Not a connoisseur of rugby, my quest and passion lies in leadership, specifically leadership in business. Unpacking the qualities of leadership and putting them into a 'recipe' for others to replicate and refine to their circumstances seems to me like a worthwhile pursuit. Why would we want to re-invent the entire 'recipe' if we could use the expert's version and just add our unique personalized style, or personalize it to a particular team, project or organization? We stand on the shoulders of giants. We can start where others have been and then add new value propositions for ourselves and our organizations provided we can determine the behavioural components of management and leadership.  

Over the last 6 months of the formation of the champion Springbok team I have watched the growth and solidification of an exciting 3 Level structure of management to leadership processes. I have no doubt the seeds have been germinating for four years but a transparent and deliberate process shaping itself before our eyes over the last half year, was Jake White's leadership skills and qualities, John Smit's different role determined leadership qualities, and the team as an entity with both self-Leadership and interlocking leadership with strategy driven qualities. Exciting as is the winning result, more valuable was watching the leadership process evolve, settle down and effervesce to way beyond the game of rugby. We have a group of human beings who have left a mark on one another and on the world out there. What a legacy to leave behind! If that is leadership, what's the recipe? If that is leadership is it different from big business leadership? I will avoid the potholes of National unity leadership. Let me offer an over simplified definition of the two roles which, at best, merge with sensitivity, by context.

Management is about control. It's about avoiding problems, forcing solutions, controlling processes, technological processes, information processes and quality decision making. It's an Active role. It deals with concrete down to earth details of things, events, issues and procedures. It is more about delivery, getting the job done than about empowering others. It's a case of "the buck stops here" so while managers might use external impact for analysis, they rely on the product of performance rather than trusting the performer as external feedback. The overall focus is on the risks, difficulty and what could go wrong. Management is immediate to medium term, and for the most part, urgent.

Leadership is about people. It's being enthusiastic about people performing in some way. It's about change management. Top leadership is about leading people in the way they want to be lead, motivating them in a way they want to be motivated, getting results by getting them on your side, by meeting them 'where they're at', and still getting the job done, only better. In a sense its processing people (relating), not the product of their performance. Leadership is about vision, seeing the big picture, the systems and patterns and having options. Leaders inspire, trust the opinion and input of others as the organization moves towards its goals. If the primary interest is not people, then leading TEAMS will always be problematic. Leadership pays attention to long term plans. It's a reflective process that ends in action.

Management is the mix of qualities (ThinkDo-Gears) and Leadership is the different mix of qualities (ThinkDo-Gears). So, it's quite a journey we expect our top personnel to walk, in sport or corporate arena. Left to luck, success is random.  How can we find a recipe and engage a balance and a flow of competencies from one set of behaviours to the other, and increase the chance of success simultaneously? Jake did.
 
What had to be present within the Bok phenomenon for us to call this "management to leadership"? Primarily, Jake's qualities of vision, passion, resilience and commitment to lead a 4 year process with many variables beyond his control. Below him we have John's bridge building between Jake and the team members. This is the man who had to catch the vision, express the objective and find relationship skills to drive the collective energy to execute and deliver results. Finally we have the Team as an entity who had to take on beliefs of possibility and timing then actualize self-leadership, confidence in competency, trust in their shared role buddies while developing technical skills plus a wholesome sense of esteem, unity and humility. My perception of the evidence of the roll out of Jake White's leadership qualities is mostly from the media and observation so please allow for inaccuracies especially where I quote Jake. Only a full modelling process would get to fine accurate nuances.
Technical and Strategic knowledge - How important is it to have the nuts and bolts?
Fact is, it's very important but it's an unreal expectation that every coach (or manager/leader) be 100% skilled in the technology side of things let alone maintain results in a rapidly changing world and changing stakeholders.
 
When Jake got the Bok job he was widely criticized for not having great technical expertise, but that would depend on whom we compare him with and the criteria for judgment. Let's say he had less than some of the previous national coaches. My contention is that he more than made up by using his extraordinary leadership qualities which we will unpack here.

Jake had the vision, and he had the open mindedness to gather info on whatever it takes over and above standard technique and strategy, to make the dream happen. His foresight, innovation and organizational skills assembled a variety of in-depth components to get a winning result and sustainability of purpose that he recognized had to move away from traditional SA idiom of rugby and towards global professionalism. These are the same skills that made him project immediately after winning that, given what is happening across the world, SA is well situated to maintain our lead for the next 4 years. What he didn't say was that it would require the same leadership qualities.   

