How Ivan Cleary Etched His Name Into Penrith Panthers Immortality

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Empowering Leaders podcast with Ivan Cleary, the Penrith

Panthers triple premiership winning coach.

Found Ivan to be incredibly humble, but equally full of wisdom at the same time.

Ivan tells us the full story behind the gut-wrenching decision to leave the West Tigers in 2018

with two years left on his contract.

But ultimately, it was Ivan trusting his heart and his gut instinct that helped him to make

that call in the end.

He tells us about ramping up the mental skills of his team following the line of the All

Blacks and their psychologist, Dr. Kerry Evans, and goes into detail about the method behind

that and how that's helped the Panthers with their incredible success.

You hear about his incredible self-reflection on his early coaching career.

He also describes his North Star of coaching in great detail and how their values fuel

what it looks like and how it acts.

Amazing story.

Love catching up with Ivan Cleary.

We're also really privileged to have Ivan Cleary as part of our Elita Connect program.

Head to elitacollective.com to find out more, book a discovery call.

We would love to get you involved in a group just like Ivan.

We curate these groups of five to six people.

You don't have to be a legendary NRL coach to be part of our program.

We just love connecting with people from different backgrounds, whether it be from the arts or

from sport or from social venture or whatever space you're in.

We know that leadership doesn't need a title or hierarchy.

We just love expanding this community of great people and Ivan is a great and fantastic

member of that.

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Ivan Cleary understand the value of good sleep and that is one of the clues we see all the

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Ivan Cleary is an icon of the NRL having just completed a trilogy of premiership victories

with the Penrith Panthers in 2021, 2022 and the remarkable come from behind three-peat

win over the Brisbane Broncos in what is one of the great grand final wins for me of any

sport anywhere in the world.

The added layer to this unique success story is that Ivan's eldest son Nathan is the triple

premiership winning co-captain of the Panthers and regarded universally as one of the NRL's

all-time greats despite being only 25 years of age.

Ivan himself had an outstanding 186-game playing career that saw him in 1998 score

a then-record 284 points in an NRL season.

Ivan is a father of four and has been married to his wife Rebecca for more than three decades.

Congratulations, Ivan.

Unbelievable achievement when he threw premierships and I really appreciate you taking the time.

Thanks, Darce.

I appreciate those nice words.

It's nice hearing all those things about you.

You had an outstanding playing career.

As a player.

Did you always feel like coaching was your path?

No, not really.

Yeah, it was only probably late in my career when you start kind of thinking about what's

life after going to look like.

I hadn't really thought too much about it.

I'd gone to university sort of before I started playing, so I had a few options along that

path.

But I remember one of my brothers telling me one day he should coach.

I was like, that's pretty much where...

Yeah, as far as it went.

I really just fell into it, to be honest.

When you read your highlights and the success you have, it sounds like a dream life.

But as we all know, everyone has their challenges and you've had more than your fair share of

challenges.

Can I take you back to 2018?

You're in your first year as coach for the West Tigers.

Dave O'Neill is the chairman of the Penrith Panthers.

He lures you back to Penrith and it comes with some serious backlash.

The world turns on you.

People write and say some awful things about you.

Can you tell us...

Can you tell us how hard that was for you and your family?

Yeah, it was extremely difficult at times.

It was a strange situation because you mentioned Dave O'Neill, the then chairman of the Panthers.

I'd coached at Panthers before, so Dave and I were friends.

He just wanted to catch up with me.

Had been trying to for some time, so I didn't really think too much of what it was about.

Yeah, just went for a coffee.

I was coaching the Tigers.

At the time, honestly, I was happy there.

I wasn't sure how the future was going to look there, but I wasn't too worried about

that at the time.

Just a bit of backstory.

We worked at the Tigers.

We were trying to sign Nathan, my son, and I realized that he didn't want to come.

I actually had to tell him, look, I don't want you to come, mate.

If you don't want to come, just tell me.

He's like, oh, really?

I was like, I don't want you to come just because of me.

That's the last thing I want.

Anyway, that was just something.

That was going on in the background.

Yeah, and Dave popped the question, just said, do you want to come back to Panthers?

Honestly, it hit me from complete left field in my eyes.

My heart straight away said, yes, there's nothing I'd love more.

I never wanted to leave Panthers.

I felt like there was so much unfinished business.

I was very close with a lot of the players, the community.

