As I'm teaching a leadership course this summer, issues of leadership in sport (or lack of it, as the case may be) fascinate me.
The recent leadership shake-up within the Black Caps camp is a fine example of how much emphasis we place on leadership when a team or organisation performs at either end of the continuum.
In this recent cricket shake-up, Mark Greatbatch has been relegated from head coach to batting coach, while taking on a new role as chairman of an independent selection panel which also includes former New Zealand cricketers Glenn Turner and Lance Cairns.
Captain Daniel Vettori loses his official spot on the selection panel, but as a token gesture of goodwill, chief executive Justin Vaughan says he can sit in on meetings.
This must be a hard pill to swallow for an outspoken man who was adamant he could maintain his multiple roles as player, captain and selector.
Manager Dave Currie keeps his job (for now) while high performance manager Roger Mortimer has suffered the greatest fall from grace, having had his touring wings clipped.
One of the theories I've been able to apply to this scenario is that of prototypicality.
This is a fuzzy set of features that capture in-group similarities and intergroup differences regarding beliefs, attitudes, behaviours and feelings.
In other words, the leader is picked by the followers or supported by followers because they are most like them. Obviously, the review committee felt they needed a leader that was prototypical of the beliefs, attitudes, behaviours and feelings of the cricket fraternity, elements that Mortimer, as a cricket outsider, may not have possessed.
Once upon a time, Mortimer was at the top of the pyramid but that precarious position now belongs to head coach and head honcho John Wright.
So far, Wright has cleverly talked up the importance of the team rather than himself and he has emphasised the privilege of playing for your country and that 9-year-old in the street or some elderly gentleman listening on the radio.
Wright seems very old school with his approach to organisations and coaching and believes less is more when it comes to management teams. Perhaps an efficient and directive leadership style is needed with only two months to go until the World Cup. Which brings me to the next theory that seems relevant to this scenario.
The romance of leadership is a strong belief or faith in the importance of leadership factors to the functioning or dysfunctioning of organised systems.
Leadership is romanticised the most in extreme cases where things go extremely well (think Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United) or extremely bad (think of the Pike River disaster). In these extreme cases, credit or blame is laid at the foot of the leader.
The media frenzy that usually follows also exaggerates the influence of the leader. We are so intoxicated by leadership that we believe superior performance can only be considered a consequence of, rather than cause of, charismatic leadership.
So strong is the desire to romanticise leadership that we very rarely point the finger anywhere else.
What if an organisation or team manage to win and perform exceptionally well in spite of the leader/s?
And perhaps, despite good leadership, a team or organisation fails?
In the two months he has before the World Cup, will John Wright fulfil our dreams of the ultimate leader or will he, too, suffer a fate similar to that of Greatbatch and Mortimer?
Someone once said to me that there are only two kinds of coaches - those who have been fired and those who are about to be fired. So, before the public and cricket administrators have a chance to assess your leadership John, enjoy this brief hiatus as the third kind of coach - newly appointed and yet to be tested.
Merry Christmas everyone.
