Teams That Swear

If your team has been told, by you or your boss, they need more ownership, less blame, or a better attitude, the temptation is to make mindset the problem.

But mindset is hard to coach because it is not specific enough.

(If this is showing up in your team, you may want to book a 1:1Team Pulse Check with Adrian. It's free and will help you get specific about what could make things better. More details below.)

In this episode of Teams That Swear, you will get a more useful way to think about change.  Adrian unpacks why labels like attitude, ownership and accountability often leave leaders stuck. It's easy to name the frustration, but it doesn't make clear what needs to change. This episode gives leaders a practical way to move from vague feedback to clearer expectations, better responses, and small moments team members can repeat until they become normal.

Teams that swear by each other, not about each other, do not wait for a better attitude to arrive. They make the unclear clearer, practise the response they want, and keep reinforcing it until the team starts doing it for themselves.

If your team keeps having the same conversation and nothing much changes, book a Team Pulse Check with Adrian. It is a free 60-minute session to step back, look at how your team is operating, and identify what needs attention next. No prep. No commitment. Just a clear starting point. No preparation needed, just a quiet place to think as Adrian guides you to a clearer next step. 

 And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow Teams That Swear wherever you get your podcasts.

Walkinshaw TWG Racing CEO Bruce Stewart on the 80 percent rule, honest input and owning mistakes before they cost the team. 

In this episode of Teams That Swear, Adrian Baillargeonsits down with Bruce Stewart, CEO of Walkinshaw TWG Racing, to talk about leading in one of Australia’s most technical, public and high-pressure sporting environments.

Bruce is a commercial leader inside an engineering-led business. He is honest about not being the technical expert in the room, and why that has made him a better leader. His job is not to know more than the experts. It is to ask better questions, build trust, and make it easier for people to tell him the truth.

Bruce also shares the personal story behind the way he leads, including losing his mum when he was eight and learning early what it means for people to pull together when things get hard.

The centrepiece of the episode is Bruce’s 80 percent rule: if you have five decisions to make, make the five decisions. Waiting for perfect information can make teams slow, cautious and mediocre.

You will also hear the story of Chaz Mostert owning a mistake after a race, popping the bubble for the team, and helping create a better process because people felt safe enough to speak honestly.

In this episode:

• Why imposter syndrome can help leaders ask better questions
• How Supercars teams make calls before everything is certain
• Why leaders need honest input from people who know more thanthey do
• What top Australian racing driver and Repco Supercars Champion, Chaz Mostert, owning a mistake can teach leaders about making mistakes discussable
• How teams that swear by each other, not about each other, learn out loud.

Want to understand what might be holding your leadership team back?

Book a free 60-minute Team Pulse Check with Adrian.

If too many decisions end up coming back to you, the problem may not be your team.

It may be how you lead them.

Senior leaders often become the person everyone turns to because they are experienced, capable and quick to solve problems. But over time, that helpfulness can create dependency, slow decision-making and leave you carrying far more than you should.

In this episode, Adrian explores how good leaders can accidentally become the bottleneck in their own team, why capable people start waiting for permission, and what leaders can do differently to build more ownership and better judgement around them.

You’ll learn how to catch yourself before stepping in, ask questions that build thinking rather than dependency, and let your leaders own decisions without lowering standards.

Teams that swear by each other, not about each other, do not rely on one leader to carry every difficult decision. They build the trust, clarity and judgement for people to step up and own what sits with them.

To discuss a Team Pulse Check or the AB Team Dynamics Assessment, email Adrian at [email protected].

Kelsey Griffin has a view on accountability, captaincy and team building that most leaders will not see coming. You will hear it within the first two minutes.

After seventeen seasons as a professional basketball player, multiple WNBL championships, gold medals, an Australian Opals career, and being drafted third overall in the WNBA draft, Kelsey has seen what leadership really asks of people when the pressure is on.

In Part 2, we talk about the phrase many leaders use: “I want the team to hold each other accountable.”

Kelsey’s response is direct. If the leader still controls the opportunities, rewards and consequences, then accountability cannot simply be handed to the team.

We also get into what captaincy actually costs, how Kelsey thinks about winning after a career full of results, and why success means more than what shows up on the scoreboard.

Kelsey also shares what happened on a flight to Perth with a young teammate she could not quite reach, and what leaders can learn from the moments when their usual approach stops working.

If you lead strong personalities, have inherited a team, or have someone you cannot quite get through to, this episode will give you a sharper way to think about accountability, leadership and what your team really needs from you.

Kelsey Griffin has been on championship teams and teams that had the talent but still fell short. She knows the difference, and you will hear it in the first few minutes.

After seventeen seasons as a professional basketball player, multiple WNBL championships, gold medals, an Australian Opals career, and being drafted third overall in the WNBA draft, Kelsey has seen what changes when a team gets it right.

In Part 1, we talk about how leaders can tell whether their team is actually strong, or just looks strong on paper.

Kelsey shares what the best teams do early, how leaders can build belonging before the pressure arrives, and why defensiveness can be a useful signal about what is happening beneath the surface.

She also shares the story of an airport pickup at Bendigo Spirit that changed how she walked into a new team, and what it taught her about belonging long before the big moments arrive.

