TEAM WORK
Ray McLean has worked as a leadership and management consultant for the last 20 years and is the founding director and principal facilitator of Leading Teams Australia. Ray conducts team performance and leadership programs for a number of AFL, NRL and NBL Clubs and also works with a wide range of corporate, educational and community organisations. His first book, Any Given Team, was published in 2006. Ray first recognised his ability to work effectively with teams when he spent five years in the RAAF as a training and leadership officer. He was also a physical education teacher for eight years. He lives in Geelong, Victoria.
Leading Teams is the largest and most successful provider of leadership and team alignment programs in Australian sport. They specialise in the delivery of teamwork and leadership programs for elite sporting and corporate organisations, aligning teams by creating shared vision and behaviours that empower all members of the team to engage in open dialogue. Leading Teams develops leaders who model and defend the behaviours that the team identifies as non-negotiable.
For more information visit leadingteams.net.au
Praise for Ray McLeans
Performance Improvement Program
The culture at our football club is one we are all proud of and one we have worked very hard to achieve it would not have been achieved without Ray McLeans direction and guidance.
Paul Roos, AFL Premiership Coach, Sydney Swans
Its pretty confronting, but [Leading Teams] go straight to the heart of what behaviours are unacceptable. It had to be done for us to improve our performance and move on.
Tracey Heenan, Principal, St Kevins Primary School
I dont think it matters whether its a sporting organisation, a business or a charity, you still need to find a way to effectively lead people to where you want the organisation to go. Anyone can benefit from this program.
Mark Evans, General Manager, Hawthorn Football Club
There are a lot of similarities between success in sport and business The Leading Teams program challenged people and opened up previously closed communication channels.
Allan Morris, Executive Director, RMIT University IT Department
Working with Leading Teams has been instrumental in equipping us with the capacity to cope with the huge impact of the bushfires on this organisation and this community.
Bill Forrest, former CEO, Nillumbik Shire Council
Leading Teams helped us understand that each individual is accountable to the school as an organisation and to each other as members of the team. We now understand how powerful the collective capacity of the team is to improve outcomes for us all.
Viki Miles, Principal, Trafalgar Primary School
Ray McLean is expert in assisting organisations to develop their culture and values. An outstanding facilitator and communicator, he emphasises the importance of individuals taking responsibility and becoming leaders to achieve better team results.
Brian Goorjian, the most successful coach in Australian basketball
[The Performance Improvement Program] is a very important part of what the players still do. Its the simplicity of it that is the strength of it, I think.
Neil Balme, General Manager of Football Operations, Geelong FC
Text copyright Ray McLean 2010
Diagrams copyright Ray McLean 2010
First published in 2010
Reprinted in 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Published by Leading Teams Australia Pty Ltd
J95, 21 Hall Street
Port Melbourne VIC 3207
(03) 9654 3744
www.leadingteams.net.au
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Creator: McLean, Ray J., 1959 author.
Title: Team work : forging links between honesty, accountability and success / Ray McLean with Adam McNicol.
ISBN: 9780994438416 (eBook)
Subjects: Teams in the workplace.
Leadership.
Organizational behavior.
Psychology, Industrial.
Other Creators/Contributors: McNicol, Adam, author.
658.4022
For Sally
who continues to be my greatest source of inspiration.
For my children Courtney, Jackson and Jesse
who continue to support me in my endeavours
and to all at Leading Teams
who have enabled me to make my vocation a vacation.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
Having worked with Leading Teams for several years, I wanted to write this foreword by way of thanks. As I sat down to write it, I reflected that 2009 had been the most tumultuous period in my twenty-five years in local government.
As CEO of Nillumbik Shire, situated on the north-eastern outskirts of Melbourne, Id started the year with a new council, the majority of whom were not on the previous council, although this is not an unusual occurrence. The seven new councillors between them had fourteen and a half years experience in local government and were charged with setting the strategic direction for a $65 million organisation with over 100 programs and services.
Then came the 7 February bushfires, which burnt 25 per cent of the municipality and resulted in forty-one fatalities. One contractor (a former manager) died, and six staff members lost their homes. The majority of the staff live in Nillumbik or adjoining municipalities, so everyone knew somebody who had been killed. In this atmosphere of grief and loss the organisation had to lift its performance to an unprecedented level with round-the-clock services in response to the tragedy. Then, to top it all off, at the end of the year the council decided not to give me another contract of employment as the CEO.
So whats all this got to do with Leading Teams?
Well, Id spent the previous four years working with Leading Teams to improve performance in our organisation. Wed chosen them not because I was an avid fan of football (explained by the fact that I barrack for Richmond), but because our HR manager had worked with them in a not-for-profit drug and alcohol agency.
Leading Teams came in at a point where Id recently been promoted to the position of CEO and most of my direct reports in management positions were new to the organisation. We pretty much had to build a new team, and I found Leading Teams practical focus on behaviours and values to be the best glue to hold together such a diverse organisation.
Over the next four years the management team worked very hard, and I firmly believe that this work has been critical in the high performance of the organisation in such a resource-constrained environment. We deliver a suite of services similar to most councils in the state, and do it 40 per cent more efficiently, both in terms of staff numbers and expenditure.
Our work with Leading Teams also proved to be critical in the development of resilience in our organisation, something we discovered through the tragedies of 2009. The ability of our managers to have hard conversations with each other about their behaviour in a time of extreme anxiety and pressure was critical to an effective response to the tragedy.
