AGSM x Sydney Swans: John Longmire on coaching for impact

Sydney Swans and AGSM @ UNSW Business School partner to deliver the Leader as Coach short course on coaching, trust and sustained performance.

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Lead as Coach AGSM x Sydney Swans

The Sydney Swans, recognised for their high-performance culture, have partnered with the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) @ UNSW Business School to deliver the Leader as Coach short course.

Blending elite sport insight with executive education expertise, the course translates coaching principles into practical leadership capability for leaders and organisations. Drawing on the Swans’ sustained success and academic frameworks, participants learn to build trustworthiness, strengthen influence and sustain performance in complex environments.

A distinctive element of the course is its use of real-life digital case studies from the Sydney Swans environment. These give participants the opportunity to examine leadership decisions in real time, and to explore how leaders build trust, shape culture and sustain performance in practice. Each case is grounded in the unique context of AFL football, a tightly regulated and equalised system where performance is analysed and dissected every week.

Designed for leaders across industries, Leader as Coach provides the structure and confidence to lead through influence rather than authority, strengthening team performance and long-term organisational effectiveness.

“Leadership is less about control and more about influence. Coaching helps leaders build the trust and clarity that allow teams to perform consistently over time.” 

- John Longmire

In an environment where organisations are increasingly focused on building coaching cultures, strengthening engagement and navigating constant change, this course offers leaders practical insight into how coaching can shape culture, influence behaviour and improve performance. Participants gain practical tools and real-world examples, forged through the learnings from elite sport, academia and business, they can apply immediately within their own organisations.

John Longmire is one of Australia’s most respected high-performance leaders, serving 14 seasons as Head Coach of the Sydney Swans, including a premiership and multiple Grand Final appearances. 

"Coaching is about understanding the ever changing environment you work in and being adaptive to maximise outcomes. " 

 - John Longmire

As a facilitator of Leader as Coach, Longmire unpacks what it really takes to lead in an environment defined by equalisation policies, national scrutiny and weekly performance accountability, and how those lessons translate directly to corporate and organisational leadership. John’s experience also highlights the realities of leadership, having to navigate both success and setbacks, learning from challenges and continually renewing teams, systems and thinking to sustain performance over time.

Q&A with John Longmire

  • The people whom I managed (in particular the players), always taught me more than I taught them. This was through the way that they reacted to how I was leading. If I was self-aware enough, I’d pivot and change how I was leading, without forgetting about my foundation.

    I’ve been deliberate about evolving rather than entrenching. Early in my career, leadership was largely about standards, preparation and decision making under pressure. Over time, what changed was my understanding that leadership is less about control and more about influence. Coaching is about understanding the ever-changing environment you work in and being adaptive to maximise outcomes. 
    1. Do the work early: The work you do in building strong relationships when things aren’t as pressurised can be drawn upon when the heat is on
    2. Who are the key influences in my organisation and why are they relevant? What do I need to communicate, and to whom? Take those who influence along with you on the journey. These can be people you lead or people you report to
    3. What’s best for the team or organisation should drive decisions: The execution should consider the impact on individuals

  • The biggest misconception is that high performance is a constant state. In reality, sustained performance requires regeneration of people, systems and thinking. This is always a work in progress.

    Periods of challenge aren’t failure, they’re signals for the renewal of what is possible. The best environments adapt deliberately and treat setbacks as part of long-term success rather than something to fear. 

  • Directive leadership relies on authority. Coaching leadership relies on engagement and understanding. The strongest leaders do not rely on the organisational chart — they lead through influence.

    You lead by holding standards, direction and cultural guardrails. You coach by helping others think, learn and take ownership within those guardrails. Coaching allows leaders to ask better questions, understand what individuals need and adapt without losing direction.

  • Strong coaching capability lifts the quality of decisions through true engagement and greatly assists the recruiting and retention of quality people. Some essential skills include:

    • connecting people's actions to outcomes
    • deep listening
    • asking quality questions
    • clear, timely feedback
    • understanding what makes individuals tick — and how it relates to their roles.

    These capabilities build trust. Trust develops through shared experiences over time, but it can be strengthened intentionally. Setting aside time to build relationships and openly share both successes and setbacks accelerates the development of trust. From that foundation, high standards and accountability can be established.

