Faf: Through Fire

by Faf Du Plessis

Owen recalls that a flaw in the Proteas’ team culture at the time was that their purpose had been confused with achieving a strategic outcome: the number-one ranking. ‘This was motivating for the team but once they had achieved it the … motivation fell away. They felt flat and their performances deteriorated. The Proteas needed a higher purpose than a ranking to maintain their motivation and focus.’

Jeremy led a discussion about the protea. He explained how the word was derived from Greek mythology in which Proteus, the son of Poseidon, had the gift to know the truth about the past, the present and the future.

Throughout these sessions at Hennops, one concept kept coming up in the conversations: ubuntu. The general meaning is that we are who we are through others and, after much toing and froing, the team came up with their own interpretation: ‘The measure of our lives is our impact on each other and others.’

Adaptability became a commitment to continuously evolve as a team, both on and off the field.

Commitment to a value is not a ‘sometimes thing’. You do it or you don’t; if you don’t, you should question whether you are contributing to the growth of a team.

Living honesty is the art of reflection, not projection and assigning blame.

If honesty is seen as a behaviour that enables consistent performance, and if consistent performance determines the magnitude of the team’s impact on others, then being dishonest is a betrayal, not just of the team culture, but of our purpose and identity.

During my captaincy, I believed that the captain and senior leadership group should not be the only ones to talk during the boma ritual.

I frequently didn’t feel it necessary to say much, but rather to set the stage for other players to speak.

Here, showing vulnerability was not discouraged. It was the sign of a beating heart.

As the captain, I would work my fingers to the bone to ensure that a healthy team culture was not jeopardised.

That’s why the choice of captain is so important, especially in South Africa, where you need to have a cultural sensitivity and awareness of the dynamics that shape our society.

What we had to realise – and this message gets delivered through poor and inconsistent performances – is that, if you’re not intentional about living your core values day in and day out, those cultural pillars start to erode, and the risk of implosion becomes real.

Sustaining a culture requires maintenance if the fine line between strength and fragility is to be navigated successfully.

Initially, it is not comfortable to be confronted with criticism … your ego often doesn’t want to accept it. Different people deal with it in various ways. Some can immediately absorb and digest the information in a useful and constructive way. Others are more defensive, but the message does hit home eventually. They may carry that information around for a while before they are able to internalise it.

The key thing to realise is that culture is always evolving but, fundamentally, the team’s identity – its why – and values should remain firm.

My role was to ensure that whoever entered our environment felt valued and respected, and had a true sense of belonging. This was something we could control.

Knowing that your captain has your back helps to instil the confidence that comes from knowing you have been selected for your skills and character, and not because of the colour of your skin or for window dressing.

When I subsequently discussed the public response with Siya Kolisi, he explained that a person of colour can easily interpret ‘I don’t see colour’ as ‘You don’t see my pain’. To see someone’s colour is to acknowledge the history and pain that come with being a person of colour in South Africa.

When you prioritise and live those soft skills, they also enhance the development of hard skills: the physical, technical and tactical. In my opinion, the Proteas are at their best when soft cultural skills drive hard skills. The team needs both.

There are going to be periods when your hard skills are not up to scratch. A healthy culture keeps a team from imploding during those challenging periods, but only if you really embrace and live your values, and not pay lip service to them.

Owen Eastwood often said that our most powerful form of motivation was a collective, rather than a personal cause: ‘A cause fuelled by our sense of belonging.’

This experience taught me that I had to prioritise my mental preparation and well-being in the same way that I valued technical and precision training.

By intentionally going out of my way to create a sense of belonging for other players, I felt more at home in the team myself. Leading people was what really made me tick, and that helped me tick the scoreboard over as well. My personal cause made sense and had meaning because it was firmly rooted in the team’s collective cause. My sphere of impact transcended what I was able to do with the bat or as a fielder, and I immediately fell in love with that responsibility.

We don’t back down, and we don’t lie down. South African national sports teams respond well to that sort of leadership, and it was a role and responsibility that I felt fitted me like a glove and that allowed me to access the better parts of myself.

By this stage, my definition of character had evolved from just being a show of grit and ‘mental toughness’ while playing. It was about principles and conviction, and about the values I had committed myself to as a person back in 2013 and as the team had done very recently. It wasn’t about mental toughness in the brute sense of the word, but about the mental and spiritual awareness to know my true self deeply and authentically in moments of strife.

