Port Adelaide premiership coach Mark Williams launches leadership company

PORT Adelaide premiership coach Mark Williams believes the mind space is the new frontier of both football and business and has formalised his own consultancy.

Port Adelaide captain Warren Tredrea and coach Mark Williams hold the AFL Premiership trophy aloft

• Why fans and coaches are tormented
• New ground blamed for inury
• Footy wasn’t meat to easy: Bickley
• Port Adelaide forward out indefinitely

PORT Adelaide premiership coach Mark Williams believes the mind space is the new frontier of both football and business and has formalised his own consultancy.

Williams’ Champion Teams has entered a competitive market alongside firms such as Leading Teams and Collective Minds, which has been causing controversy for being behind the Crows’ “power stance” and a pre-season training camp on the Gold Coast that is said to have rattled some of the club’s players.

Williams was reluctant to comment on the methods of his competitors other than to voice some concern that there were unqualified people in the industry who could often cause as much hard as good.

Williams will draw on his coaching and school teaching background and also borrow from the expertise of his sister, Jenny, who is a registered psychologist.

“There’s no doubt that we’ve worked so long on the physical stuff and the game plans but understanding how to deliver it to the players and what characteristics they bring prior to coming into the clubs,” Williams said. “One thing that Jenny brings is that she’s an expert and she’s got the qualifications and that sets her aside to a lot of people in this space

“There are people who can talk it to get people involved and there are people who can actually hold people’s hand to walk them through and grow with them.

“A lot of the psychological basis of what I teach is based on Jenny’s book,” Williams told The Advertiser. “Because she’s right up to date with organisational psychology.

“Then I have the practical experience where it fits in.”

Now based in Melbourne, Williams has already had some success: he worked with the Supercar driver Dale Wood and the Erebus team before its Bathurst success last season and is involved with several programs with the AFL.

That follows closely mentoring Dustin Martin over four years and helping him from being a troubled young man to the game’s most outstanding player last season.

Williams is also the director of coaching at Maccabi Victoria and the coach of suburban club Ajax.

As ever, it is innovation and being cutting edge that drives him — and he’s known for being good at mind games of the old-fashioned kind.

His interviews with aspiring players at the draft camp have become legendary with Williams asking left-field questions just to see how they respond.

“There’s no doubt I challenge people,” Williams said. “But I show them where they’re at.

“All people in any occupation wants to know where they stand, where they are at, what they need to do.

“Those things are solution-based.

“If you can give people the skills based around what they might lack in inner skill, give them the opportunity to practise that, it’s amazing how much they can succeed and open up their minds to other things and change.”

Williams’ website is on www.championteams.com.au and was designed by Collingwood premiership player James Manson.

Among his clients are The AFL, Santos, Deloitte and Boeing.