All Team Members Should Be Leaders

British Rugby team England, has enlisted the help of the Royal Marines in Dorset to develop the leadership necessary to create a winning team. Brian Ashton, the head coach is making use of outside consultants too, to bring this team together.

The Times Online reported today that head coach Brian Ashton said “he had been surprised by some of the players in the 45-strong squad whose leadership ability has shone through over the past ten days. He suggested that this was, in part, because they had not previously been encouraged to operate as leaders, which seems an implicit criticism of the previous coaching regime. ‘It’s not about calling lineouts and running back moves,’ Ashton said. ‘It’s the ability to decide what to do when things are going wrong and make them go right.’

It points to the fact that every member of a team needs to operate as a leader, whether they are the point leader or not. An effective team leader will be make sure that all aspects of a task are being covered and that they are coordinating without being dictatorial. This requires a lot of give and take. Additionally it is important that all members of a team know what everyone else is doing so that they can adjust and align themselves to the problems that any other team member may be facing.

The article continues. “’You need to pull players together, put them in a hostile and uncomfortable environment where they must work together to be successful, and they have done that.’ Some of the exercises designed by the Marines involved sensory deprivation, testing the ability to make decisions in extremes of tiredness….’This is the first time this group of players has been fit and available and the process of bonding as a group has been accelerated,’” Ashton said.