AFL RECORD HOW TO FIND A COACH

AFL RECORD HOW TO FIND A COACH 8 AFL RECORD afl.com.au

HOW TO FIND A COACH AFL RECORD The science of finding the right senior coach is a lot different these days. Whereas once a casual conversation would have sufficed, now it s a thorough process. NATHAN SCHMOOK EXHAUSTIVE PROCESS: Brendon Bolton (left) with assistant John Barker, one of the rivals he beat for the Carlton coaching position. t s February 1977 and Hawthorn has just finished another gruelling pre-season session at Stradbroke Park in Melbourne s south-eastern suburbs as it plots its premiership defence. Coach John Kennedy snr is walking back to his car when he stops assistant David Parkin to tell him some news. By the way, the legendary coach says, you ll be appointed senior coach of the Hawthorn Football Club tomorrow. Just like that, a 34-year-old Parkin had his first senior job, one he held for four years, launching a career that spanned 22 seasons, produced four premierships and changed the art of coaching. Thirty-eight years on and the Australian Football Hall of Fame coach is playing a background role in another coach s appointment, this time at Carlton as candidates Brendon Bolton and John Barker jockey with others to win their first senior job. Forget about handshakes in carparks, it s 2015 and the scene is the slick, eco-friendly offices of international recruiting company Egon Zehnder on Collins St in Melbourne s central business district. The official sub-committee is assembled, a position description has been drawn up and a long list of candidates has been whittled down to those left at the first of three interview stages. Welcome to the modern search for a senior coach, a process clubs take pride in stretching further and further with every new appointment. Selecting a senior coach is a gamble you don t want to lose and the process is about stacking the deck in your favour. It has become a science. Carlton s 2015 search started with Mick Malthouse s sacking in May This is 10 per cent a football business and 90 per cent a people business COACHING GREAT DAVID PARKIN and ended in Bolton s appointment in August, 91 days later. For CEO Steven Trigg, the key element in the search which has been hailed as an overwhelming success 18 months into Bolton s tenure was the involvement of a professional recruitment firm. Whether people like the term or not, you re talking about an executive search, Trigg told the AFL Record. So the cornerstone was a really elite recruitment agency to work with us on it. It is after all their bread and butter. They are the ones who counsel on and undertake the personality profiling and we lean strongly on them in terms of the candidate and their fit. To understand the complexity of a modern coach search, you need to go back one step to the incumbent s departure or sacking. The exit of Kennedy snr in 1977 was unique at the time in that he was leaving a strong team for family reasons, but there is usually the need for change when a coach leaves. Trouble is often afoot. Take the Brisbane Lions at the end of last season. In the words of chairman Bob Sharpless: We have regressed from 10 wins in 2013, to seven wins in 2014, four wins last season and to three this year. Those results made Justin Leppitsch s position untenable and change was required, but a lot takes place before candidates are presenting in a suit and tie in an executive recruiter s boardroom. Once the decision s made that you do need a new coach, you go to the board and management will put together a job description to say, Here s what we think we need, Lions CEO Greg Swann said of the process that led to Chris Fagan s appointment. afl.com.au AFL RECORD 9

