Tom Harley: Captain of the Club, not just the team
It’s September in Melbourne. That means football (Australian Rules). We’re just a week off the Grand Final when over 100,000 people will pack into the MCG, the biggest stadium in Australia to watch the game. Millions more will watch from home. This event is so big that every sewerage worker is either at work on on call for the start of the half-time break when almost the entire population flushes the toilet at the exact same instant.
In an article in today’s Age newspaper, journalist Martin Flanagan talks to Fred Wooller. Wooller was the captain of the 1963 Geelong Team who won last year and are the hot favority to take back-to-back honors. Between 1963 and 2008, Geelong never won a grand final so Wooller has been interviewed by a thousand journalists.
I’m not really into Footy as much as most of the population, and I wouldn’t have normally read Flanagan’s article. But for some reason I did, and I read a quote I thought I’d pass on.
Wooller is enormously proud of present captain Harley.
“He hasn’t just been the captain of the team. He’s been the captain of the club.” He respects Harley for involving himself in causes like Just Think, a campaign against alcohol-induced violence.
What a great differentiation, and how easy is it for us to just focus on the team? How are my team going? Is my team getting the respect I believe the deserve?
I’m going to be taking inspiration from Wooller’s description of Harley. What can I be doing that isn’t just about my development team? What can I be doing that drives the whole company forward?
Are you being the captain of your team? Or are you (helping) to captain the entire club?
Photo by James Demetrie, used under Creative Commons Attribution licence.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesdphotography/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
