Kevin Sheedy On Leadership, Teamwork And Consultation

Why did it take 2,000 years for humankind to invent wheels on suitcases? It’s because people are like that. As people, we miss opportunities to make improvements all the time; for Kevin Sheedy, this is one way to describe the act of leadership: it’s making things better, resisting the very human default drive to be staid in our thinking.

We’re typically “slow to take up leadership opportunities… slow to think quickly.” At meetings, Sheedy sees people behaving negatively (i.e. in his terms, slow in thinking) and metaphorically ‘straps his pads on and reaches for his bat,’ to use cricketing imagery.

His loving disdain for typical executive structures and their ‘sameness’ in any field of life releases him to debate with fervour any reticence and negativity to the new idea. He thrives on the challenge with a glint in the eye.

Name any innovation to have hit the Australian Football League in the past 25 years and you can bet Kevin Sheedy’s had some involvement, and generally he’s been the instigator; from the birth of indigenous recruitment to women in footy to the recruitment and training of fulltime AFL coaches to the overseas AFL promotional machine to the Anzac Day Blockbuster… Sheed’s has been there and paved the way.

Leadership snippets:

- Leadership is about thankfulness and invitation; see the opportunities and seize them!

- A simple idea… creatively acted upon, that’s leadership.

- Leadership is not about how I feel, it’s about how “they” feel.

- It’s trying… you might not get your idea across but you should put it up; that’s leadership.

- On the job… on the ground—making things better; that’s leadership.

- When things are going wrong, everyone starts looking out for themselves; except the leader—they continue thinking innovatively.

- Leaders make decisions.

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Finally, leaders “chase knowledge and share it.”