SOLID GROUNDING: AFL RECORD HOW TO FIND A COACH Alan Richardson, Simon Goodwin (right) and Luke Beveridge (bottom) all served long apprenticeships before securing senior coaching positions. In our case, the criteria was someone who is experienced, someone who has had a lot of jobs, preferably someone who has coached their own team and then there s a care and empathy piece, education, relationships. So you put the criteria together and we weighted each of those topics as well. Like the Blues, the Lions had a five-person sub-committee, but rather than a professional recruiter, they employed psychologist Matti Clements, who was also part of the sub-committee that recommended Alan Richardson to the St Kilda board. Then the shortlisting begins. The Lions started with a 40-man shortlist that included every senior coach in the competition, as well as the leading assistants at rival clubs, then working through a process of elimination. The conversations that take place at this stage are crucial and coach managers become heavily involved. Their clients want to know what the club will be providing them to make them want to go for the job. Who else are they talking to? What sort of person do they need? Do they need an experienced coach or are they open to an untried candidate? What is the state of their football department soft cap? And what agreements do they have in place with their existing assistant coaches? Potential candidates will drop out at this early stage if the club s situation doesn t suit theirs, and that is seen as a positive development in an industry where coaches once raced to win the first job they could, worried another would not present. By now the Lions list is down to half a dozen and Swann and then list manager Peter Schwab are having initial conversations to feel out the group. The list is further reduced to three or four and the sub-committee is ready to interview the candidates, who have been briefed on the club s key criteria. Clarity of thought is one of the key things LIONS CEO GREG SWANN Like Carlton, the Lions interviews took place on neutral ground hotel boardrooms and sponsor s boardrooms for the convenience of candidates who might not want to be linked to the job publicly. As well as Swann, Schwab and Clements, the Lions sub-committee includes former champion Simon Black and recently appointed football manager David Noble, who is the main point of contact for the candidates through the process. The interviews start and the questions are pointed. It s not an interrogation, Swann says, but a serious discussion. We re looking for things like leadership and culture, and whether they have got high emotional intelligence or resilience, he said. Then from our perspective there was a teaching aspect, delivering game-plans, footy knowledge, people skills, communication skills. How would they fit in with what we are trying to achieve here? How would they go about teaching our guys how to play the brand of footy they had in mind? What was their game-plan? Is it simple? Is it easy to understand? How are you going to teach it? There is still room for the coach s slideshow presentation, but a job is no longer won or lost on the strength of this, 10 AFL RECORD afl.com.au

HOW TO FIND A COACH AFL RECORD HAWK GRADUATES: Brendon Bolton and Chris Fagan (below) are both disciples of Alastair Clarkson. with most candidates highly skilled at presenting. Michael Voss won the Brisbane Lions position in 2009 on the back of the most impressive and extensive presentation some of the panelists had ever seen, but it wouldn t be enough now. To do something unrehearsed is quite a different story, Trigg says. These days it s less about the simplicity of a presentation and more about an interactive discussion. The trait, Trigg says, that comes through in the most impressive candidates is the assuredness that comes with breadth. It s a confidence in their beliefs about what they want to do with the coaching role, he says. That might manifest in a couple of different ways, but those that have breadth of experience and not necessarily at AFL level tend to be the ones who are more assured. Clarity of thought is one of the key things you either have that or you don t. Candidates leave the interview knowing when they ll be contacted next and the panel members get straight to work debriefing and documenting their thoughts on the interview, marking the applicant against their criteria using a template. For those invited back, the next round is generally more conversational. For the unsuccessful applicants, feedback is given. he role of the senior coach was described to the AFL Record as CEO-type management of a group of young individuals and people around those individuals. In a Fox Footy documentary called The Graduates, Parkin interviewed the five senior coaches who came through Hawthorn under Alastair Clarkson Adam Simpson, Damien Hardwick, Luke Beveridge, Leon Cameron and Bolton. Parkin asked them how they would describe their role to someone who had no knowledge of Australian Football. This job is about building good relationships with 100 people 50 players and 50 staff. That s the conclusion these coaches came to, Parkin said. So how are aspiring coaches preparing for a job that is so much more than making astute game-day calls? And what is the industry doing to make sure coaches aren t thrown to the wolves, costing them professionally and their clubs financially? AFL competition and stakeholder manager Michael Poulton runs the Level Four senior coach program, an elite course that prepares the next wave of senior candidates through high-level mentoring and a challenging curriculum. He says an area for improvement in the 19 coaches accepted into K ERAL Coaching great Alastair Clarkson has challenged the AFL industry to think laterally when appointing coaches and place less emphasis on the playing careers of candidates. Both Chris Fagan and Brendon Bolton came through the Hawthorn system before earning senior jobs, spending eight and six seasons at the club respectively. Neither played AFL/VFL football, but their senior coaching futures appear bright after long apprenticeships in varied roles. Who would think that two guys who haven t played senior AFL footy would now be coaching they ve both come from nowhere, Clarkson told the Record. Fages is 56 for goodness sake and he s been in the game for 20 years. Both of them had to serve really long apprenticeships before they did develop that credibility to say, Well, I may not have played the game, but gee I know a lot about it. They re 20 years apart, but they are both outstanding coaches. We need to continue to look a little bit laterally and don t just think the main pre-requisite for your credentials as a coach is that you ve played a fair amount of elite AFL footy. We have too many safe appointments. They might be OK, but are they the best? I think we should be exploring a little bit more laterally in terms of our appointments. NATHAN SCHMOOK afl.com.au AFL RECORD 11

