Steve Hansen shares his thoughts on the importance of creating alignment in your environment, and some ideas on how to do that.
**This is video is part of a six-part video series, featuring Steve Hansen talking about leadership throughout his coaching journey. To view all the videos in this series, click here.
What is alignment and how can coaches create it?
Alignment has two components.
- Something to align to. An idea, a philosophy, a challenge, or a vision.
- People who buy in to the idea/challenge/vision
Steve Hansen shared that when he applied for the Head Coach role with the All Blacks, he presented a vision for where he believed the All Blacks could reach. When he was given the role, his first job was to get alignment from the important people within the team around that vision. As he said, he needed to:
“Convince the people who mattered about the vision”
What did that convincing look like?
For Steve Hansen, alignment is all about having,
“robust conversations with everyone that needs to be discussed with”.
Those robust conversations give everyone a chance to ask questions about the vision, to challenge the vision and to come up with alternatives. Steve Hansen believes, you can’t have alignment without first having these robust conversations, because those conversations allow everyone to have their voice heard. At the end of the discussion, coaches need to ask:
“Are we all committed to this?”
Once the athletes say yes, then more than one person owns the vision, and that is powerful. If the athletes get the opportunity to agree and then commit to it, they feel like they’ve been given the opportunity to contribute, and it becomes theirs.
It’s important to note, the idea doesn’t need to be a massively ambitious goal like the one Hansen shared. For a coach in their own context, it could be a goal for the season. Or it could be a style of play they want their team to use. Or it could be related to how they want the team to behave off the field/court/track. Regardless of the scale of the idea, the process of getting alignment is the same.
Why does it matter for coaches?
Having alignment around a vision or an idea gives the team a direction. It provides a vector for the team’s behaviour. It can act as an anchor point to keep bringing people back to. If your team is going through a rough patch, you can use the vision to re-inspire them. If your team is going through a period of complacency, you can use the vision to re-energise them. If anyone in the team starts to behave in a way that’s out of alignment with the vision, you can use the vision as a starting point for the conversation to help them get back on board.
Key takeaways
- Spend time thinking about big ideas that are important for you and your athletes. This doesn’t have to be a vision like Steve Hansen shared. It can be a specific way you want your team to play, how you want them to behave or a goal for a particular season.
- Once you have landed on something, give time for the important people to have a robust discussion about it, and be open to the ideas and opinions in that process. As Hansen said “What’s most important is to have a robust discussion about it”.
- At the end of that conversation, ask ‘are we committed to this?’ Don’t miss this step as it leads to everyone owning the idea.
- Ensure the idea is spoken about and referenced regularly, so it’s something that’s always present in your environment.
View more of the Back to the Future Series with Steve Hansen below:
Part 1: Steve Hansen on Innovation
Part 2: Steve Hansen on Vulnerability
Part 3: Steve Hansen on Motivation
Part 5: Steve Hansen on Resistors
Part 6: Steve Hansen on Leadership
Image Credit: James Coleman