Successful vs. Effective Coaching: Essendon Football Club

Introduction

Organisational leadership is inherently challenging. In any context, it is incumbent upon the individual in a leadership role to select the style of leadership best suited to their own skill set and, equally, the style best suited to the group or organisation in question. The dilemma driven by such a selection underpins the discussion that follows. Contextualised by the world of professional sport and the responsibility of coaching, this paper outlines the distinctions between effective coaching and successful coaching. Drawing on personal experiences in rugby and on the professional sporting example of James Hird, coach of the Essendon Football Club, the following discussion considers five major distinctions between effective and successful coaching.

Background: James Hird and the Essendon Football Club

Before proceeding to a more analytical discussion of Hird's role as a leader within his organisation, it is appropriate to provide some basic background on the context and the coach. James Hird was in his third season as a head coach in the venerable Australian Football League (AFL), where the head coach is both a figure held accountable for the team's overall performance and an individual who bears considerable public accountability. Before being named head coach of the Essendon Football Club in 2010, Hird had spent the better part of the previous two decades serving as the organisation's leading player personality and public face.

Widely considered one of the great players to have entered the game, Hird was inducted into the AFL Hall of Fame in 2011. According to the write-up accompanying his induction, Hird spent his entire career with the Essendon Football Club and is accordingly nicknamed "Essendon's favourite son." As Horan (2011) reported on the occasion of his induction, "a veteran of 253 games spread over 16 seasons, Hird won five club best and fairests, three Anzac medals, a Norm Smith medal and a Jim Stynes medal as well as playing in two premiership sides in 1993 and 2000. Picked at a lowly No. 79 in the 1990 draft and the last of 52 players chosen on the Essendon senior list, Hird admitted coach Kevin Sheedy's decision to keep him allowed him to live his dream." (Horan, p. 1)

Hird's experiences as an extraordinary player and league luminary, as well as his relationship with coach and mentor Kevin Sheedy, helped to forge a coach from the player. As the discussion below will demonstrate, Hird's relative newness in the field makes him an interesting figure for examination, even if the available sample size remains modest. The Essendon Football Club serves as the context for the discussion, and head coach James Hird is examined as a primary exemplar of an effective coach. Personal experiences are used in some instances as a counterpoint and as a demonstration of successful coaching.

Person-Centred vs. Results-Centred Coaching

One of the recurring notions in the research is that effective coaching is inherently a more interpersonal mode of leadership than successful coaching. This is because the emphasis created by an effective coach centres less on the individual as a player than as a human being. According to the Sports Education and Leadership Program (SELP), "successful leadership has been defined as the ability to get others to behave as the manager intends them to behave. The job may get done, and the coach's needs may be satisfied, but the players' needs are ignored. In effective leadership, the athletes perform in accordance with the coach's intentions and, at the same time, find their own needs satisfied." (Youth First, p. 1)

This denotes that successful coaching takes an ends-justify-the-means approach to utilising player personnel. While this may potentially lead to positive outcomes on the field, it is often a poor way to manage morale. The example of James Hird is instructive on this point and reflects the humanist impulses of effective coaching. In his Hall of Fame induction speech, Hird recognised a number of the attributes that helped him to succeed in the profession despite the modest level of fanfare that accompanied his initial entry into the sport. Hird stated in his induction speech that "I always thought that was all I wanted to do and a lot of hard work paid off. I had a lot of very good people around me who kept me positive and motivated and successful." (Horan, p. 1) This attitude demonstrates both the determination that the coach believes is required for a player to succeed in the league and, more importantly, that support from others is a critical aspect of finding and sustaining that determination. This has served as an essential part of Hird's orientation as he has worked to establish himself as Essendon's head coach.

Indeed, Hird's players have publicly acknowledged the coach's distinct ability to keep his charges motivated through stretches of mediocrity and struggle. According to Ashton-Lawson, Bombers star player Jobe Watson affirmed his team's commitment to the coach and the motivational skills Hird has shown in keeping them focused through difficulties. The article noted that "Essendon has been struggling this year, with a 65-point loss to Collingwood at the much-hyped Anzac Day match their fourth loss from five games. That prompted Essendon legend James Hird to plead to his former club to play some hard, attacking football. Hird wrote in today's Herald Sun that the Bombers need to get back to their old style of football by improving on skills, motivation and courage. Watson said today that Essendon club legend Hird's words are sure to inspire his struggling side. 'You have to look into the mirror and see if you're demonstrating the type of things that he's talking about and I think that'd be motivation for a few players,' Watson said." (Ashton-Lawson, p. 1)

Perhaps more than any other source of evidence, the degree of commitment voluntarily demonstrated by his players speaks to Hird's preference for effective coaching. This also stands in stark contrast to personal experiences as a youth rugby competitor. My own coach was motivated entirely by successful coaching and therefore tended to distribute playing time with a heavy favouritism that often produced positive results on the field but left many lesser-skilled players idle. As one consequence, many of these players experienced lowered morale and a sense of detachment from the team's success. More troubling was the fact that so many of these lesser-skilled players did not receive the attention and experience needed to make significant progress.

Conclusion

Using Hird's experiences as an evolving coach for Essendon, and personal experiences as a youth sporting participant, it is clear that the present discussion produces an endorsement of effective coaching over successful coaching. Most compelling among the reasons for this endorsement are the humanistic and management-based principles that define effective coaching. Given the relative prominence and influence of professional athletes today, effective coaching seems a far more relevant mode of leadership and one likely to yield better long-term results for the organisation in question. As research on leadership effectiveness consistently affirms, prioritising the development and wellbeing of people — not merely the achievement of results — is the foundation of sustainable organisational success.