I had a desire to be in that cauldron as well. To me, leadership has never been about liking the control that comes with a position of authority. I loved being the guy who could lead the team in a direction. The opportunity to improve on existing systems and to lead a team towards a collective goal just resonates with me. Leading people gives me purpose and, when I assumed the full-time captaincy, it came at a time in my life where I was ready for the job.

I’m inherently process driven. To me, the focus on the process in cricket is the same as in life. You can’t always control what life throws at you, but you are in control of your process and values, and how you respond to them. Our emotions lead to thoughts. Those thoughts dictate our decisions, and our decisions determine our behaviour. By focusing on a process, we can be deliberate in living the values that lead to the types of behaviour we need to achieve the desired outcome.

Culture drives standards and underpins sustained success in a way that hard skills don’t do on their own.

In that sense, I was almost fanatical about three of our core values: honesty, ownership and challenging each other from a place of authenticity.

I realised the sun was shining on me now, and it was up to me to make the most of this responsibility.

It creates clarity and certainty, which are two of the most important factors in any player’s ability to perform.

I didn’t expect to have a perfect captaincy but I undertook to be open to learning and listening, and to be authentic and true to myself. In leadership, the real you reveals itself in time to your team, and you have to ask yourself whether you will be comfortable when that happens. When talk meets actions, especially during stressful times, consistency in behaviour is critical to leading a team successfully.

True relevance is measured by the distance between what you say and what you do. If your actions fail to line up with your words, you lose credibility as a leader.

When you’re being authentic, you’ll also have an awareness of your own personal shortcomings. In that sense, as much as I had wanted the captaincy, leadership was never going to be about me having absolute control. In fact, true leadership is in large part the art of releasing the urge to control. This wa...

This doesn’t mean that there weren’t certain decisions that were mine and mine alone to make. Captaincy can be lonely at times, and some of the most difficult actions and decisions are taken outside of the team setting, to avoid burdening the players with every distra...

As a team – as individual players and as a captain – we were at our strongest and healthiest when everyone in the team had clarity on what their role in the side was, when they knew what they were taking ownership of. Our values served as our gu...

He had a saying, ‘Everybody needs love’, which stuck with me throughout my captaincy and to this day.

For exactly those reasons, the coach and captain have to be switched on to how players might be feeling. You need to be able to detect when players need love, and then give it to them. Generally, players won’t ask for support, but you must still be able to provide it.

It’s healthy for him and the team to share in that joy; it should never be ignored.

The great challenge to leadership is also giving love to people who might not be ‘deserving’ of your love, in the sense that they are not performing well, or they’re not your kind of person or someone who moves in your circles.

When I became captain, I had to undergo a change myself. I couldn’t just spend my time with people who looked like me and talked like me, or who had the same interests as me.

Leaders set the tone for the behaviours and values they want the team to embrace.

By stating that people need love, he acknowledged the deep human need to feel a sense of belonging in an environment that embraces you for who you are and for what you can become.

Love, in the sense that he meant it, was an enabler of performance. He understood ubuntu in the way Archbishop Desmond Tutu described it: ‘Most of what we are depends on where we belong.’

Unhealthy pressure – such as the belief that acceptance only comes through performance – is not conducive to performing at a high level.

Our culture was about caring for people, and putting the time and energy into sustaining that. It was all about investing in your teammates and, as a captain, I wanted the players to know that I cared about them.

My leadership style was based on being honest, principled, relational and vulnerable. The relational approach, however, did not mean saying what I thought people wanted to hear. It was about saying what needed to be said, but to have those words come from a place of sincere caring for the other person. As a captain, at various times you have to be the friend, the confidant and the shoulder to cry on. But you also have to be the guy who ruffles feathers. Understanding how and when to do so isn’t always easy, because the approach differs from player to player. But your why for doing it has to be constant.

But you also have to be the guy who ruffles feathers. Understanding how and when to do so isn’t always easy, because the approach differs from player to player. ...

We really needed to set time aside for meaningful conversations with players who were going through a difficult time, regardless of whether they were feeling despondent because of cricket or some other reason.