No corporate leader can know all the technical side of things in our dynamic info driven, unpredictable, competitive, world of global business. We need to know enough about standard and modern management skills, and we also need the 'over and above' ability to keep our eye on the ball (and the court), anticipate future trends, be open to what others know that we don't, and be flexible enough to change direction before competitors and take the risk of being wrong. Corporate leaders have to harness their version of specialist advisors, scrumming coaches, lineout coaches, vision coaches etc but the flair for putting all that together and holding the crucible is the test of leadership.

And the essence of that flair lies in people skills.  Sheer technical know-how makes for great management skills but if the next step is leadership we need to know,\ (or learn how), to develop trust, alignment, bonding, a sense of belonging and shared purpose that transcends ordinary results, intolerance and internal competitiveness. That's a tall order. Great players don't necessarily make great coaches. Great managers don't necessarily make great leaders. The difference is not ground floor tech skills but higher level thinking skills called TD-Gears. Lets unpack the components Jake organized and inspired.

Visionary ability to see Patterns and Anticipate Trends
Jake watched videos. He was criticized for being hooked on videos. Whether he gathered info from videos or speaking to people who had previous experience, or whether it was his ability to think in concepts, I don’t know. What is important is that he read the direction the game was taking - back to the 90s, to set pieces and breakdowns. He insisted on the height, build, weight and power, fitness that supported his convictions. He bothered to get personally involved, "Percy at 30 is the fittest man I know". Where did that come from but Jake's perceptual acuity.

What can corporate managers and leaders take out of this? The equivalent would be doing your homework, becoming informed and involved, observing, curious, anticipating trends that haven't happened yet.  

Knowing the value of add-on expertise
Jake's honesty in not knowing it all, involving external expertise and his willingness to give credit to others are inspirational qualities. When conditions are set for spending time together, leading from the front rubs off fast and collectively. It’s a mind-read but the presence (humility), displayed by all members of the team (that so impressed England) had its source in Jake's attitude to continual development and learning. Doing the best is not being the best or finished product. The right expert is also the ethical expert. Jake will have done his homework on that. Certainly we saw the result in Eddie's reciprocal downplaying of his input. We also heard that in Sherylle's ability to move from the previous winners to the SA team, "I'm a professional".

I'm told that Matfield studies his lineout opponent's patterns in detail from video recordings to formulate the best counter attack. Those are high level thinking skills (Gears), loaded with fine distinctions and smart decisions. That's a far cry from brute force and ignorance! I'd love to ask him if his increasingly vocal and spatial prompts were coded instructions or smoke screen for the opposition.  Either way, he consciously read their game and made it his business to outsmart the opposition.

Managers and Leaders are well situated to read the game. Boardroom or playing field, technology is with us and most 'players' use it. The point is how? Do we use just the factual benefits? Do we use if for getting an exceptional edge in respect of the people who will work with the facts and execute goals?  Managers and Leaders can go all the way with the outputs of Identity Compass, (the study of ThinkDo-Gears). Identity Compass will read people's specific performance responses and give you a personalized motivation and values menu which enables you to 'juice up' that person's, or the team's, responses or adapt it to specific goal.
Winning is a process, not an item and we need all the help we can get. INSAfrica give you recipes, which is faster and more effective than one-size-fits-all people management.

Inspiration as an ongoing motivator: Its one thing being inspirational just because of whom you are. It is quite another to recognize what others need and be able to lay that on. Jake gave each player a hand written note on the eve of the final in France. Conceptual thinking skills (a Gear) enabled him to know what individual spark would light a fire. Bringing the concept down into personalized details and acting on it (another Gear) was leadership. Of his talk at half time in the final he says "I knew they needed to hear me speak and they needed me to speak calmly". There is a cocktail mix of Gears in that observation and that is leadership. John's talk on the field in the semi-final was a case of 'they need to hear my voice and they need to hear it as a do or die command', followed by a telling analogy of NZ and Aussie failure – "I'm not having that here", with a few expletives! That's leadership.

