkar get a century! It was a boring job for Giles to do and the key lay in the captain’s communication of its importance. If a player knows his role and implements it well, a seemingly small role can become important. At the very least, it can raise a player’s self-esteem, as we saw with Gambhir.

History judges leaders by the quality of the decisions they take. The outcome may not always be beneficial but the boldness and intent behind the decision are what matter.

buoyed

Dhoni got the job in 2007 because Tendulkar, standing at first slip, realised that the young wicket keeper was already thinking like a leader. And Virat Kohli said, before he became captain, that he was always involved in the game, running up to the captain to offer suggestions etc. It came as no surprise that each of these three seemed ready to become the leader because in their minds they had already started thinking like one.

Madhabi Puri-Buch, former MD and CEO, ICICI Securities, believes that there are two kinds of leaders: those who believe that ‘HR stuff‘ is an interruption of work and those that believe that it is the most important part of the leader’s work. This difference in approach is what, she believes, determines whether the leader flowers or gets bogged down.

‘hear-a-holic’,

Steve Waugh, in an interview, spoke of the time he had just become captain of Australia. ‘As captain, you are in charge and you are responsible for what happens on the field. In a way I was very inexperienced and in that pressure-cooker situation you don’t know how you will cope. Initially, I didn’t follow my instincts, took advice from too many people. You need to take advice but finally it has to be your own decision. You can’t ask people how to run your business—you have to work it out for yourself.’

consensus.

conviction

A former Indian cricket captain who tried to involve too many people in deciding strategy also refused to hold himself accountable when he realised that an error in judgement had occurred.

As Ian Chappell says, ‘The Ws and Ls (wins and losses) go against your name.’

Never worry about the situation you are in because that is already upon you, he told them.

Good leaders and champions therefore will always present a situation as do-able rather than impossible; as with the Tendulkar example on how to approach a daunting total in the final of the 2003 World Cup. Or Virat Kohli’s strategy to look upon a massive run chase against Sri Lanka as if he was playing two T20 games back to back. Warne says it is important to erase from your mind things that you can no longer do because that will only weigh you down and is a waste of time anyway.

Instead,

This optimism, Imran Khan believes, is a key quality that a leader must possess. He recalled that halfway during the 1992 World Cup, when Pakistan’s chances of reaching the final stages were minimal, Intikhab Alam, who was the team manager at the time, came to Imran to ask for his opinion on flight arrangements for the team to fly back home. Imran was surprised and...

A leader would be particularly disadvantaged if he was lacking communication skills. This

glibness