We lived here.

Obviously, Nathan was playing there, but that left a big problem.

I was contracted to the Tigers, and it was two more years there.

I'd started a rebuild, which was, that's a big process, and I was all in doing that.

Yeah, it dragged on for a bit.

I just went to the Tigers, honestly.

I just went there and just told them, honestly, what had happened and how I felt.

They said, you're not leaving, and I said, fine.

I understand.

I just went about my business at that point.

We were still playing in the season.

I was trying to get us to the finals.

It didn't quite get there, but then it dragged on afterwards.

I remember my wife saying at some point, why don't you just stay?

It's just getting too hard.

I just said, honestly, because there's just this attraction that I just can't shake.

Yeah, anyway, I got through a bit of a tough period there.

There's still a lot of people down at the Tigers.

I'm not too happy with me, but I think it's worked out okay.

Worked out a bit better than okay.

That's a huge amount to think about.

Your son, who's probably the most sought-after player in the country,

the club wants to entice him across to the Tigers.

You're such a values-driven person, and integrity comes out in everything you do,

and you're caught in this incredible bind, I suppose.

I look at it, too.

I think you're the Dallium Coach of the Year in 2014.

The Panthers sacked you a year later.

Was any of that in the mix, too?

How did you go back there after they booted you only a couple of years earlier?

Yeah, definitely.

You know, Phil Gould, a very highly respected, well-known figure in rugby league,

he got me there in the first place, and then he did sack me.

He was still there when I came back, but he wasn't the one that wanted me back.

So that was definitely some question marks.

I had a lot of family members going, what are you doing?

But I didn't really know what I was doing.

I just felt it, you know, and it was honestly all about feel, my heart.

A lot of it was around Nathan, I think.

Yeah.

There's a strong attraction to go and link up with him.

I just felt terribly, you know, about the whole Tigers thing.

Honestly, I still feel, I don't feel good about that.

As I said, you know, I've said this before, you can only be in one place, and at the end

of the day, if I had stayed there, I just don't think they would have got the best of

me.

So I know that they mightn't understand that, but it's just how it went.

I think I've done 120 or so of these conversations, and I love it.

Yeah.

that is a really common thing is that people will say what you said

in a roundabout way, that they've made the best decisions in their life

when they listen to their heart or their gut instinct.

And when they make bad decisions, they go against it,

even though it might seem the right way.

It sounds like a pretty crucible moment there for you where you just,

when my heart's here and I've got to do it.

Does that sound right?

Yeah, it's absolutely right.

And even when there's, as I said, you know, my wife, Bec,

said at one stage, like it's, you know, don't you just,

why don't you just stay?

Like you're happy there.

Like there's, you know, you've got so much happening.

We're on the right path, all that stuff.

I just said, I get it, babe.

Like I'm a fairly simple bloke, really.

I'm fairly conservative as well.

So it would have been really easy for me to just go, no.

But I just, for some reason, I just kept down the path.

And I mean, I don't think you ever want to look back and say, well,

that's all I'll just say.

Like this was, you know, it's not really about that.

I just.

It's just something I felt like I have to do.

And I think what it has shown is that, yeah,

I felt like I did belong at Panthers.

The stuff that I, you know, started or helped start, you know,

many years ago, did have some unfinished business, I think.

And, yeah, it's just one of those things that happens in life.

I totally agree about the gut feel and such a common thread in leadership.

The amount of times you don't do it, you just kick yourself and go,

I knew I should have done that, you know.

So I think that's one of the fun things about being a leader, I reckon.

Yeah, it's a great bit of insight.

You're fast-tracked in.

You find your way to the Panthers in that first year.

You're two and eight, two wins, eight losses, 10 rounds in.

And I read this from you at the time.

You said, I felt burdened by the father-son thing.

Nathan wasn't playing well.

I felt guilty for that.

I felt like a burden on him.

I was wondering maybe I'm not the right man for the job.

Can you tell us about that bit of self-doubt that crept in at that time?

Yeah, I think I started that year still carrying the baggage from the Tigers.

I still felt like I did feel guilty and bad about that.

I was hearing the noise too much.

It was really affecting me personally.

So that was part of it.

The other part was there's a lot of pressure,

a lot of pressure around the signing and me going back to Penrith.

There's a lot of people with a lot of eyeballs on us,

particularly and more so because of Nathan.