Examples of leadership for the Team as a unit, were many and repetitive. Making a ceremony of giving out jerseys, using special people to make the jersey special was anchoring in high level experience, the will,  perseverance, the spirit of 'possibility' and 'together we can do more than any one of us apart' and 'the time is now'. Above all, was the leadership skill of showing trust. Jake believed in them.

What are the opportunities for inspirational leadership in the workplace? Too often I hear managers and leaders say, "I don’t have time for that". Fact is, it saves time because it is becomes a fulfilling prophecy. If you take on the style and you believe in yourself and others, believe they have what it takes, even if it's not evident, then once you have set it up it has its own positive momentum you can rely on.  

Many kinds of Motivation – and knowing when to do what
Ground floor motivation is the typical, extremely important 'hype' of flag waving, anthem playing, 'noise' on a group level. For the individual it’s the right kind of socks and jocks and gestures. Jake didn't ignore those. He had some loaded items himself. He also laid a platform for high level motivation which functions as drivers.
 
Knowing the importance of sustained innovated as incremental motivation was part of his rationale for bringing in Sherylle Calder and Eddie Jones and "if Kitch Christie were around, I'd invite him too" attitude. What looks on the surface to be sheer technical expertise also works outside of awareness at the level of recharging and extending the passion. It avoids complacency and provokes passion. Jake's strong internal benchmarks did not preclude the use of global resources to keep the forward momentum. It pre-framed individuals and team unit for - "competency is a process of individual contribution and connectedness. “There's still a lot to learn” attitude. That produced players with a high level confidence about their outcome based confidence, (self-esteem). Comfortable in who they, they don't need false pretensions of arrogance, one-up-man-ship BS. "Humble" they have been called. That's Jake's leadership cascading down the levels of stakeholders. That's Jake's leadership skill of controlling the build up to when the team will peak. Anything else is a gamble, you could get lucky - but!

There is one more aspect of motivation I want to mention, and that's the direction. The most effective structure of motivation is a double propulsion system. I noticed a weighting for what we call 'Away from pain' motivation. The negative consequences of not performing were stressed. An exception to that was Jake's half time talk in the final. He said (calmly) "The cup won't be given to you. You have to pluck it away from England". That's 'Towards the gain' motivation. That's an instruction to act, to go get it. Leaders will use one, the other direction, or both depending on the context. One-size-fits-all motivation reduces the chance of success.  John, a great captain would have had to adapt motivation for individuals. Some individuals are driven only by gains and achievement, others are driven only by what they want to avoid. To quote Boris Becker "I never remember a game I won. I only remember the one I lost and I play to never repeat that". Among the Boks there will be some of each preference but Team management would have set up and anchored in the direction of the call to action, so regardless of individual preferences, the motivator will work.

In the corporate world you'd do well to play it both ways and the middle. And you'd need to keep check that the people with a strong 'Away from' motivation use it to deliver action as did Boris. It would have to produce a 'Towards' result. What can happen is that the 'Away from' drives fear and procrastination.   

Eddie had a great double pronged one you could read from either direction, "The cup is yours to lose". Being a high level motivational barb it is loaded with frames of reference, not the least of which are: 'the ball is in your court, it's not about England, certainty - not doubt'. That's leadership and how it must have engaged the brains! Leadership knows when to engage, back off, provoke.

To counteract the negative impact of pressure Jake had many tricks up his sleeve the most useful of which was openly talking about it, putting it on the table so reducing the impact and making it manageable. This is a form of reverse motivation. Not once did he trade on hype of assumption that winning would be easy. Startling to some, counter intuitive to most, he was at pains before the final to turn England into the favourites. Loading the Boks with the expectations of being the favourites, would have built up pressure and doubt. That's when mistakes occur, that’s when cohesion evaporates and focus disperses.  Both Jake and John fed the world, but by intent, the Boks, with convincers for it being the other way round. They produced believable reasons why England had the advantage. Then he fed the Boks with realistic, small chunk doable and believable actions to counter that. That’s leadership playing the motivation game. Corporate leaders can do this do but it certainly helps to have a menu for each top talent you are wanting to retain.    

Communication style that includes Listening   
Apart from great rapport generally, there appears to be a great working relationship between Jake and John whereby Jake will make his call and John, ever sensitive of the individual, will make certain things happen the best for the players. The coach's role determines the large scale principles, strategy, tactics etc, while the Captain's role like a good orchestra conductor is mindful of the detailed synchronization of the individual instruments. He it is, who has to handle it on the field and he has to set it up prior to that. I've see and heard enough to know they that they can both do both roles, They know the value of different communication for different people. Its not one size fits all. Jake and John could not have ended with such team unity had they not been able to listen, really listen and make people feel heard. When they are on song, the team will be.

