THE ability to embrace different perspectives and make different choices might help the West Coast Eagles out of their early season form slump, at least if coach John Worsfold can redirect his team’s focus.
THE ability to embrace different perspectives and make different choices might help the West Coast Eagles out of their early season form slump, at least if coach John Worsfold can redirect his team’s focus.
While critical of his senior players this week for a lack of leadership in last Sunday’s loss to North Melbourne, Mr Worsfold knows how quickly things can turn around.
He spent four weeks in France late last year, where he undertook a leadership course that provided him with a fresh perspective on what it means to lead.
“What the course meant for me was a lot of personal reflection,” Mr Worsfold said.
“Just listening to how things could be done differently, and how things that are done totally differently to the way you would have done it can still work really well. So what I took away from the course was that there’s not just one way to do things, and the importance of being open to these alternatives.”
The coach will bring some of this perspective to the 2010 version of the Eagles Executive Leadership Program.
For a $9,000 investment for seven sessions over the football season, business executives and managers are being encouraged to take the course, which partners with the Australian Institute of Management and University of WA Business School.
The program is designed to provide senior business executives with high-integrity learning on leadership, varying from interactive workshops and lectures to observing and analysing a physical training session, and being involved in an away-game experience. Speakers include Eagles CEO Trevor Nisbett, Mr Worsfold, former SAS commanding officer James McMahon, Eagles captain Darren Glass, UWA associate professor exercise, health and sport psychology Sandy Gordon, and other academics.
Mr Worsfold said the course would enable businesspeople to view things differently.
“Participants will be privy to how we do things at the West Coast Eagles and be able to compare our processes to how they’ve seen things done or believe they should be done,” he said.
“They’ll then be able to make decisions on what works and what might fit into their own environment.
“I think participants will see the synergies in the way a sporting team is run, both from how the actual team is organised to how the football club is a business, and would have seen very similar obstacles that they would have faced in their own businesses.”
Eagles chairman Mark Barnaba said with a turnover of about $50 million a year, the Eagles was more than a sports club.
“It is a profitable and well-managed business,” Mr Barnaba told WA Business News.
“There is a sound business plan implemented by some very astute people, including a board with a very diverse skills set and a management group led by Trevor Nisbett.”