  • A coaching culture involves maximising people’s talent through daily conversations where two-way feedback is normalised. Feedback loops are part of everyday conversations — not one-off events. Strong coaching capability lifts the quality of decisions through true engagement and greatly assists the recruitment and retention of quality people.

  • Participants will review real-life case studies, apply decision-making frameworks to real leadership scenarios and engage in discussion around outcomes and alternative approaches.

    The course features a range of practical experiences, including:

    • Real-life digital case studies from the Sydney Swans’ high-performance environment, enabling leaders to examine leadership decisions in practice.
    • Insights from elite AFL leadership, operating within a highly regulated, equalised system under constant public scrutiny and weekly performance accountability.
    • Practical coaching frameworks to strengthen influence, engagement and team performance.
    • Techniques for building trust and stronger leadership relationships that underpin high-performance cultures.
    • Decision-making approaches for complex and high-pressure environments to help leaders assess situations quickly, balance competing priorities and make sound decisions when outcomes matter.
    • Practical methods for embedding a coaching culture, where feedback and accountability are part of everyday leadership conversations.
    • Lessons from both success and setbacks, exploring how high-performing teams learn, adapt and sustain performance over time.
    • Strategies to maximise individual talent, supporting stronger engagement, recruitment and retention.
    • Exploration of AI coaching in practice, examining how senior leaders can responsibly use AI to enhance reflection, strengthen coaching conversations and scale leadership development across their organisations.
    • Immediately applicable leadership practices that can be implemented within teams and organisations.

    This course focuses on what happens in the real world. Participants analyse real situations, workshop outcomes using proven frameworks and translate these insights into practical leadership actions. The course strengthens leaders’ ability to connect with their teams, build trust and influence behaviour, supporting both short-term performance and long-term organisational success.

Lead with coaching to perform with confidence

The Leader as Coach workshop bridges theory and practice through real-life digital case studies drawn from elite sport and complex organisational environments, alongside evidence-based models and frameworks.

This course goes beyond a theoretical exploration of coaching. It is a rare opportunity to learn from leadership forged in one of Australia’s most regulated, scrutinised and performance-driven environments — translated into practical tools for business impact.
Explore Leader as Coach

Denise Weinreis: Coaching through an organisational lens

Leadership expert Denise Weinreis, co-facilitator of the Leader as Coach short course, brings an organisational lens to these insights — exploring how coaching capability shapes culture, strengthens teams and drives performance across diverse workplace contexts.

About Denise Weinreis

Denise Weinreis is a leadership expert and organisational consultant specialising in coaching capability, behavioural flexibility and high-performance cultures. With extensive experience working across corporate, government and elite sport environments, she helps leaders build emotional intelligence, strengthen trust and create psychologically safe workplaces that drive sustained performance.

When to shift from directive to coaching leadership

There are moments when a directive leadership style is necessary — such as under tight deadlines, during crises or when working with inexperienced team members — where fast, high-quality execution is critical.

However, effective leaders recognise when to transition from directing to coaching. As priorities shift from immediate task delivery to long-term capability, motivation and development, a coaching approach becomes essential. Knowing when to adjust style is a defining feature of mature leadership.

The core skills of an effective coaching leader

Strategic leaders must be able to observe their environment and adapt quickly. Behavioural flexibility is central to this capability.

Strong coaching leaders develop cognitive, emotional and compassionate empathy in real time. This involves overcoming personal biases, practising perspective-taking and demonstrating situational awareness. These skills are particularly important when leading multigenerational or culturally diverse teams, where adaptability and emotional intelligence directly influence performance.

Building a coaching culture: Psychological safety and belonging

In strong coaching cultures, people experience psychological safety and feel encouraged to approach challenges creatively. There is a genuine sense of belonging — increasingly recognised as a critical factor in thriving workplaces.

When employees feel accepted, valued and safe to contribute authentically, engagement and accountability strengthen. Research reinforces this link: a 2023 study found that building coaching capability increased attraction and retention of talent through fostering continuous learning and employee wellbeing.

Organisations that cultivated purpose-driven coaching environments reported a 21% increase in employee engagement and a 17% increase in productivity.

Coaching, therefore, is not only a leadership style — it is a cultural driver of performance.