That's why I felt guilty.

Because I felt you don't deserve to have extra pressure

because of me, essentially, on you.

And I think that was affecting him.

It was affecting me as well.

I'm sure it was affecting my coaching because, as you'd know,

people feel that.

It wasn't great times.

There was a lot of doubts going on in my mind.

The team was playing terribly, honestly.

As the coach, you're responsible for the performance.

I don't care what anyone says.

You can blame the players or...

Yeah, as much as you want.

But the fact is that you're responsible.

It was a mess.

So anyway, sort of hung on and turned it around.

We ended up winning seven games in a row at that point,

which I don't know where that came from.

It just sort of happened.

And then we stumbled to the end of the year, missed the finals.

I definitely thought, well, yeah, I'm not sure whether I am the right man.

But in the end, I was like, well, no, no, I'm going to go for it.

And made a few changes and did a couple of things there.

And I never expected what's happened in the next four years.

Spoke about a bit of dysfunction in the culture at that time.

Can you share a bit about what you saw and what needed to change?

Listeners probably have read the book,

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.

I'd read that book about 10 years earlier, but had forgotten about it.

My brother sent me just like a snapshot of what the book's about.

He just sent it to me on the phone one day.

And I looked at it and just went,

Oh, man, that is us.

Like that, honestly, that is us.

That was quite a shocking moment, but a good one as well.

I saw that was the basis of, yeah, we're going to turn some things around.

I mean, I was trying to promote change.

You know, whenever you come into a club, I know I've been there before,

but I was definitely trying to change things.

It wasn't a rebuild by any stretch.

We had some good players and it was ready to go, I thought.

But culturally, there were some things that I thought we needed a shift there.

And as you know, you know, some people come with you on that journey.

Some take some time, some don't.

And that's what was, yeah, that was happening.

You know, we needed to change some things and some tough decisions were made.

Some, you know, unpopular ones probably.

That's what we had to do.

And that's the same as anything.

It just took me a while to realize that we had to make some changes.

And that was one of the things about the first year back there, 2019,

where we were struggling.

I thought the place was different.

You know, I thought I knew the place.

I'd coached here before.

I'd watched many games when I wasn't there because Nathan was playing.

But things had changed and I didn't notice until I got there.

So that was interesting.

It was difficult, but it was also good.

You know, it's good to go through that time.

And yeah, it was definitely some hard times early,

but I think the struggle is what it's all about.

It definitely makes you enjoy the good times more.

Fast track on the head full of years later and you're hugging your eldest son.

He's the co-captain of your team.

You've just three-peated.

You've pulled off one of the great grand final wins.

He's played one of the great grand final performances.

As I said off the top, in any code, any sport in the world,

that's the level of what you've achieved.

Are there any words that can describe the amount of joy

that you must have felt to post the third grand final win with the family?

No, I don't think so.

It was just incredible.

You know, I've been fortunate enough to win three.

They've all been different.

The emotions have been all quite different, actually.

And this one was, I don't know if I've ever felt euphoria,

probably other than sort of, you know, when you have your children

and just sort of pick through the first job you've never seen one before

and just go, oh, my God.

But this was something else.

Just the way the game went and how radical that last 20 minutes was.

And when it was actually over, I was just like, yeah, it was sort of surreal.

And it took me, honestly, it was like weeks to try and wrap my head around

how that all went down.

Yeah.

I mean, I went back a few times and pieced together some stuff.

But, yeah, I like all the stuff with my family and obviously Nathan,

what he did, you just couldn't write it.

So I feel very blessed, very lucky.

So to win one NRL grand final is incredibly tough.

To win three in a row is just next level.

And to set the scene for those who aren't on the same plan

that don't understand, 24-8 down, 61-minute mark of the grand final.

In the last 18 minutes to win,

you score 18 unanswered points.

It's the biggest come from behind victory in grand final history.

You looked as calm as anyone could possibly be.

I watched you back yesterday in preparation for this in the box.

I know how you kept your cool.

Can you describe what sort of work goes into being able to get that right

in that circumstances and how you've been able to prepare that?

Yeah, I think the best thing about this whole thing,

apart from just the joy of it and experience,

is it's just going to be such a great reference point for the future in and

around, you know, when you're set the way you want to play,

the things that you value, the things you coach day in,

day out, you know, all season.

You preach, you know, little details here, there and everywhere.