AFL RECORD HOW TO FIND A COACH UNPREPARED?: The appointment of coaches simply because they were great players, such as Essendon s James Hird, has been questioned by David Parkin (right). the program over three years has been the lens through which they see their football club, with everything revolving around the football department. They graduate with an understanding that a football club includes demands from a CEO on strategy and vision, commercial imperatives, community obligations and the needs of supporters. Once much smaller parts of a coach s role, all are now critical to how he structures and runs his program, with unavoidable demands on his players from outside the football department. One senior coach who struggled with the demands of the club versus the demands of the football program became involved with the fan committee to understand why player appearances were so important. At Carlton, staff members can be rostered to attend pre-training meetings with players and coaching staff before joining training and taking on a role. It is part of Bolton s one club philosophy. If you ve been an assistant coach doing the defence for the last eight years and that s what you do, then that s great but there s a broader skill set that a senior coach needs, Poulton said. There s the informal stuff you can do within the club that extends There s a broader skill set that a senior coach needs LEVEL FOUR SENIOR COACH PROGRAM COORDINATOR MICHAEL POULTON your own role, learning from others, mentors, seeing other sports, spending time with other people. Then there s the formal stuff, like doing a short course on understanding athlete motivation. When you re asked what have you done in your coaching career, (you can say) I ve been a line coach, I ve been a development coach, I ve coached my own team, I ve done some formal course work around teaching, I ve spent some time with the commercial department, I know what list management looks like. Of the aspiring senior coaches who are not completing the Level Four program, many are completing formal study such as a masters of sports coaching or a masters in business management. The AFL Coaches Association plays a key role in helping coaches understand what opportunities are available to them. For many, being prepared and applying for a senior position at the right time is crucial. Too many coaches have come before them and taken positions they weren t ready for, and it is tough to get another chance if you are sacked. Parkin is a student of coaching and business leadership and visits the trend-setting All Blacks every three to four years. He estimates he s been involved heavily in up to seven formal coach searches and played some role at almost every club in an appointment. He never interviewed in the true sense of the word, but coached at Hawthorn (1977-80), Carlton (1981-85), Fitzroy (1986-88) and again at the Blues (1991-2000). Committed to study during his coaching career, he developed a sports coaching degree for Deakin University and is credited with introducing much of the modern coaching vocabulary. It is not game-plans and football nous he is worried about, however, when he takes part in a modern panel interview. We ve made so many mistakes in Australian Football that we admit and I m not so sure will happen again, Parkin said. But it s happened in the past decade where great players have been given the opportunity to coach without any obvious credentials other than they ve been a great player. So we can all worry about game-plans and technical stuff and fitness, but I m much more interested in how good are you going to be with all the people you are responsible for? How are you going to engage and build the relationships required? I ve spent a bit of time with the All Blacks and that s basically their mantra, this is 10 per cent a football business and 90 per cent a people business. That s been my mantra as an interviewing coach. @NathanSchmook 12 AFL RECORD afl.com.au