As a coach, businessman or parent, your role as trying to make yourself as ‘redundant’ as possible.
The concept of being redundant is part of the total philosophy, and connects directly with creating a learning environment and knowing the whole person.
My goal as a parent is to gradually have my children educated academically and in the ‘school of hard knocks’ such that they will rely or need my wife and I, less and less, as they forge their lives, making personal, career, financial, life decisions. In this sense, we are trying to make ourselves redundant to the decisions that our children make. Obviously we are there to support them whenever required, and to provide some guiding advice if needed.
As a business leader, I am in competition every day, and need the business to deliver best service each day. Consequently, I rely very heavily on my staff to be part of that process. Each individual is required to make good decisions on behalf of the business to get the results we all seek.
In order to achieve this outcome, I need to have each individual know how they perform to make good decisions which lead to results. I want my staff to understand how they have a “PB day” – a personal best. Knowing their performance skills, actions and behaviours when having achieved their “pb”, there is every likelihood they can replicate it day after day. The more the individual can do this, the less I am needed as the team leader in their daily work life. I can be redundant to their needs and be more strategic in my business.
And the same goes with an athlete. Whether the athlete is in an individual or team sport, the more that they ‘know their own game inside out’, the better they will be at making good decisions onfield. As coach, one of my important roles to help a player discover what it is they do when they are performing at their best, was always to establish the closest relationship I could with them.
I was always interested in the person first, athlete second. As much as the cricketer wanted to let me into their personal world, I was interested to know about family, life aspirations, interests, life after cricket, and so on. The more I knew about the person, the more I believed I could help that person off field so that their onfield world could be less distracted.
Key points to making yourself redundant –
- Know what you are trying to achieve which must align to personal philosophy
- Create a learning environment that encourages all individuals to become their own best coach
- Spend time to get to know each member of your team
