What Culture Drives Your Small Business?
How Chris Fagan rebuilt the Brisbane Lions AFL Club so it's ready for success
I was at a Sportsmen's Luncheon last week where Chris Fagan, coach of the Brisbane Lions AFL Club, shared his journey to becoming a senior AFL Coach.
Being a Hawthorn member, I knew some of this but it was great to hear him explain his coaching, teaching and management journey including why he took up the coaching job when he was headhunted by the Brisbane Lions.
I also liked how Chris compared sports coaching to his previous occupation as a primary school teacher. You get new kids/recruits every year and your job is to mould them and make them better in one year.
Because that's how I view my role as a business coach – to ensure I leave the owner, team and small business in a better place than when I first started working with them.
Now for those of you who don't know or don't follow AFL, Chris joined the Lions at a time of great unrest in the club. It hadn't achieved success in a very long time, they'd sacked two coaches who were favourite premiership players (Michael Voss and Justin Leppitsch) and more players were wanting to leave the club than stay.
As I listened to these challenges, I was thrilled to hear Chris' coaching and people management philosophy is similar to my own so here's how he rebuilt the Club's culture from the ground up.
COACHING IS ALL ABOUT MANAGING PEOPLE
Chris' development and assistant coaching experience was lengthy with stints at the Melbourne and Hawthorn AFL Clubs.
But as his role by 2012 had moved him into Hawthorn's Head of Coaching and Development (players and coaches) which continued through the 3 peat premiership years until 2016, Chris had felt his dream of being an AFL senior coach was gone.
Until he received an unexpected call from Greg Swann, Brisbane Lions CEO who asked him this key question:
Are you a Coach or a Footy Manager?
Great question, hey? One many small business owners need to also think about to ensure they're working in their Sweet Spot – doing the work they love to do 80% of every single day.
And it made Chris really think, at 54 years old, what did he really want to do. He was a bit fearful so he read the book
: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers which gave him the confidence to take on the role.
Chris also acknowledged it was a courageous choice by the club – to take on someone who hadn't played the game nor been a senior AFL coach. But as outlined in this article from
The Age, his appointment has started other clubs re-thinking how they recruit for their next coach.
But Chris also knew his coaching and people management experience, along with the lessons and success from Hawthorn's premiership years, gave him a great toolbox to draw upon.
Now you can have what you believe is the 'best' business or sporting club, but if your organisational
culture is negative, toxic, selfish and contains people who've 'checked out' or are no longer the right fit; you'll never achieve the business or sporting success you aspire to and desire.
This is the environment Chris Fagan walked into so his first job was to make the environment safe for both players and employees. There was too much looking out for one's self so he had to rebuild the relationships and trust.
3 Questions Chris Fagan Asked Everyone At The Brisbane Lions
Here's the 3 questions Chris Fagan asked everyone connected with the Club – players and staff alike – so he could get an understanding of the true culture and environment inside the four walls.
1. What's good about being part of the Brisbane Lions Club?
2. What's not good about being part of the Brisbane Lions Club?
3. If you were the Coach, what would you do?
This process took three weeks of simply listening to the answers, absorbing and understanding their perspective.
Chris took the time to talk to everyone to ensure he understood where they were coming from so he could then come up with strategies which showed he'd listened and they had a voice again.
Unlike many people in new leadership roles, he didn't come in, guns a-blazing, with all the answers and impose a new way of doing things. He initially just listened which is what everyone new to a role or organisation should do. Don't impose your 'I know best' ideas without first taking your time to ask great questions and then listen to the answers. As I always say Questions Give You Information.
Chris also told everyone about himself – his truth and values – so they knew what he stood for and how he would live up to what he said he'd do. This was important because when he followed through on this, it helped to build much needed trust.
The final thing he did was engage the company Leading Teams who work with a lot of sporting clubs, to establish the Brisbane Lion's new purpose and trademarks the Club and everyone involved would stand for. Some of these trademarks included re-igniting the passion, spirit and love for the Club by once again having pride in wearing the Lions jumper.
Chris strongly believes coaching is primarily about people management, not just the tactics and strategy.
The same applies to running a small business.
You can have the best product/service in the world, but if your team is unhappy, not working well together and don't feel supported and listened to, then you're doomed to fail.
Whilst Chris took 3 weeks to talk to every single person in the Club, he revealed it took 2 years of building rapport and relationships to truly gain the trust needed for success.
One of his key mantras which continues to build the Club's culture is simply this:
What did we learn today and how do we get better?
Now these 3 questions and Chris' key mantra may seem very simplistic and possibly even irrelevant but I know from experience, they're the best way to gain rapport with disengaged, disgruntled, frustrated and overwhelmed staff.
When I'm brought in to reset teams, I start by saying as hard as it is, if they can honestly share with me the Good, the Bad and the Ugly about what's really happening in the business; then that's the best way I can help the owner, the team and the business get back on track and successfully grow.
I ask Chris' third question through these Magic Wand questions:
If you were the owner with a Magic Wand and I could fix or help...
- one thing to make your job easier, what would that be?
- one thing to help the team work together better, what would that be?
- one thing to help the owner become a better leader, what would that be?
- one thing to make the business more profitable, what would that be?
Once I have this buy in and honest answers from staff, I can then devise simple solutions to help the owner, individual staff member, team and business.
And here's my final thought:
Are you the Coach of your small business?
When did you last ask questions like this of yourself and your team?
Do you take the time to build relationships with each of your team members, or do you provide them with a 10 minute tour and that's their induction?
Do you truly know the culture of your business or do you need someone to come in and find out what's really happening?
Remember: Just because things look OK on the surface doesn't always mean that is true. And if the workplace isn't good, then trust me, staff are more likely to tell an outsider the real issues than tell you.
Cheers
Tamara
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