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Imagine you have moved house as part of your commitment to revitalise a team which had 3:28 record last season. Soccer is by far and away the most popular local sport and you are running the country’s only professional soccer league outfit. You have also persuaded your young coaching team to rent or buy locally. Before and as you arrive, there are problems over recruitment and mounting financial troubles. The backer pulls out and then, it is decided to move the club four hours up the road.
All your best-laid plans are in tatters and you have no kit, no proper training facility and seemingly no hope. Yet Brian Noble managed to turn round just this situation. The sport was rugby, and his side, the Crusaders, who play in Wales, would go on to win 48% of their games and reach the Super League play-offs in 2010. It was not the first time he had faced adversity and the lessons he had brought with him served him well.
This is one of the many first hand experiences that Noble draws to illustrate how coaches face challenges in their careers, and what they can do to overcome them. Because of his success at both winning or saving teams, any sports coach who wishes to advance their own career should be studying this book.
Some of you might be familiar with his TV punditry on the BBC at top rugby league games. As a former GB coach, he brings a wealth of tactical experience to the audience. Well versed in dealing with the media, he knows not to speak down to his audience or baffle them with jargon. He does not hide his strong views. This makes him a good analyst to watch and listen to.
However, this is not a book about rugby league tactics. Noble, though proud and loyal to league, is not afraid to draw from all sports and walks of life. He has an excellent group of contributors to finish each chapter. Cross-code players like Jason Robinson and Jonathan Davies, former Ashes winning England cricket captain, Michael Vaughan, business leaders like Dave Whelan and Sir Ken Morrison and even Hollywood star (and former boxer) Mickey Rourke.
Refreshingly, these contributors add their experiences to the bolster the arguments and conclusions, not to glad hand Noble. Each has been successful and yet each has faced problems and hardship that they have overcome. Rugby dual code legend, Jonathan Davies, lost his father at 14, was out of the game with injury for 18 months at 19, and lost his wife when she was 34. He talks about the lows of internal and external situations. His conclusion is that those who work the hardest come out on the other side of adversity.
And Noble is not going to surprise us too often with what works: Hard work, belief, energy and building the right team around you. The subtly lies in what work you do, when and how. To action this, the book neatly split into eight headings: Leadership, Motivation, Preparation, Values, Adversity, Conflict & Criticism, Structure, Success & Winning.
Within in each chapter, he sets out concisely how to improve or deal with coaching challenges. He then illustrates them with examples from his own experiences. In addition, he draws on his own reading. It is not surprising to see that he comes back to Jim Collins Good to Great text. Collins’ extensive research of the best businesses showed that among other things, the leaders were not flashy and they worked hard at their core business. Noble goes onto use Collins’ metaphor of a bus. A good business is like a bus. It is simple: somebody has to be the driver, some has to plan its direction and route, and some have to be the passengers and so on. When the direction of the bus is known and everyone is in his or her place, then the bus can drive on at full speed. To be a successful team everyone has got to want to be on that bus.
Noble knew certain players could disrupt the team. He would either work with them, redefining their roles or he would weed out what he says (former England rugby union coach) Clive Woodward called “energy sappers”. He has tells us of a number of examples where he used influential players to lead the team in the direction he wanted. Often, in difficult times, they were ones who gave the team the impetus they needed. Noble understands the value of trust, which we can also call empowerment.
When talking about motivation, he says that pre-match, half-time or full time speeches are overrated. He personally cannot remember any as a player, and only a few as a coach. A couple stick in his mind. One was just before a crucial Tri Nations match against Australia. In the high tension of the changing room before the game, as he looked at the strain on the players’ faces, he tried to outline three crucial points. In the silence that surrounded him he said: “One, we must control the rucks” to nods of approval. “Two, our little things have to be better than theirs”. As he felt the heat rising, he then said: “Three”, a slight pause, “Three”, he said again. Then nothing, because he completely forgotten what he was going to say. After a few moments of desperation he said “and I’ve forgotten what the third point is!” The changing room collapsed into hoots of laughter for five minutes. And, of course, with the tension gone, the players went out to win a famous victory.
Stories like this go alongside his tales of the battles up and down the management chain. You don’t just have to make sure the players are happy, you have to look after your employers. Everyone is answerable to someone. Rugby league is a tough environment on and off the field. The fact that Noble was able to see through longer term contracts shows he invested time in persuading his superiors that they would see a payoff. He came into relegation threatened Wigan Warriors and made them competitive again. Previously he had made Bradford Bulls one of the most successful teams of the early 2000s.
He wasn’t always blessed with the biggest budgets or the best players. So we can easily align our own situations to him. As coaches, of rugby, of soccer, or any other sport, we can learn how he set out his seasons with clear messages on what was going to happen and, crucially, why? He knows that the players need to know why they are working towards the goals he is giving them. That means they are more likely to listen, keep going when it is tough, enjoy the rewards for what they are when they do come.
Underlying much of what he says is that he knows that success comes from lots of small improvements. When you are losing, you have to know where you are going in the long run. But in the short run, you need to keep coming back to the micro aspects of the game. He knew what it would take to get back winning again if the results were not coming his way.
He changed his success measurements, “downsizing” as he called it, so progress was being made. He could assure players because they could see their successes growing week by week, even if their tangibles of wins and league points were not yet. Noble rates his best season as a coach and a leader when he didn’t win any silverware (and this was a coach who won nine cups at Bradford, including three World Club Championships).
There are two reasons why this book should be within an arm’s reach of the your desk. First, it is a book you can easily dip in and dip out of. The summaries at the end of each chapter are timely reminders of how you should conduct yourself. It is well worth reading one of these before you go out onto the training park later today or before a sticky meeting with a player. The final couple of chapters also give you a road map for success. Some great tick lists on player boundaries, planning and management techniques.
The second reason must be to inspire you to fulfill your ambitions as a coach. We all dream of doing a great job and winning every game. The reality can be nothing like that, and every coach faces lows. Because Noble has such humility, he can allow his enthusiasm and sometimes sheer bloody-mindedness to create successful teams, whether as cup winners, or survivors. That to me is the key. We may not always have a positive win:loss ratio, but as he quotes Jason Robinson: “The best person to judge your success is you, only you know if you could have given more”. Noble has built and maintained teams which have had integrity. His own summary would be what he says several times in the book, “A bad person cannot make a good rugby league player”.
Building Winning Teams: Leadership Tips from the Changing Room to the Board Room, Brian Noble.
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