Reputations are organic and fluid. They can be made, unmade, and made again. But it takes real leadership in a crisis to make or break a reputation. A great case in point is the recent Australian cricket cheating scandal.
Even if you don’t know much about the ‘gentleman’s game’ you’ll have some notion of how important it is to a lot of people in cricketing nations throughout the world – and nowhere more so than Australia. The game of cricket feeds into many markers of national identity and ideologies about being Australian – playing hard, but fair, never giving an inch, supporting teammates, even if that results in self detriment. Unfortunately, those traits have also resulted in a team culture that is often overly aggressive, bullying, demeaning, and boorish. The reason many cricketing fans around the world have savoured the recent crisis in Australian cricket is precisely because of that behaviour. The win at all costs philosophy can create a culture whereby cheating is a natural extension and that really is the issue here.
Sure three players cheated, conspired, and lied. That it was the captain and the vice-captain of the team makes it even more appalling – that the junior member of the team was the one tasked to alter the condition of the ball with sandpaper makes the whole thing appear rather cowardly. But Smith, Warner and Bancroft are not the first to be caught cheating at cricket and they certainly won’t be the last. When sport becomes all about winning despite everything, then when the chips are down and a team is losing, like the Australians have been in South Africa, then some people may make stupid decisions, no matter how much we may not want them to.
” . . . they are scapegoats for a toxic culture that has been festering away for years.”
Australian cricket captain, Greg Chappell has admitted since the underarm controversy in 1981 against New Zealand, that it was the stupidest decision he made in his career. Even though it wasn’t ‘cheating’, it was certainly not playing the game the way it should be, but he justified it at the time, because he felt he had to do everything to prevent a six being hit off the last ball. Everything in this case was getting his brother Trevor to roll the ball along along the wicket and nearly 40 years later the effects of that decision still resonate.
The blame in the current scandal has been clearly accorded. Three players have had their careers stalled with lengthy suspensions, and rightly so, but they are scapegoats for a toxic culture that has been festering away for years. The real villains here are the guardians of the Australian game – Cricket Australia and its board and executive body. They have had many chances to correct behaviour, to admonish aggression – they’ve done very little. Perhaps they have thought they didn’t need to, but they have been the ones directing team culture, they have appointed the coaching staff, and they have enjoyed the fruits of the decades of Australian cricketing dominance. Now they have set lengthy sanctions on Warner, Smith and Bancroft and they possibly think that will right the ship. It won’t.
“Real leaders understand that they lead from the front, that they take responsibility for their team when a crisis occurs.”
Australian sports fans, like most around the world can be incredibly forgiving of their team’s indiscretions but cheating apparently is a line in the sand that they cannot stomach. That Cricket Australia’s chief executive, James Sullivan couldn’t even use the word ‘cheating’ to describe the cheating of the Australian players in a press conference a few days after the incident speaks volumes. It also marks where Cricket Australia mangled its response and suggests that only a clean out of its board and executive body will really set the path to creating a new reputation.
Smith and Bancroft earned praise for accepting responsibility, not blaming anyone else and admitting the damage they had created for fans of the game. That they were aware of their own responsibility should have been a sign to Cricket Australia that they do the same. They needed to express that the philosophy of win at all costs that they have fostered for many years was what was really the root cause of an embarrassing and costly cheating episode.
In business, just as in sport, responsibility comes from the top. Real leaders understand that they lead from the front, that they take responsibility for their team when a crisis occurs. They don’t shift the blame, they don’t create distractions to hide the real issues and they don’t absolve themselves.
” . . . acceptance and responsibility will enhance a good reputation or repair a damaged one.”
Recently I spoke to a chief executive of a telecommunications company in Wellington. It had received some negative feedback and he wanted some advice on how to respond. He said he had no issue whatsoever with the review, it was a totally fair reflection and one he said would be taken on board and would generate an operational change. He told me he liked that his company could be assessed that way by its customers and he encouraged it. What was striking was the fact that he himself called me, not a marketing manager, or another director, or a secretary. He took the burden on himself because he said it ‘was down to’ him.
It reminded me that all too often in business it can be the other way – apportioning blame rather than accepting and owning it. Because acceptance and responsibility will enhance a good reputation or repair a damaged one. So far Cricket Australia has been entirely lacking in assuming either of those traits.