If you are stepping into a team, leading an experienced group, or wondering whether your team is really as strong as it looks, this episode will give you a sharper way to read what is going on.

And right near the end, Kelsey goes on record about something she has never said publicly before: she is more open to coaching than she has ever been.

Every senior leader eventually hits the point of thinking, “I can’t keep working with this person.”

Maybe commitments get missed, updates do not come unless you chase them, and too much work starts landing back on your side of the fence. After a while, the story in your head starts to change from “How do we fix this?” to “Maybe they are just not up to it.”

In this episode of Teams That Swear, Adrian Baillargeon shares how to diagnose what is really going on before you escalate, disengage or mentally fire the person.

You’ll learn how to spot three common patterns: misaligned standards, hidden trade-offs and trust erosion through repeated micro-moments. You’ll also get practical language for a direct reset conversation that is clear, measurable and time bound.

Teams that swear by each other, not about each other, do not tolerate quiet dysfunction because it feels polite. They confront early, get specific about what needs to change and escalate responsibly.

To discuss a Team Pulse Check or the AB Team Dynamics Assessment, email Adrian at [email protected].

And if this episode gave you language you can use with your team, follow Teams That Swear wherever you get your podcasts.

In Part 2 of my conversation with one of the most successful coaches in Australian cricket history, John Buchanan, we getinto the team dynamics behind high performance.

John shares what it was like coaching Shane Warne, how he rewarded players who made others better, and why the strongest accountability eventually comes from teammates, not just the leader.

If you lead talented, experienced or strong-willed people, this episode will give you practical ideas for building trust, strengthening peer accountability and helping strong individuals become a stronger team.

We explore:

• How to balance individual ego with team performance
• Why team-first behaviour needs to be recognised - andhow he did it 
• What John means by your “discretionary spend on the team”
• How mature teams learn to coach and challenge each other
• The benefit of knowing onself and staying clear on what they stand for

This is Part 2 of my conversation with John Buchanan. Listen to Part 1 first for John’s lessons on earning trust when you are not the obvious choice as leader.

If you’re leading at a senior level, pressure is unavoidable, but what matters is where it lands, because when it leaks through tone instead of clarity your team starts guessing, second-guessing, and carrying weight that was never theirs.

In this episode, I unpack how pressure travels through leadership systems, why your micro-signals shape behaviour faster than your words, and three simple ways to direct pressure to the right conversation so it doesn’t hit the wrong people. If this sounds familiar, this episode of Teams that Swear is for you.

What do you do when you step into a leadership role and the room is already full of talent, experience and strong opinions?

In this episode of Teams That Swear, Adrian Baillargeon speaks with John Buchanan, one of the most successful coaches in Australian cricket history, about earningtrust when you are not the obvious choice.

John coached players including Shane Warne, Steve Waugh, Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist and Justin Langer. But this conversation is not just about cricket. It is about walking into a high-performance environment, knowing the room does not need more technical expertise, and finding a way to harness what is already there.

In Part 1, John shares how he shaped his leadership philosophy, what he learned from self-doubt as a young player, and how he approached leading a team of elite Australian cricketers who were already at the top of their game.

You’ll hear:

• How to earn trust without forcing your authority
• Why new leaders should resist the urge to prove themselves too quickly
• What John learned from a raw conversation with Justin Langer
• How to listen when someone tells you they feel let down
• Why leadership is less about having all the answers and more about helping the room use the knowledge it already has

Teams that swear by each other, not about each other, do not rely on titles to create trust. They build it through clarity, listening, challenge and shared direction.

To discuss a Team Pulse Check or the AB Team Dynamics Assessment, email Adrian at [email protected].

And if this episode gave you language you can use with your team, follow Teams That Swear wherever you get your podcasts.

You have inherited a team. On paper, they are capable. The meetings happen. The work gets done. The results may even look fine. And yet, something still feels off.

In this episode of Teams That Swear, Adrian Baillargeon shares the story of a senior leader who inherited a technology leadership team that looked solid from the outside, but was not working well enough together.

The issue was not capability. It was the unspoken stuff. Each leader believed they were doing the right thing individually, but the team lacked shared purpose, deeper trust, clear behavioural expectations and a way to have the conversations that mattered. They were polite, professional and quietlystuck.

Adrian walks through what changed when the team assessed how they did teamwork, rebuilt connection, created shared standards and committed to working differently over time. The result was not just a better leadership team. It changed the experience of the wider department, and of the CEO.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why inherited teams can look fine on paper but still underperform as a group
• How politeness can hide the conversations a team needs to have
• Why individual capability is not the same as collective performance
• What it takes to turn separate functional leaders into one leadership team
• How an assessment, like the AB Team Dynamics Assessment, can help reveal what is really going on

***If you have inherited a team and you are sitting with that nagging sense that something could be better, this episode will give you language for what you are noticing and a practical example of what can shift.

Teams that swear by each other, not about each other, do not leave team dynamics to chance. They build trust, create clarity and hold each other to the standards that make performance possible.

To discuss a Team Pulse Check or the AB Team Dynamics Assessment, email Adrian at [email protected].

And if this episode gave you language you can use with your team, follow Teams That Swear wherever you get your podcasts.