No leader can do it all himself. It doesn’t matter how experienced they are, how intelligent, how prepared or how committed. Every leader needs input from others to allow them to make the best decisions possible. They need perspective, and they can only get that perspective by consulting others.
During my career, I was lucky enough to always have people around me whose judgement I trusted, both off and on the pitch. These people didn’t just give me good advice; they gave me fresh and interesting viewpoints too, because their personalities, their experiences and their areas of expertise were different not just from mine but from each other’s too.
Off the field, I rarely, if ever, took a big decision without consulting seven (that number again!) people: my mum and dad, my brother Ben and sister Holly, Rach, Andy and Derwyn. If that effectively made Andy and Derwyn part of my family, well, that’s how I saw them, because that’s how much I trusted them. Each one of these seven had my best interests at heart, but each one of them also came at things from a slightly different angle:
Between them, then, I had pretty much all the bases covered.
The same was true on the pitch. At any one time with Wales, there were probably five players in total who between them took command. The personnel would vary, though not by that much; we had such a settled squad for most of my international career that the same people were there year after year. Men like Alun Wyn, Gethin, Jamie, Ken, Foxy, and so on. These five or so would meet every Monday morning to discuss things. In some ways we were one big captain, if that makes sense.
Every one of these guys brought something different to the table. Gethin was, by a mile, the best player I played with at assessing things on the field. He would often say to me, ‘Go to the ref and say this.’ It might just be the way the opposition were infringing at the breakdown, but he was so sharp, and he was almost always right. It was like having a coach on the field.
Jamie, as defensive leader at centre, was great at spotting what the opposition were trying to do. Alun Wyn was an inspirational character in the dressing-room. Those kind of things. They were a nucleus on which I relied a lot. Some people think that the captain is set apart from the other players, but if I saw myself as anything by way of captaincy it was first among equals, and with guys like that we were all very equal.
And of course you don’t just have to seek the counsel of senior people. Everyone’s got an angle, and everyone can contribute. In a rugby team alone you’ve got, for example, the hooker at the coalface, the enforcer in the second row, the dynamism and intelligence of the half-backs, and the full-back with the wide vision of the game that’s unfolding in front of him.
No one person has everything. I played against lots of great 7s in my career, but not one of them was remotely perfect. To demonstrate this, if I were building the perfect 7 I’d take a little bit from seven different 7s. I’d take Tipuric’s aerobic capacity and handling skills, Pocock’s strength over the ball, Hooper’s speed, McCaw’s spatial awareness and ability to play so close to the edge, Dusautoir’s tackling, Louw’s ball-carrying, and my own explosive power in the rucks and discipline when it came to not conceding penalties.
That would be a perfect 7. But even then a player like that couldn’t exist, because when you add quality in one aspect then, beyond a certain point, you have to start taking away from others. You can’t be as strong as Pocock and as much of a greyhound as Tipuric; you can’t be as quick as Hooper and hit rucks with my explosive power.
The challenge as a leader is therefore twofold. One, to gather in advice from different people, but be aware that some of it will be contradictory and that you’ll have to know which to use and which to discard. That is easier said than done. Some of this is experience, but much of it also comes down to the leader’s second challenge: to be yourself. Listen to others, but always be yourself.
Some of the clubs I played for early in my career used to have initiation ceremonies, and the more outlandish and vile the better; one even involved putting a hole in the bottom of a black bag taken from a public bin and drinking the contents. That wasn’t just gross – it was dangerous.
As a teenager I’d get so drunk at some of these events that I’d have to be scraped off the floor. I didn’t like doing this, but I was young and the other players were older and more experienced, so I went along with it for a while.
Then one day I just thought, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not drinking at these things. I got the piss ripped and called a shit bloke, but I stood my ground: and when I did, there were always other people who’d join me and say, ‘I’m not drinking either.’ They’d seen me stand up for myself, and that made them want to do the same for themselves. And in the end most people respect you for that, no matter how much grief they might give you at the time.
Be true to yourself. If you’re happy standing up in front of a roomful of people and knocking out great speeches, go for it, knock yourself out. I wasn’t. I hated being the centre of attention; I never wanted to play the big ‘I Am’ or be Billy Big Bollocks. You see captains bringing everyone into a huddle on the pitch before or after a match, and you know that nine times out of ten they’re doing it to look good for the cameras. You can huddle in the privacy of the dressing-room just as easily. The only time I ever did that on the pitch was if the opposition were late coming out and I didn’t want the boys to lose focus.
Perspective often means equilibrium. As my old mentor and mate Martyn Williams told me – and these are words whose wisdom I had cause to reflect on several times during my career – ‘You’re never as good as they say you are, and you’re never as bad either.’