And the amount of those things that happened at the end of that game

was just, there's just too many to discuss.

A big thing we've worked on the last few years has been, you know,

we've really ramped up, you know, mental skills, coaching, you know,

like obviously the better you get, like the higher level of competition,

we all know how much the mental stuff is important.

But we probably, not neglect it, but it's probably never, you know,

coach as much as it should.

It's hard to find the time.

You know, we may have a conscious effort probably for the last, yeah,

probably four years, but definitely it's improved the last few years

because once you get better at it.

And a lot of that stuff came to the fore in that last 20 minutes, you know,

just trying to stay present regardless.

So what the situation was like, you know,

the scoreboard was blowing out, the time, everything.

You know, a lot of the stuff we trained and spoken about, yeah,

like it helped the boys out in that moment.

I mean, it's not always going to work out that way,

but just for it to actually work and it's going to be such a cool reference

point for the future too.

It's like the chicken and the egg thing, isn't it?

What do you get first?

But, you know, that's going to be really fun to actually look back on

when we're trying to improve.

And evolve even more.

Can you give us a little bit of detail on mental skills training?

What does that look like for you and the team?

Yeah, we probably followed the All Blacks lead probably when that was,

that's probably going back to 2011.

They were struggling with pressure.

Clearly the best team for probably 20 years,

but they only won one World Cup at that point.

Yeah, and they use the, you know, the red-blue model.

Kerry Evans, I think, is,

it's quite an intense, detailed and complex model.

When we try to just, you know, really simplify it and, yeah,

so that's kind of the way, the way we do it and, you know,

work towards very simple stuff.

Try not to make it too complex and too complicated for the boys or me.

Yeah, but a lot of it's just around, yeah, dealing with pressure and outside noise

and just all the things that can distract you basically in the middle of a game.

Yeah.

And we feel like we've only really started.

We've only really started to scratch the surface too,

so that's exciting for the future.

Heard your reference at Army Camp at the end of the 2019 season, I think,

that you felt you led the foundations

and then you built your culture and values on the back of that.

Can you share us a little bit about what that did for the team, you know,

heading into the three-peat Premiership wins

and what are the values and cultures?

How do you articulate them?

Probably going back to the, you know,

when you asked about the difficult year in my first year when I came back in 2019

and we had to make some changes at the end,

at the end of that year.

When I was originally sacked at Panthers at the end of 2015,

I had a year out.

I really tried to spend that year trying to, you know,

I'd been a head coach for 10 years at that point.

Started pretty young at like 35, pretty much straight out of playing,

made a lot of mistakes.

Had survived essentially, pretty much that's it for 10 years.

So I sort of sat down and thought, okay, I need to, you know,

streamline the whole thing.

Like what have I learned?

What works?

What doesn't?

And part of that was, yeah,

when I first started coaching the New Zealand Warriors, that was 2006,

I had an assistant coach called John Ackland.

John was, he's about 12 years older than me, I think.

Real wise guy, you know, real old footy head guy.

One of those guys, you know, the one-liner types and, you know,

just so cool.

And I remember him saying to me,

the most important thing you will do is create, you know,

the right environment.

And I didn't really, I knew what he meant,

but I don't think I ever really,

you know, drilled down into what that should really look like and feel like.

It was more just to sort of, you know, you have, you know,

you have, you know, beliefs, obviously, and standards and all that kind of stuff.

And then the culture was sort of just, it would just evolve organically.

Whereas at this point, you know, when I was out, I was like, right, okay,

I want to actually articulate like what it is.

And then did that for a couple of years and I got to the Tigers, did that.

And then when we had this bad year in 2019, I was like, no, no, no,

I'm going to streamline it again.

And I'm going to actually say what it is, you know,

so people can follow it and it's really clear.

And I've got an idea, just break it into three parts.

You know, what does it look like from the outside?

What does it feel like on the inside?

And then basically how does it act?

Not just on the field, but obviously on the field,

that's what we deal with.

And that's, so that's what we did and still doing.

So I'm still working on that.

Trying to make it pretty simple.

That's pretty simple to follow.

But everyone knows, everyone knows how we act, what we do.

In that sense, if you know, you're accountable for it

and that's pretty much how we've gone.

So what does it look like?

What does it feel like on the inside?

And then how does it act?

That's the culture reference point.

And then you live those behaviours and you get to analyse them

through that lens.

