What a rugby team taught me about culture

Last week I attended yet another great PWC function where the New Rugby Union team, Melbourne Rebels was introduced.

It was fascinating to hear both the Chairman and even more particularly the Coaching Director, talking about the culture he was looking to nurture.

Given all the daily news we hear about footballers and their behaviour in Melbourne, it was interesting to hear a sporting coach focussing not just on finding talented union players to join this new team, but focussing strongly on finding players with the right attitude.

There are some interesting links between sport and business. We know as business people that we can train people in technical skills but it’s hard to change attitudes.

It’s hard to turn lazy people into go-getters, it’s hard to change negative attitudes to positives, but we can teach computer and other technical skills.

We know that when we are recruiting that we need to look for the right attitude along with the right skills – so we need to know how people have lived their lives as well as what technical skills they might have.

The five star pledge of the new Melbourne Rebels team is:

• R = Respect: the opposition and each other
• E = Excellence: highest standards in everything we do
• B = Balance: sport and life, determination and humility
• E = Ethos: team first, “we, not me”
• L = Leadership: constantly challenging the status quo

What great standards for business – respect for the competition and ourselves, highest standards in our performance, balance for sustainability, putting the company before ourselves and continuous improvement.

Along with the five star pledge comes the Melbourne Rebels five star engagement with community, schools, clubs, business and charities.
Sounds like a winning formula to me – no doubt the Rebels are also seeking those businesses whose culture looks is synergistic with the above to become sponsors and strategic partners.

Marcia Griffin’s latest book, High Heeled Success (pictured left), is a frank account of building a business from a solitary sales person to a multi-million dollar business with 4,700 sales consultants around Australia and New Zealand. Contact Marcia to purchase. Marcia’s latest venture is skin care company griffin+row.