LEADERSHIP
THE ALL BLACKS HAVE HAD MANY STRONG LEADERS IN THEIR RANKS SINCE THEY FIRST PLAYED A TEST IN 1903. BUT STRONG DECISION-MAKING WAS A SKILL THEY LOST IN THE TRANSITION TO PROFESSIONALISM, ONLY TO SPECTACULARLY REBUILD IT.
Not only have the All Blacks had a handful of great captains over the years, they now have a revolutionary system of leadership.
We saw the sense of nationalism the Springboks had that really galvanised them and we didn’t feel that we had. It was a combination of getting that leadership right and us understanding ourselves as New Zealanders.’ DARREN SHAND
For much of the amateur era the All Blacks seemed to be able to stock their ranks with natural leaders. It wasn’t a deliberate strategy as such.
It just seemed to happen that way, perhaps because New Zealand was a developing, predominantly agricultural country where hard work, resourcefulness and resilience were built into every day life.
The pioneering spirit was in-built into the All Blacks and with it, they had men who could problem solve, take on responsibility to fix things and understand the need to work collectively.
Throughout the 90-plus years of amateurism, the All Blacks were renowned for having strong leaders: good captains who could read the game well, adapt and innovate as needs required.
Pick a handful of the best leaders over the period and many would make the world’s all time best list. Think Wilson Whineray, Brian Lochore, Graham Mourie, Ian Kirkpatrick and Sean Fitzpatrick. All of them were high calibre men, with leaderships gifts.
That strength of character was a huge part of the All Blacks’ success for a long time. Good leadership was all part of the All Blacks package, but it was lost a few years into the professional age.
The All Blacks, somehow, misplaced their leadership mojo. That much became apparent at various World Cups when the team, under pressure, couldn’t find the answers they needed.
It became a perennial sore point – the inability to make good decisions under pressure and for the team to stay connected with one another. The commanding figures of old weren’t coming through the ranks any more.
The natural leadership production line had dried up. And in a double whammy, the game had evolved to the extent that teams needed strong characters across the field and could no longer rely on just the captain to guide them.
By 2004, the extent of the leadership problems became clear to the All Blacks coaches. Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith had taken over at the beginning of the year and they were alarmed at what they discovered.
They felt that too much on-field responsibility was left in the hands of captain Tana Umaga and that the other 14 players didn’t really feel they had much to offer in the leadership department. Worse, they didn’t feel that it was their responsibility to have any input – that there was no expectation for them to contribute.
What also troubled the coaches was that for all the good they encountered within the All Blacks and in New Zealand rugby generally, there was a dictatorial model of leadership in most teams.
Mostly what happened was that the coaches would run everything during the week. They would determine the gameplan, the selections and take the players through training. The coaches would drive every aspect of team life and then come Saturday, the players would run out to the field, told to make all the decisions.
It wasn’t smart. If the players were going to be driving the team on match day, they surely had to be doing it more during the preparation phase as well, shouldn’t they?
This was effectively the conclusion Henry and his team reached in October 2004 and they knew they had to change. The players had to be empowered to take on more responsibility and get used to being decision makers all week. Otherwise they were being set up to fail.
I can remember my first day as an All Black. Keven Mealamu came in and sat next to me at lunch and said, “I don’t want you to feel like this team is a burden, I just want you to express yourself and be yourself.”’ AARON SMITH
So Henry, the management team and a group of senior players met in Wellington and agreed they were going to rip everything up and start with a new system of leadership.
The players would have more input. They would be asked to contribute to the tactical approach. They would be tasked with analysing opponents and having some say in how the team should approach individual tests.
They would also be given responsibility to drive their own standards off the field. The concept was radical and it was smart.
All Blacks manager Darren Shand said: “The initial driver [for the leadership group] was looking at teams prior to our tenure and seeing poor decisions being made under pressure and people not being able to react under pressure.
“Probably in our first campaign we didn’t really see any shift in that area. It really came home to roost in that test in Johannesburg [2004] which we lost. We saw the sense of nationalism the Springboks had that really galvanised them and we didn’t feel that we had. It was a combination of getting that leadership right and us understanding ourselves as New Zealanders.”
From the end of 2004, the All Blacks became a different team to be part of. They were working, unlike any other international team, in a collaborative approach between players and coaches.
What also changed was the attitudes of senior players towards new men in the team. The old days of tough love were kicked out. It was agreed that giving new men the cold shoulder and making them find their feet without much help was not conducive to better performances.
Instead, new men were embraced and mentored by senior players and made to feel welcome. Lines of communication were more open.
