In the game of business, are you playing to win… or playing not to lose?…
My latest guest on The Wisdom Of… Show, Liz Ellis is one of Australia’s biggest sporting icons whose timeless wisdom will help lift you to victory in business and beyond. A much-respected voice in Australian sports media, Liz has forged a career as a thoughtful advocate for women’s sports and television commentator and the recently elected new Chair of the Netball Australia Board.
She is also a beloved television personality, from her career as a sports commentator for the Commonwealth Games and 2000/2004 Olympics, and most recently, as the winner of the 2023 series of Channel 10’s I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.
In her playing prime, she was one of Australia’s highest-profile elite athletes and ranks as one of Australia’s most successful netballers. Liz’s career highlights include a 2007 World Cup Victory with the Australian Netball Team, three World Championship gold medals, two Commonwealth Games gold medals, four national premierships, and a ranking as Australia’s Most Valuable Player on four occasions.
Throughout our conversation, her journey, both on and off the field, is brimming with memorable stories and profound lessons that transcend sport and show us all how to show up as better leaders in every domain of our lives.
Want more game-changing insights on winning in business and life? Watch the full interview with Liz Ellis now.
Values Of The Victorious
As I sat down with Liz Ellis, one of the first things that captivated me was her fascinating perspective on values. This perspective proved critical in rallying her team out of a string of losses.
“When I became captain of the Australian Netball Team… I felt we didn’t really know what we stood for and who we were.”
This lack of identity led to a fractured sense of togetherness as a team, which was reflected in their performance.
“We lost the World Cup, then we lost the Commonwealth Games… we were losing games we shouldn’t have.”
“…So we came up with a sentence: The Australian Netball Team is proud, united, and relentless. But we realized pretty shortly that anyone can write a sentence… What matters is the behaviours you put underneath.”
Liz then continued by outlining core values that lived out these behaviours:
Integrity: Easy to say but harder to live; integrity is about what you are doing when no one is looking.
Respect: As a leader, you can’t just have the respect of those around you. You have to respect them back and be held accountable, and your team must do the same for you.
“You can’t not have those as a successful team, and you can’t not have them as a successful leader,” she concluded.
As a founder, think about your values and ask yourself:
Do your values define how you uniquely are (that differentiates your company from all others), or are they simply defining the baseline of what should be expected?
These perspectives and layers of values, such as the surface-level baseline values versus differentiating values,allow us to define more precisely how our values genuinely represent us.
Prepare To Perform
Next, we shifted the conversation to how these embodied values contribute to real-world performance, leading us to a fascinating reflection on the power of preparation and practice in sports versus business.
“How you react is how you’ve prepared,” Liz began. “Your directions under pressure are what you practice day in and day out.”
She then gave the example of a team training and dropping the ball at the end of a drill in practice, illustrating how this seemingly innocuous mistake can have far-reaching consequences.
This led to the observation that if one slips into bad habits during training, one is bound to repeat them in moments of chaos.
I then added an observation of my own from my conversation with Olympic-level coach and hockey legend Rick Charleworth.
I once asked him what the difference was between sports and business leadership.
He said, “In sports, we train harder than the game, so the game is the fun part. But in business, we barely train.”
It is our responsibility as leaders to ask ourselves how often we prepare our teams for chaos and equip them to thrive under the inevitable pressure that will come with it.
Creating Safety Out Of Chaos
Next, we pivoted from the makings of a high-performance team to that of a great CEO, especially in leading themselves and others through chaos and uncertainty.
“The first step is to accept that there is going to be chaos… The leader has to be the calmest person in the room.”
She then told me an incredible story.
“I had this coach, Jill Macintosh. We were six goals down by New Zealand (in the World Cup Finals) with three-quarter time. We won the game at the buzzer. If you watch her for the last 15 minutes… she calmly sat back and watched while the other coach was out of their seat… she trusted us to do our job, and her job was to be calm.”
It was a tangible comparison of how one coach’s calmness under pressure instilled trust between her and her players. At the same time, the other coach’s frantic energy very likely may have induced anxiety.
When leaders are powerfully calm, we instil safety in those who follow us.
As founders, we can do the same for our teams when the stakes are high, and chaos is inevitable.
Unbeatable Teams & Unbreakable Trust
We then shifted the focus from leadership to the players and how the bonds of trust are built and fostered.
According to Liz, the first factor of trust arises with trusting your team members to do their job.
‘You don’t get that trust by saying ‘I trust you,’” she said. “You get it from seeing how hard the person beside you works in pre-season.”
When you observe the players around you showing up for themselves and putting in the work on and off the field when they’re not publicly seen or rewarded, trust becomes the instinctual and automatic default for in-game dynamics.
Netball further fosters this in its rules.
In netball, players aren’t allowed into certain parts of the field depending on their position, so no one person can dominate and do everything. This rule necessitates trust and forces players to rely on their teammates.
The second factor of trust she outlined boils down to the team’s game plan to achieve their objective (winning the game).
According to Liz Ellis, a solid gameplan must be:
Easily understood: It must be clear and simple to remember under pressure
Thought through: It must take all potential outcomes into consideration
Spoken about: It must be communicated and known by between all players
Agreed upon: It must be fully bought into not only logically but emotionally
In your business, it can be intriguing to consider how you act when you are not publicly seen or rewarded and how those moments reflect your capacity to perform when you are in the spotlight.
When taken to heart, this practice alone can completely transform how you conduct yourself and show up for yourself, your team, and your customers.
Power Of People
As we wrapped up our conversation, we discussed the concept of leverage. Liz commented that “where I leverage best is in relationships.”
She then told me how, after a long day of practising, she and the team would be called to “gussy up and put your walk-out uniform on” to go to a function.
While many of the others would silently protest, Liz felt that if she was going to go anyway, she would want to talk to people and have a good conversation while she was there.
It was through these events that she learned a key lesson about communication:
“When I was younger, I made the mistake of thinking that having a conversation was telling someone about myself, but I think the best conversations are when you lean into the person you’re talking to and ask questions.”
This simple but powerful piece of wisdom—to lean into genuine curiosity, without an intention to gain anything, but an honest and earnest aim to simply understand them and find common ground is one of the most constructive practices that has helped Liz build the immense network both in and outside of the sport that she has.
“The conversation could fill an hour, or it could lead to something really interesting,” she remarked.
The beauty of every conversation is that you never know where it might go, what it might lead to, or what doors it might open.
This potent lived wisdom will significantly benefit Liz as she fulfils her recently appointed role as the Chair of Netball Australia, giving her invaluable contacts to lean on to help them achieve their goals.
In a business context, this is infinitely useful, as every business at its core is about people—and your capacity to connect with and compel others is fundamental to your success and, in many cases, imperative to your survival as an organization.
If you enjoyed what you read, I encourage you to watch this episode.
Immerse yourself in Liz’s profound wisdom, unforgettable talent, and remarkable reputation as an Australian sports and media icon.
Join the transformation and conversation…
Watch the full interview with Liz Ellis on The Wisdom Of… Show
And don’t miss Simon Bowen’s transformative masterclass on unlocking your hidden genius. Your future self will thank you.
