A new coach and a great movie - stories of leadership

I am really excited as I have a new coach. I am still being coached by the TTC Group next season (as I was last) http://www.thetriathloncoach.com/ but am now being coached by Dave Green for 2011. He is based in France so possibly more convenient, but more than anything he has an absolute wealth of experience and a great manner that makes me feel confident that as a team we will extend what is possible beyond anything I could come near without such guidance and interaction in my preparation. I am going to write a blog about the good, the bad and the indifferent of coaching shortly, but for now a few thoughts on leadership enabling people to excel beyond what they thought they were capable of, as great coaches can do.

I was watching a great movie last night, "Invictus" with Rob. At first glance it is a rugby movie based in South Africa for the World Cup in 1995. Rob loves rugby so no surprise that he chose it. However rugby is really just the canvas on which a far more interesting and complex story about leadership through change takes place.

The two key leaders are Nelson Mandela from when he takes office in an unstable, angry and fearful post apartheid South Africa and Francois Pienaar, the Afrikaans Springbok captain. It ends with the moment when the Springboks won the 95 World Cup on home soil against the odds and allowed a brief moment of national pride and unity at a time when the nation was anything but unified. It is a great movie that shows the power of two kinds of leadership, leadership through inspiration and leadership through example to allow people around each of these men to do in the end, what at the beginning seemed entirely unfeasible, both to themselves and their peers.

I loved the messages so much I will be showing it to my boys (4 and 7) when we next have a movie evening with them. They love sport too, so I hope they find it packaged in a good format for them to enjoy as well as be inspired by.

Invictus is the name of the poem by William Ernest Henley that gave Mandela inspiration when he was at his lowest in prison on Robbin Island. In the movie, and I believe in reality, he shared the poem with Pienaar to assist him inspire the team that at the time was a potent symbol of Afrikaaner pride and the racism that put Mandela in gaol. Personal leadership in action.

Hopefully you will never personally understand the depths to which Mandela understood some of the darker lines of this peom. I have had a pretty blessed life and cannot really conceive of the horrors and fear that his politics and leadership put him in. However anyone who really extends themselves towards their limit, whether in sport, in politics or any other field, knows you are taking on risks and challenges to do so. Whatever difficult situation you may find yourself in, the final two lines are the potent ones, you are the master of your fate (don't blame others) and you are the captain of your soul. Here it is. 

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

A bientot (see you soon)
C