Is that as simple as it sounds?

Yeah, pretty much.

It's sort of like my North Star as a coach.

So I always just keep, you know, whether it's after a game,

whether it's a training session, whether it's if we've gone to a fan day,

yeah, all that stuff is just, you just keep, you know, referencing it.

So, you know, a little simple thing like, you know, we want to look fit.

You know, so if you want to be fit, then that goes into our recruitment strategy

or our, you know, retention model or, you know, we build from within.

So a lot of our kids come through.

So the Junior Pathways Program, like there's a big emphasis on, you know,

how fit we either are or we look.

You know, it's not just about being fit.

You know, so, you know, things like strong body language and,

you know, never defeated and all that kind of stuff.

You know, we care about that kind of stuff.

So it's just, it's good for not just me, but also the rest of the coaches

and the players and the captains and the leaders and all that sort of stuff.

Just simple stuff to, yeah, to follow.

The feeling one's interesting because that's a tough one.

But that's what we're always looking, you know, we want people who work for us

or play for us or whatever to feel, you know, connected

and, you know, to feel psychologically safe.

I know that's a, yeah.

It's easy to say, but that's a constant thing we work on.

And for me, that's a good one just to keep, you know,

and just in all your discussions and what you observe.

It's, yeah, it's something that we, again, we take very seriously.

And you don't always have it.

Without a doubt, you don't have it all the time.

But that's what we always, we try and search for that sort of stuff.

Could someone share with that recently around psychological safety?

That's, you know, Google has clearly got the ability to analyse data,

maybe as well as any organisation worked out in their team of, you know,

how many?

40,000, 50,000 people.

The teams that had that were the highest performing teams

over and above any other measurement they could find.

And it seems interesting how, you know, the North Star you described,

the Penrith Panthers, something you feel people in the organisation

have got an understanding of that, whether they can say it the way

you did or not.

Is that what you're achieving?

Well, that's what I'm trying to, yeah.

Yeah, and I don't think I'm there, definitely not there yet,

but that's sort of, you know, I probably, when I started this,

I probably didn't have the confidence in it and myself to sort of preach it.

I don't want to preach it, but, you know, if I feel as though it's, you know,

it's at a point now where, you know, we are, you know,

we are making some progress with it and I'm, yeah, much more comfortable,

you know, I guess, yeah, spreading that message and trying to get,

I guess, you know, other people in the business, obviously coaches

and other staff to, you know, to follow that.

Yeah.

Penrith is located 55 kilometres west of the CBD in Sydney,

proudly working class suburb of Sydney.

You speak a lot about your passion for the community, where you live,

and you moved your family to Penrith a second time around, I believe.

Can you tell us about the people of Penrith and they sometimes do get a bit

of a bad rap and why they mean so much and so much to you and the culture?

Yeah, just a little back story.

I come from the Northern Beaches of Sydney, that's where I grew up.

My wife also does.

For the average kid from the Northern Beaches, Penrith is pretty much like Mars.

You can't be further away, you can't be more different.

It's not somewhere where as you're growing up, you're going to go,

you know what, I'm going to live in Penrith, I'm going to go there.

Went to New Zealand for 10 years, got the job in Penrith.

I could have easily come back and just lived on the beaches and done the trek

or whatever.

But we decided that we wanted to, yeah,

we wanted to settle our family out there.

Yeah, had four kids or out here, I should say.

The thing was Nathan was like about 14 back then, 13 I think maybe.

And he's a good little footy player.

He wasn't a superstar.

But one of the things that was going to be good about it was like, yeah,

the footy system out here is strong, you know.

So if nothing else, he was going to get to play good competitive football

each week, which would help him.

Honestly?

It's the best thing we ever did.

My kids love it out here, honestly.

The people are, without putting, I don't want to put anyone down in Sydney.

I come from the beaches, so I'm probably allowed to say that.

But eastern suburbs, I've spent a little bit of time out there with the Roosters.

There is no pretentious people in Penrith.

If there are, they don't get very far and they won't last.

They're just real people.

I love their community.

I felt when I got here, the club wasn't going that well.

You get a lot of people come from sort of towards the city and, you know,

live out here.

Obviously, it's a bit cheaper and whatnot, a bit more space.

So there's a lot of like second, third generation, you know,

Souths fans, Parramatta, you name it.

