Hard Yards in Leadership

20. John Buchanan: From humble beginnings to coach of the Australian Cricket Team

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Episode notes

We often compare leading a workplace to coaching a sports team because there are so many similarities to be drawn. So many in fact that for this episode we are picking the brain of a truly great Australian sports coach for his leadership wisdom.

John Buchanan is renowned for his remarkable success as an international sports coach for the Australian men’s cricket team

Now, he utilises his extensive experience to transform deep-seated understandings of top-tier sports performance into triumphant strategies and actions within the corporate sphere.

In this episode John shares:

  • His story from childhood to coach
  • The first steps he took to becoming a coach
  • How he handled imposter syndrome
  • How he got help by being vulnerable
  • Why trying to instigate change too quickly caused him to lose his job
  • The way he handled coming in to coach the Australian team
  • What happened when his negative report on the team was leaked to a team manager
  • How things got a lot better after he got his own support around him
  • What happened when he was close to players who had to be dropped or required discipline
  • The 3 questions he had to ask himself to make sure he wanted to keep doing the job

Key Quotes

“Leadership isn’t easy, you’re not there to be popular with everybody.”

“You've got to find ways your experiments are given the best chance of success or if they miss then do they miss because it’s the wrong thing or do they miss because you presented it the wrong way?”

 

If you want to find out more about John

You can follow John on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmbuchanan/?originalSubdomain=au

Or find out more about his business coaching and guest speaking: https://www.buchanancoaching.com

If you want to find out more about what Wayne does, check out his business via the website:

http://engage4performance.com/

Or you can follow him on socials:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wayne-reuben-engage4performance/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.