John Eales - Follow the leader

As a mentor, Eales says you share a sense of achievement when your charges do particularly well or receive some acknowledgment for their skills. While you may not really feel part of their particular success, he adds, you definitely feel for them and share the experience with them.

One of the highlights for Eales at the Olympic Games was the gold medal win for the men’s hockey team. "A fantastic bunch of blokes and a fantastic team, great attitude, so enthusiastic and so determined to do well but so modest at the same time, and I was really impressed by the way they went about their work.

"It was great to spend time with them in the lead up to it, through a couple of times when they were a bit disappointed with how they were playing, goals they let in, and then seeing the joy at the end of the road. You don’t feel like you contributed at all, but you feel a part of the whole thing."

As well as riding the highs with those he was mentoring, Eales was around to help teams deal with disappointments as well. And as any Australian would remember, the Games were far from smooth sailing in the rowing camp, and Eales played a small part in that incident. "I was there and available if they needed me to help out in any way," he says. "And I helped a little bit, in that I had a chat to some of the girls."

As any high profile sports person or businessperson can tell you, the spectacular highs of competition or business are celebrated but it’s the spectacular lows that often go down in history. As Eales says, "People in life go through experiences like that but very few people go through them under such scrutiny. And that experience is not easy for anyone, no matter who you are or what experiences you’ve had."

Eales maintains the role of a mentor, sporting or otherwise, is simple. "You offer your experience, basically, and that can be what you did in preparation for a World Cup final as opposed to an Olympic gold medal match, or how you prepared in the weeks leading up—the different pressures you’d face," he says. "Maybe it’s dealing with the media, maybe it’s dealing with the workload under a coach. It could be a whole range of things, but knowing you’ve been through those experiences, players and coaches are willing to come up and have a chat and ask you questions."

As his chosen business alliances indicate, Eales is a big advocate for the role of leadership and mentoring in any arena. "I know that any time I have been able to achieve a lot in any field, it’s been largely because of people who have inspired and helped me along the way," he says. "And whether you officially call them a mentor, or whether they’re a mate, or whatever you call them, that role is so important."

Part of this process, says Eales, involves people creating shortcuts for you, based on their own experience. "It doesn’t mean you don’t go through the learning, you still have to go through and make some mistakes, but you probably make less mistakes and will be aware of them a lot quicker. I think great mentors are people who can get in tune with you really quickly. They need to be people you get on well with, people you’re very comfortable with, talking about more than just the office stuff. Because I don’t think you can isolate what you’re doing in any work environment totally from what you’re doing outside, and so a real mentor needs to know you as a person, not just as a role."