Neither is a pushover. They can both say it like it is. They can hold themselves and others accountable. Loyalty must have forged a really great link between these two which would also have brought out the best in them. One secret of good leadership; it's not a one way street. Leaders are forever learning about, and from, those they lead. Openness and loyalty are hidden but profound motivators. In both arenas one would guard against favouritism and would hold in mind the outcome of the relationship.
 
One would expect from Jake a teaching, telling kind of communication style but, notwithstanding the criticism, he came across (in public) as open, honest, expecting the best, utterly professional. He kept his goal in mind and visible to all stakeholders. Everything he did was referencing his idea of what it would take to win now, not historically, not in the future, but now. To that end, he communicated cohesiveness, integrity of the roles and partnerships, combinations and the team. Where previous national coaches have kept factual secrets to themselves or pronounced only as justification, Jake gave away a lot of his ideas. Not many but the detractors, were listening. Yet prior to the world cup I noticed the media change their style from telling and fault finding to well described critical analysis, not of Jake the man but of the behaviour of rugby. I was reminded of the Charles Fortune decades of turning cricket into everyday language that 'ordinary people' could understand, enjoy and be knowledgeable about. My guess is rugby will never be as localized as it was. It was with great delight that I read in the Sowetan, day before the final, a summary of how to understand the game of rugby! And when a war cry was demanded, the 'teacher' said "the anthem is the war cry and notice the tears in their eyes".

Noticing and attending to the small details was an important quality of Jakes. He noticed the President's Mbeki's blue tie with the Springbok blazer and produced a green tie gift. Jake is high on observation skills and listens attentively, personalised details are important to him.  

In sport or corporate arena, good personalized communication geared for an outcome, aligned with the listener, is a key to leadership and it rubs off on attitudes and performance and even the greater community. Lack of the respectful loops of input-output communication is an attempt to lead by power.    

Internal benchmarks - External benchmarks and the link with Motivation
"I don’t care if people don't like me as long as they respect me" Jake is reputed to have said. At the time the journalist remarked that Jake was unusual because most people wanted to be liked. Not so. These are Gears. Neither right nor wrong, these are habits,ThinkDo-Gears that affect motivation. Sports field or Boardroom, some people will be motivated by influence, power and desire to control people and situations. They are competitive and they evaluate others according to the direct boot-licking support they get. Others are motivated by affiliation. They want to be liked, prefer a sense of belonging. They like networking, close relationships, harmony. What people think of them is extremely important. Yet others are motivated by achievement, they target goals and want to make things happen, want to be successful and perform better. They wouldn't care if people liked them or not.
 
And of course there are degrees of each. Any time we think 'everybody' is this or that, or likes this or that, we are guilty of generalizing beyond accuracy and we probably mapped across our own preferences assuming our way is the best way! This is not a useful frame of mind for managers and leaders. Denying the uniqueness of people is no way to get the best out of others.

Add the fact that some people make decisions only after conferring with external sources, opinions and people. Some, on the contrary have a strong internal sense of what is right and how decisions should go. They may do a lot of homework and info gathering, but only they, are the arbiters of their decisions. With a combination of this and an achievement orientation, the individual would not contaminate his goals with wanting to be liked. And they would probably be forthright in saying so.

The desire to be respected is more common, but the difference is that respect is typically about what we do whereas being liked is typically linked to who we are. Managers, who demand 'respect', when they really want to be liked, are always going to battle with leadership. They need to like themselves enough to not be defensive and the respect will follow. Humility is a case in point. In Jake's case I sense the respect was pretty universal. Even other sport champions (golf, swimming, tennis) came to watch.  

Integrated systemic ideas and empowering others: The example is Jake telling Francois after the final, "those 3 points from half way line may be the most NB points in your life". I'm not going into the powerful mass of meanings packaged into that statement. Recognising truth is good. Expressing that truth to the youthful player, will equip him with a lifetime of philosophy that will positively affect years of performance plus inter and intra-personal relationship making. Leadership cares about people, nurtures people, shares and expresses accordingly. Across the board, the Bok players supported each other, empowered each other. How can we replace workplace politics with trust and connectedness?