The team’s mental skills coach Gilbert Enoka was a big driver in the change and he revealed what the team were trying to achieve in the early days. “There are three different cultures that we want to diminish,” he said.
“The culture of silence – we want an environment that when players are feeling unsure or situational stress, they actually speak up. The culture of secrecy where players appear to listen to things, nod their heads but haven’t really taken it in or don’t want to take it in. That drives a lot of behaviour underground. And the culture of me – we want the team to come first.”
For the team to come first and for the culture of silence to be eradicated, it was made easier for new players to understand expectations and their obligations. They were made to feel wanted and in return, they were expected to make a contribution.
“I can remember my first day as an All Black,” Aaron Smith says. “Keven Mealamu came in and sat next to me at lunch and said, ‘I don’t want you to feel like this team is a burden, I just want you to express yourself and be yourself.’ I still remember that.
“I also remember I had a more lighthearted incident when I had to see him when I was on music and I wasn’t getting it right and I was called to the back. And he gave me the look... he’s all smiles and cuddly and then he gave me the death look and I was... ‘wow, I’ll sort the music Kevy’.”
The other side of that same equation was that senior players also took on responsibility for discipline. If players stepped out of line, they had to report to their peers who would then decide what to do with them.
It was a powerful tool for ensuring standards were met and behaviour in line with expectation.
That system forced a rise in personal standards. The younger players would come in and firstly see the example set by senior players. Those same older players would also explain what everyone had to do. Everything was clear, transparent and obvious and so if someone stepped out of line, they would report to teammates.
Keven Mealamu, one of the toughest and longest serving All Blacks, was put in charge of discipline and having never put a foot wrong in his career, it was a difficult experience for players having to say sorry to him for any matters of ill-discipline.
“I just think it’s so much more powerful when it’s coming from the players,” Mealamu said about peer discipline. “It carries a lot of weight when it’s coming from the coaches, but I believe it’s about 10-fold when it’s coming from the guys you play right next to. You have let down the guys who trust you.
“It’s a funny situation because most of the time you are laughing with the guys – cracking up. We work hard together and there are a lot fun times so if it ever gets to the awkward moment when it’s like that... you feel for them. You know if you were in that situation the last thing you wanted to do was let your mates down. It’s something you wouldn’t want to do.”
What effectively happened between 2004 and 2011 was that the All Blacks became a better directed, mentally stronger team.
They moved away from the culture of me, culture of silence and culture of secrets. In practice that meant everyone learned the art of putting the team first and how far that philosophy had to extend.
At the core of that was a need for every player to be personally responsible for their preparation. It was down to each individual to make sure they followed their conditioning programme; that they ate
What they [All Blacks] have been able to do is breed that into their future. If I am able to add so, [they have] been able to get that into their team so that every player that comes in, you can really see it in their eyes.’ MICHAEL CHEIKA
well, recovered appropriately and gave themselves the best chance of playing at their best.
It also meant that the loneliness of the captaincy was removed. No longer was the skipper out on his own, having to make all the decisions himself. A wider leadership group took on responsibility to feed into the mix what they were seeing on the field.
There were plenty of voices being heard throughout a test and a handful of players knew they had an obligation to lead either by example or by offering input into the strategies the team were employing.
The change to a player-led model allowed the All Blacks to become better decision makers on the field. The players led the team through the week and it became a natural process for that to be extended to match day.
How much better led the All Blacks were became apparent in performances and results. They started to win tight games more often. They became better at clawing their way back into games if an opponent started to get away from them. No one hid when they were under pressure.
Senior players kept talking calmly and sensibly and everyone could understand that they had to think about nothing more than doing the next task.
As good as they were tactically and technically, what began to differentiate the All Blacks from everyone else was their ability to work through problems, find solutions and graft their way to victory on the back of doing the right thing at the right time.
Winning became a habit and it was because the leaders became adept at holding the team together. Few teams could match them for resolve, discipline and focus and even their fiercest rival, Wallaby coach Michael Cheika, paid them grudging respect in 2016. He talked then of his aspiration to make the Wallabies more like the All Blacks.
“We are trying to move forward both in our game and in our attitudes as well,” he said. “Building the right style of play and being competitive on any given day.
“When the game is against you, when you are running up the hill, that is almost when you enjoy it a bit more as a footballer or being involved in the game. How to be more resilient, that is something we really want to build into our game... more mental toughness. I don’t think we have been brilliant at that in the past and we have been working really hard on that for last 18 months now. We want to continue to build that mental toughness so that when a new player comes into the squad he really feels that.
“What they [All Blacks] have been able to do is breed that into their future. If I am able to add so, [they have] been able to get that into their team so that every player that comes in, you can really see it in their eyes.”