Blog / Leadership
Bill Sweetenham, Swimming coach, Method behind winning teams
When you have coached swimming teams to achieve Olympic, Commonwealth and World Championship gold medals in three different countries, you must know something about building a winning team... And Bill Sweetenham does.
Recognised around the world for his planning and coaching abilities with high performance sports teams and individuals, including Hayley Lewis, Mr Sweetenham has tasted success enough times to understand the formula behind a great team – and a great leader. “I think the concept of a winning team is to build good foundations where responsibilities and role clarities are clear for the individuals within that team,” Mr Sweetenham explained. “A winning team is made up of great individual performances. I always say there is an ‘i’ in team and, together, each individual achieves more. There has to be a contribution from an individual and it has to be driven by a team focus, because the team will hold an individual in line under pressure,” he added.
Picking the right members
When choosing members for a team, Mr Sweetenham said each person needed to contribute ownership, consensus, consultation and negotiation and be working towards agreed principles, structures and boundaries to ensure the team gelled. “There has to be a significant shared benefit for each individual within that team,” he said, explaining everyone had to discuss the team’s capabilities and processes, looking at where they were compared with where they wanted to be, with a gap analysis done to assess what was needed to reach that goal. “It’s important that your goals are in line with your targets and you don’t have a team objective that isn’t capable of being reached; you have to be realistic,” he said.
Picking the right leader
A great team leader will recognise the value each person brings to the team and energise everyone by showing how their contributions count towards the end goal. “You’ve got to make each member of your team become a winner.” This leader will also recognise the personality traits needed from new team members and employ the right person and commit to developing their skills set, rather than the other way around, Mr Sweetenham said. “Identify the person – open mind, creative, innovative – then develop the required skills that need to be addressed. If it’s selling, if it’s property development, you train them.”
When someone is ready to move on
The reality of working with others is eventually someone will want to try other things, and this loss will affect the team. It is essential for a team leader to provide an environment where this person is comfortable expressing their views and have an exit strategy planned, Mr Sweetenham said, but added sometimes you had to try talking them into staying. “You have to have them signed off on the outcome, so if they haven’t achieved the outcome then it should be a no exit strategy - and they should sign up to be in the team with a no exit strategy.” “Not everybody can be an Olympic champion, but everybody can be prepared like an Olympic champion and feel comfortable and confident in the outcome, whatever that is, if they’ve given 100% of themselves to themself and the team objective,” he added.
Dealing with change
Change is inevitable, however not everyone is comfortable with the idea, Mr Sweetenham explained, citing the media’s negative reports over his coaching methods when he took on the role of British swimming coach. He had the self belief to rise above the negative attention and get on with the job. When he started working with the team it was ranked 72nd in the world and had six finalists in the 2000 Olympics, but by 2008 the team was third in the world on medals, gold medals and point score. Mr Sweetenham worked with a group of young coaches who were willing to take his lead and stick with him through the three stages of change - opposition, ridicule and then acceptance. “When you change things and you dramatically change the culture of the team, the first thing that you’re going to encounter is antagonism. If you have the ability to stay with what you want and what you believe in and what you have faith in, you’ll finally get acceptance and support.”
The winning formula
The only difference between a team achieving its sales results and another achieving a haul of gold medals is the goals set. All members must still have a winning attitude to achieve that level of success. Early on in his career Mr Sweetenham was teaching a group to swim and one person - Anthony Boon – stood out because he said he could swim but when asked to show his skill, jumped in and nearly drowned. “I said, ‘Tony, you told me you could swim’! He said ‘I can, just not yet’ and I knew that that was a winning attitude. It was an attitude that he’d taught me that I wanted to use through the rest of my life,” the renowned coach said. “I always look for people who are ‘can’ people in ‘can’t do’ environments, where success is not conducive; it’s not there for the taking,” he said explaining these people had the ability to manipulate a negative culture and produce a positive outcome. “I believe that great athletes know what good athletes don’t know. Good athletes commit to competition and great athletes commit to winning, and that’s what makes them great.” After discussing leadership with Nelson Mandela, Mr Sweetenham reviewed his opinion of what constituted good leadership. “He corrected me by saying that he felt that people needed leadership in their light hours rather than their dark hours,” he said, explaining some people didn’t have the self-belief to reach their full potential when everything was going well and even found comfort in the bad times because they felt protected by others. When you have coached Olympic champions for a lifetime, what do you do in your down time? Mr Sweetenham has just returned from an amazing world trip where he met 10 extraordinary people and rode 10 of the fastest, most thrilling and daring roller coaster rides in the world. “I can’t wait to do it again.”
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