Validation, Relating, Love, Respect, whatever you prefer to call it: Jake cradling a player in his arms after the final, that's leadership. Jake and John both, gently, lifting Mandela's hands to feel the bottom of the hard won cup, that's leadership. There were so many instances of mind-sets (Gears) that demonstrate leadership. This is not rent-a-crown behaviour. This is way more than just tolerance, or even respect. This has become deep understanding and appreciation of human beings. I might even use the word "love".  Leadership is – loaded – it's driven by value and meaning, loyalty, curiosity, resilience, non-judgment, connectedness and more. It goes without saying that Managers and Leaders in the workplace have to be careful of this one but it can be done with integrity, without touching, making people feel valued. At this level diversity and racism are just words.

TEAM validation: Francois Steyn "Butch tells me I can do whatever I want and when I do, buddies are there, and when I make mistakes, my buddies are also there". How fortunate is this young man to have this kind of leadership to feed on. Leadership knows when to stick to the game plan and when to improvise. Someone needs to write a book on all the examples of leadership during this team performance.  

Lonely, isolated, visible, vulnerable, exposed at the top:
It's scary at the top. For me the metaphor is climbing Everest. The pressure is huge, the terrain unknown and unpredictable and you feel responsible for your team, organization, the whole world. You don't always get a second chance so you push beyond yourself the threshold. You do a deal with your body to go where your mind has set the course. You may not need support but it's great to have a significant other to lean on, download to, in utter confidence, someone who can be brutally honest with no agenda other than behaviour relevant to a common cause. Again it's a 'thumb suck' but I think an informed one that, in John, Jake had such a 'someone'. No questions asked, no judgment, just a good timing and a metaphorical pause, touch, engage then move on with renewed purpose. I hope that would have been so for John too. Special people deserve special bonds even in the workplace, especially when work is played out in public. Without such a bond, negative stress can become overwhelming. It is an occupational hazard of management and leadership.

Jake has an advantage of support in a non-work arena, his family and a circle of friends including Eddie. It helps. Leadership and professionalism stayed with him even as he quit. He wants to “exit with dignity”. I've no idea if it always was so. I don't particularly care. What I care about, is that none of us is too big to mess up. I care that we rise above our messes, acknowledge the emotion, link it to contexts and move on. That's leadership. Letting go, when our values are not being met, that's leadership. Walking away with integrity, that's leadership.

One thing is certain. Solutions, on the field or in the boardroom, require that we take into account the highly complex nature of human beings and their locked-in motivational thinking processes. For corporate managers and leaders who are 'naturals', you might have recognized the structure of your previously learned leadership skills. For those who have to work at leadership skills, it's no big deal. Anyone can learn these skills when you have the recipe and you know the ingredients. INSAfrica and Identity Compass can put into your hands personalized current recipes for specific performance by your valuable talent. You, and they, can choose what Gears are important enough to warrant juicing up in order to expedite goals. INSAfrica will Coach-Train-Mentoring solutions that support you. The secret is in contextualizing the Gears that are working for you or against you and repackaging to have more flexibility. You will only do that if there is value in it and the value is likely to be that you could adapt the specific mix of Gears to the specific project. That’s leadership.

Can we assume that in both sport and the corporate world, that we at the top will never make mistakes, never 'lose our cool"? On the contrary the best of us do, it's acknowledging that and recovering that is the leadership skill. Right in the middle of the world cup matches Jake pushed for a massive training session, leaving some guys injured and stressed. John's test of leadership was to see that out, holding the crucible and managing the reins. But when it was over, he confronted Jake's in private, assertively told him off for panicking and overdoing things and realistically made the call that if the team couldn't do the job after all that time together, they never would be up to it. It takes guts to do that on the sports field. It takes guts to do it in business but I believe that if we could give, and take, truth as others see it, we will change corporate politics and lack of trust. Like Jake, we'd have to validate and back off, and learn for next time.

I want to validate the Bok Coach, Captain and Team for your purely playing skills and magnificent bodies that demanded care and you gave it. I want to validate you for your extraordinary high level qualities and behaviours of leadership. I value that you demonstrated that which enabled us to unpack the components of management to leadership qualities. Go well. Spread that leadership. And you can, and you will, because you must.