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Motivating Your Workforce Will Carling Style

Posted by Kate
Dated: June 25, 2008 5:36 PM

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Former England rugby captain, Will may not sound like the obvious person to inspire hairdressers and salon owners, but his experience of leading the team to numerous victories contains valuable lessons for anyone needing to motivate a team.

Will was just 23 when he was made captain of England, and he soon recognised that the players were not acting as a team.

"Most of the players didn't even speak to each other because they played for different clubs," Will told delegates. "They didn't talk about winning - their main concern was how long they would stay in the team. All they cared about was not being dropped."

When Will took over the job of captain the team was winning 20% of its games, when he left they were winning 80%.

The strategy Will employed could be applied to any salon business. It all came down to setting players long-term goals and constantly motivating them.

At the beginning of his captaincy Will presented each player with a wallchart, which plotted their lives for the next three years, broken down by each week.

"This started players thinking about three years down the line rather than the next game," said Will.

The other major change in approach was to start analysing how results were achieved. "I wanted us to stop just looking at outcomes and start looking at processes," said Will. "We needed to understand why we won the games we did win so that we could repeat the success."

Getting to know the team members as men and not just players was also integral to the team's success, said Will.

"It was important to get to know every player as a person so that when they walked through the door I knew what frame of mind they were in," he said.

Focussing on what players did well was also important, said Will. "In sport a lot of coaches focus on what a player can't do, I praised the guys about what they could do."

Will recounted an occasion where before a match against France he put a card under the door of each player's hotel room, with a personalised account of why he thought they were a great player. "It's little efforts like this that make a huge impact on people," he told delegates.

Learning to listen was another important element of Will's success. "I needed to know what the team needed from me. I needed to listen to them. I asked 'what can I stop doing to make it easier for you?'" said Will.

Delegates were certainly happy to listen to Will's story, and no doubt took away some valuable techniques for motivating their own workforces.