In The Arena

My guest today on In the Arena is Dr Richard Young.Richard has spent eleven Olympic cycles inside the machinery of high performance, as an athlete, a coach, a researcher and the builder of systems that outlast him.He was dropped from the 1984 Olympic team standing in the airport, and the void that followed set the course for everything since: a career spent working out why the best repeat and the rest don't. We go deep on effort versus system, the one per cent myth, why the repeaters own eighty per cent of the stops, and how to point reflection forward instead of backward. This is a conversation for any leader who has tried to outwork a problem and wondered why it didn't work.Notebook ready.Play on!

My guest for this podcast is Alison McCormack, CEO of Bicycle Network, but that wasn't the plan. She was the shy youngest of five, the one who listened while everyone else told stories. Then her mum died suddenly and a friend said, "I'll see you Wednesday 6 o'clock." The bike became the vehicle for something bigger. A decade of volunteering. A life membership. Then a CEO role at an organisation that needed saving. She met with 50 stakeholders before she even applied. The board chair took her on a gravel ride to an Aboriginal meeting place and said, "This is about trust." They turned the Titanic. This is a conversation for any leader who has to push through the hill of hysteria while staying true to why they started.Notebook ready.Play on!

Trent Cotchin captained Richmond through the microwaved membership tickets, the 113-point belting, the noise that had a name on it, and then led them to three premierships with the Richmond Football Club.But the story isn't what changed in the game plan. It's what changed in the man.This is a conversation about the moment he called Ben Crowe and realised he didn't have to do it alone. About the St Rose Cafe meeting with Jack Riewoldt where they stopped making it about themselves and started building for Daniel Rioli's generation. About big paddocks with strong fences, about trust, empowerment and alignment, and about what happens when you finally let the tide go out and see where the rocks really are.This is a conversation for any leader who's ever felt the weight of the armour they're carrying.Notebook ready.Play on!

Michael Voss has lived a life where pressure meant something great was about to happen.Three-time premiership captain at Brisbane. AFL coach at Carlton. A career spent in the arena with skin in the game. And now he's sitting in what he calls "the grey", the space between what was and what's next.We talk about his mantra, 'courage to always compete', and how that mantra survived every iteration of him.About the daily 20-minute drive that became his leadership practice. About upstream thinking versus downstream problem-solving. About the moment he raised the floor on standards and risked himself for the team. And about identity always in formation, not a fingerprint, but something you write with your own pen.This is a conversation for anyone who's ever stepped out of the arena and wondered what courage looks like now.Notebook ready. Play on!

John Buchanan never played Test cricket. Seven first-class games for Queensland.Then, he walked into a dressing room with Warne, McGrath, Ponting, Gilchrist, and the Waugh brothers, handed them Sun Tzu's Art of War, and told them they were going to dominate world cricket.He coached Australia to a 79% win rate, 16 consecutive Test victories, and two World Cups.But it nearly cost him everything. Jobs, relationships, and the constant question of whether he belonged.We go deep on coaching philosophy, the courage to hold your line when it loses you the job, why doubt is essential to leadership, and what it takes to harness elite ego without letting it destroy the team.This is a conversation for anyone who's ever had to lead without the credentials, hold standards when it's easier to walk past them, and find belief in themselves when no one else does.Notebook ready. Play on!