Building strong culture in all areas within playing group key to on-field success, Jordan Lewis writes
Jordan Lewis was part of a thriving winning culture at Hawthorn and the opposite at Melbourne. The four-time premiership star reveals what it takes to build a strong culture — starting with what’s on your own two feet.
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Culture is a funny thing.
It can’t be bought and it can’t really be taught.
It has to slowly become part of the fabric of the team, to the point where you don’t even notice the one-percenters.
And it’s the difference between the elite teams in the AFL and those who are still struggling to find their way.
You don’t necessarily understand it until you’re either out of that environment and able to look back into where you were, or you get exposure to a different environment and you see things that were part of your previous environment that really mean a lot.
It goes without saying that my biggest football chapters were at Hawthorn and Melbourne.
The great thing at Hawthorn through my time there was from the outside looking in, there were a lot of star players.
But within the club, it was an environment of acceptance of everyone. Whether that be the guy who was 44th on the list, to the best player at that time, there was an environment where you could provide feedback through those channels.
Humility was a big part of that and is the backbone of a strong club culture, which starts from the top.
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Anyone who came across the Hawthorn players when I was there, the feedback was that they were very humble. That was how we specifically wanted to conduct ourselves, especially when outside the club.
Some might question that on the field and sometimes you might do things that you might regret afterwards.
It was just the little things, like after you win the Grand Final and you’re on stage the next day, to not have sunglasses on and connect with the crowd.
Socks, too.
Yes, socks. You could tell the time of year based on which socks were packed in your footy bag.
When you train, having everyone in the same uniform. You don’t have different socks on — everyone had brown and gold socks on when the footy season was upon us, and then in pre-season everyone had the black Adidas socks, as it was at the time.
We wouldn’t train with our tops off, because it was a chance to be photographed, and sponsors get exposed, and you’ve got to respect the people paying the bills.
For me, culture is about all the little things that might not necessarily be paid much attention at other clubs. But good sides and good cultures have a heavy priority and focus on the little things that help.
You could even see it in our haircuts.
There’s some flamboyant styles in the game at the moment — potentially put down to some bored players in hubs with clippers on hand and no more than that — but outside of pre-season, that was a big no-no.
To us, it became about the individual, and not the team.
Culture is hard to build, and hard to maintain. But it’s very easy to lose.
Some of those things were really tedious, but you had to be on to them. New people would come in, and if you weren’t on to them from the moment they arrived, then someone else would arrive and they may have a different influence on them.
We were really lucky with the leadership group that we had, because we really valued those things as high priority, because we knew if you got those little things right, then that would then snowball into other things not needing so much attention.
As for Clarko’s singing … that might have been one that we let slip. But it goes back to the humility factor — you’ve got a four-time premiership senior coach and for him to stand up in front of a group and do something that he’s not confident at, let’s be honest, broke down barriers for the group.
It just showed that if he could get outside his comfort zone and make a fool of himself in front of the players. You then had the chance to do that also, whether it be on the training track, in games or away from the club.
Another great example of Alastair Clarkson’s vulnerability was before a game in which Brad Sewell, Luke Hodge and Sam Mitchell weren’t playing.
He came out dressed as one of the Queen’s guards. We were like, “What’s going on here?” And it was a theme about the changing of the guards — that the older leadership group was out for the game, so the new leadership group had to step up. We were looking sideways trying to see what everyone else was thinking. He was head to toe in costume, but wasn’t afraid to be himself.
When I got to Melbourne, that difference in environment was really evident. It was so ingrained at Hawthorn that we almost took it for granted.
I would walk into the locker room and it would be a bit messy, but I’d come from a place where there was not allowed to be anything showing.
It gave off a feeling of professionalism, and that was one thing I picked up on.
You try to voice your opinion, but if they haven’t had it ingrained in them, people go, “Well, how is a clean locker room going to help me perform?”
That’s hard to get across to a group that hadn’t really had that around for a long time.
It took a bit of transitioning.
As athletes, you’re always happy to buy into something if you know it’s going to have a direct result on performance. That’s the hardest thing to try to get across — it’s hard to measure what a clean locker room can do or what having the same socks on a training track can do, but it gives off a perception that you’re a highly-functional and professional team.
At Hawthorn, you would say “they’re a professional organisation … they’re all dressed the same, they’re all highly functional out on the field”.
Whereas if you went to a different team, and they were in different tops, shorts, socks — to me, that just doesn’t scream professionalism.
That’s what we valued and it can’t be understated in the modern game.
It can be easy to get stuck in the big picture at times. But sometimes, it can start with what’s on your own two feet.
Jordan Lewis is a four-time Hawthorn premiership player and Fox Footy analyst.
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Originally published as Building strong culture in all areas within playing group key to on-field success, Jordan Lewis writes