Team sports were not on offer when I was a child in a town in NSW's Northern Rivers region, or at least they were not on offer for me. No cricket or football of any code that I knew of, and I doubt that I'd have been interested anyway. The dib dib dib Cubs was enough.
Later, in Newcastle as a teenager, few if any of my mates played weekend sport, and I had zilch interest in football and even less in cricket. To this day.
In recent years I've wondered if this absence of team play as a child had an impact on team work in my adult life, and I suspect it did. Not always negatively, I think, but negatively overall.
From my earliest days in newspapers I was vaguely aware of networks of former players of a specific sport, and that may have been apparent when the editor would arrive at my desk to introduce with jollity his former rugby league teammate, or even a player from another team, with an instruction to write a story about his business winning an award. And get a photo with his ugly mug in it! Cricketers were good at it too, although the jollity was restrained.
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Later I became aware of a certain mafia for rugby players, and I saw it in action with job applications accompanied by overblown recommendations in phone calls from high. Simply having played rugby seemed to be a strong recommendation in some circles.
I didn't miss the support of these fraternities, because I was fortunate enough not to need it, but I do believe it's the fact that I had not played team sport that left me short on teamwork skills. Not so much skills as a team player, because as a player I would work hard to do well what was wanted of me, and in the sense that I produced what I was asked to produce I was working as an individual.
Rather, I fell short as a team leader. For about a third of my 40 or so years in journalism I managed and oversaw the work of others, sometimes a few others and sometimes many others, and I was never comfortable doing it and some were never comfortable with me doing it. The problem was not that I failed to produce the goods at the end of the day, rather it was that I was not good at managing the different personalities, attitudes, attributes and shortcomings of the individuals in the team. I imagine that this capability is likely to be one of the most valuable acquirements of playing team sport.
I do believe it's the fact that I had not played team sport that left me short on teamwork skills. Not so much skills as a team player, because as a player I would work hard to do well what was wanted of me, and in the sense that I produced what I was asked to produce I was working as an individual. Rather, I fell short as a team leader ... I was not good at managing the different personalities, attitudes, attributes and shortcomings of the individuals in the team.
I didn't know, for example, how to tell someone their work was lousy other than telling them their work was lousy, and I still don't. I didn't know how to motivate people who were not naturally motivated, and I could muster no understanding of or sympathy for moodiness and recalcitrance. Yes, the moodiness and recalcitrance may well have been of my own making.
Getting the best from others is likely a skill learnt subconsciously by team players on and off the field, before the game, during the game, and at the post-game celebration or commiseration.
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At times when managing one or two small teams I found relying on others so difficult, and frustrating, that I'd attempt to do all the work myself, and I am sure that encouraging reliance and reliability are lessons well learnt in team sport.
I have, too, an abhorrence of meetings and of people who love meetings, and I expect that those who have grown with regular team meetings will be equipped with a tolerance and the ability to steer a group that I don't have. Twice, as my children grew, I attended a P&C meeting, and twice I vowed never again.
My visceral fear of public speaking may well be a product of my lack of involvement in a team. It is irrational, paralysing, and surprising for even those who know me well, and I think being able to speak to a group of people as you spoke to teammates over many years would overcome that. Perhaps some speakers imagine that the audience is made up of members of their team.
All the skills that I missed out on go directly to leadership, and so one arm of a career in journalism was closed to me. I'm more than happy that I and perhaps my superiors recognised that.
Some years before I retired an editor at this paper told me, laughing, that he was delighted to see prominently on my personnel file the notation "Difficult to manage", and I suppose a willingness to follow the leader is another quality developed by team sport.
The result of being short on team work was that I was long on the solitary, and so most of my work in journalism was as a commentator or columnist, as lone an operator as a newspaper journalist can be. Having been on the wrong side of the desk, I was relieved to be responsible for my own work even if I could never pass the buck.
Still, life is best lived with options, and missing out on team sport was a big miss.
Jeff Corbett is a former Newcastle Herald journalist. He contributes regular opinion columns to the pages of the Herald each week.
