Renowned cricketer Faf du Plessis discusses leadership with me at Discovery’s Actuarial Conference

Yesterday I had a truly fun and absolutely inspiring chat with Faf Du Plessis - Proteas (South Africa’s National Cricket Team) captain in the Test, ODI and T20 sides from 2016 to 2020. As he joined me, the generational gap was obvious. Or perhaps it was a trendiness gap, considering that he had turned-up trousers and takkies without socks – which in my framing would be both physically uncomfortable and hard to understand. 🙂 Faf was quite a contrast to me in my jeans, T-shirt, black socks and much more conservative attire.

Faf joined me on stage as the song “Maak Jou Drome Waar” resounded.

This music video for the song features Faf and was produced by former South African international cricketer AB de Villiers and South African singer-songwriter Ampie Du Preez. It’s all about achieving one’s highest ambitions, speaking perfectly to Faf’s life and achievements.

I admit, my conversation with Faf gave me a renewed interest in cricket

 It also gave me an enormous respect for the mental strength, resilience and particularly the sophisticated leadership skills cricket captains require.

We covered wide-ranging themes from Faf’s personal story to some of the toughest challenges he’s faced in his professional career, and his recently released autobiography titled “Through the Fire”, which shares Faf’s unique insights on parenting, on team culture and leadership values.

My favorite of Faf’s personal stories is his shirtless proposition to a pretty female spectator at a club game. He spotted her in the crowd, and invited her to join the team’s fines meeting after the game. This stand-out spectator is now Faf’s wife, Imari, and mother to his two daughters. By the way - on the shirtless bit, Faf tells me that he feels uncomfortable with clothing and prefers being naked 🙂.

I found Faf’s thoughts on how to guide children through their sporting careers interesting.

Faf was brought up by a stern and performance-oriented father, counter-balanced by his empathic and warm mother. He has clearly swayed towards his mom’s parenting style and believes that empathy and warmth is more important than performance pressure. It’s a fascinating debate and I am vacillating on my own position here. I am naturally an empathic father, though I do wonder if there are moments when pushing your children over the finish line, at crucial decision points, isn’t ultimately in their best interests. Many of the world’s best sports people - much like Faf - describe a motivator parent who drove them to excellence. If you’re not familiar with the story of the famous tennis-playing Williams Sisters, Venus and Serena, I strongly recommend watching “King Richard”, starring Will Smith and available on Netflix.

Remove his glove and fix his shoe, or continue to limp across the field?

Faf also took us through a blow-by-blow description of his first walk to the crease at his inaugural Test match for the Proteas against Australia in Adelaide in 2012. It was a gruelling walk, through a packed stadium with millions watching on live television as he made his way down the stairs at Adelaide, onto the field and to the crease. On the way, he stubbed his shoe, and it lifted his heel uncomfortably out of his cricket shoe. Wearing bulky cricket gloves and unable to fix his shoe, Faf hobbled on to the field, facing a mental quandary about whether to stop amid a hostile crowd hurling personal insults, remove his glove and fix his shoe, or whether to continue to limp across the field. In the end, he decided to stop as he made it to the boundary rope, remove the glove, and fix his shoe, pausing at the mercy of the hostile crowd. It felt like it might have been a bad start to a first test. Not so - as he went on to score an astounding 188 runs!

Having a thick skin and mental fortitude seems to be part of the job.

Faf has many stories of targeted abuse on the field both by the opposing team - especially in the hands of Australia and New Zealand - and by the spectators. It takes a calm and focused demeanour to “ride” this out and Faf used this sort of energy to maximise his performance. This approach gave him more motivation and focus than pretty much anything else. His recipe is to use the bad stuff and negativity to drive you hard to perform better…I loved this.

I learned a lot from Faf’s trained behaviour and structured approach to concentration at the crease.

He taught himself not to think about batting when he wasn’t at the crease, against his every instinct. He forced himself, in a structured way, to focus on other things - anything but batting. He had correctly recognised that fatigue at the crease was exacerbated by thinking through batting non-stop, and he was much better served by deep concentration at the crease with less fatigue, if he forced himself to have a clear head when he wasn’t playing or practicing. This is a great lesson to me about switching on - and switching off at the right times, to ensure mental wellbeing and optimal performance when needed.

I listened with goosebumps to Faf’s descriptions of playing in front of hundreds of thousands of people in the world’s largest cricket stadiums, during the Indian Premier League (IPL), where Faf is now the captain of Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). The noise made by the crowd is so loud that batsmen cannot hear each other for calls on runs between the wickets. This feels like the pinnacle of a sporting event. In this RCB team, Faf captains one of his lifelong cricket heroes - a man he rates as one of the best ever - Virat Kohli. Kohli is an Indian international cricketer and former captain of the Indian national team. It must be quite a leadership challenge to overcome the awe of captaining your own hero of the sport. This takes a combination of extreme humility, considered respect, earned trust and camaraderie. Considering the very strong team I work with day-to-day, I face a similar challenge in being surrounded by people who can likely do my job better than me!

I wish I could relay all of the fascinating elements of our conversation, but sadly I need to stop somewhere.

Let me end by sharing three key insights from Faf’s book, which resonated with me

1. Underperforming players are best returned to form through love and care - not through being berated, belittled, isolated and pressured. Faf has a strong view on this having played under a host of captains and coaches, with different styles.

2. Traditions are important. They create safety and sense of togetherness in a team. The capping ceremony of new players, the 30 minutes of mobile-free time after a match ends - these all became traditions within the Proteas that were functional and purposeful but that created a common understanding and code within a diverse team.

3. Achieving inclusivity in a diverse team requires a structured, intentional, and deliberate approach. Faf spoke about the “Zebra” approach of the Springbok Sevens of mixing black and white players on the bus or at meals. He researched the Sevens successful recipe to entirely integrated and diverse team. Faf went on to describe how he cross-walked this to the “salt and pepper” approach at the Proteas. Considering the differences in cultural backgrounds, and the natural human behavioural approach to sticking with your own cultural group, these structured approaches helped the team to achieve natural and comfortable inclusion and diversity. Faf clearly matured and over time developed a great understanding of cultural differences, honing his ability to “stand in someone else’s shoes.”

I am privileged to have had this fun time with Faf, in a setting as amazing and dynamic as the Discovery Global Actuarial Conference. Our light-hearted interview wrapped up a day of deep mathematical, analytical, and intellectual creativity – the sort that makes Discovery a great place to live and innovate.

Thank you Faf. I have big respect for your achievements - just too many to list. Rated one of the top five batsmen in the world (scoring a magnificent 11 198 runs in all formats of international cricket) and one of the best ever fielders, Faf’s humility, focus, intensity, and thoughtful reflection belies the stature of this hugely talented man.