You know, and if you were a Panthers fan, you didn't really want to put your head

up and talk about it too much.

And that was one of the things we wanted to change.

We wanted to, you know, we want Penrith people to be proud of their team

and their area.

And that wasn't all, you know, it's not always the case because, yeah,

as you said, there's a bit of shit put on us and stuff.

And just to see the amount of, yeah, Panthers jerseys and whatnot around

and, you know, just the pride that the community, you know, is feeling,

not just about the team, but about themselves.

And that is to be able to have some sort of influence there is just,

yeah, mind-blowing and I feel very grateful for it.

You're proud now, the Penrith community, no doubt about that.

And you mentioned, you know, Nathan, you said he's a pretty good little footy player.

You coached him when he was six, I believe.

I read about him as an Australian schoolboy champion who played, you know,

national level.

I mean, was there a point in time where you thought, hang on a minute,

my oldest son here could be a serious NRL player?

Was there a time you can remember that?

Yeah, probably when he made the Australian schoolboys, that was like,

it doesn't always mean you're going to be an NRL player,

but you're on a pretty good path.

He was in a really good Panthers under-20s team at that stage, very strong.

I think there was still five or six kids out of that.

That team are actually in our team still now, so it was very strong.

Yeah, I guess you sort of, you hope and think that he should be able to play.

How long for?

Honestly, I never would have envisaged where he's at now.

Interestingly, when I got sacked, that was probably the best thing for him because he was,

yeah, he was debuted as an 18-year-old where if I was the coach,

there's no way I would have picked my own son as an 18-year-old in the team.

So it's funny how things work out.

Like, it's definitely,

that's worked out better for him.

And I love asking this question, you know, about leadership on the home front.

As I said, you're a father of four.

What are you like as a dad?

Well, I think I'm all right.

Like, you know, I probably, it's just, you know, I guess a personality,

you know, you got to lead however you do.

I love my kids.

All my kids love them as much as any of them.

So two boys, two girls.

And we had two very close together.

Then we're pretty happy with that, a boy and a girl.

Six and a half years later, we got bored and life was getting too easy.

So we thought we'd have another one.

And then another one turned up.

I'm not sure how that happened.

But so we had four, yeah, boy and a girl, a bit of a break,

and then a boy and a girl.

So I know my first two, they complained constantly that, you know,

we were far harsher on them than we are the younger two.

And that's probably true.

So I think over time, you get a little bit lazy being a parent.

So just let them do whatever.

I've got four as well.

And I concur, isn't it?

You run out of gas by the fourth time around.

And they might be the most well-adjusted, the fourth one,

because you stay out of their way potentially.

But Nathan, Jet, Malaya, I think, and India.

I wanted to ask you, I was talking to a friend of mine,

a very successful AFL player.

His oldest son is a star of the AFL, as it turns out,

was an early draft pick and one of the best young players in the competition.

His second son didn't quite make the grade, a beautiful young kid.

And I was talking to him recently.

He said, you know, for the second son, he's almost felt this sense of shame

that the pressure from the family outside world was so much.

It was one of the saddest stories I've heard.

And, look, Nathan's carved this path out that's almost impossible

for anyone to follow, let alone having a dad who played

and the other siblings.

Is it a hard thing to try and protect the others in some way from that?

Yeah, well, my youngest son, Jet,

he's now 18.

He's in the Panther system.

You know, he's already experienced a lot, you know,

the whole opposition school are basically chanting and, you know,

just, you know, you're not as good as your brother or this or that.

And I can, you know, I know he feels that.

He's starting to get better at just letting it wash over him.

He expects it a bit more.

I've spoken a lot to my wife about this over the years,

and I worry about it a lot, what Jet's going to have to put up with,

not just him.

Not just me, his dad, but obviously his brother.

It just so happens he plays the same position,

which is he tried to change positions, but he couldn't.

It's just that's what he plays, and that's what he's best at.

So that's all sort of still ahead of him.

And I do, yeah, I worry about it.

But, you know, we talk about it a lot as well,

just trying to keep an eye on it as best we can.

Some things you just can't, you know, avoid.

Like there are, you know, his peers and friends and their families and parents,

and they see it.

They see things that...

Oh, I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't think exist, but, you know, whether it's, you know,

they get a...

I think Jet gets a bit of a rails run because of who he is,

and that's hard.

That's hard for Jet.

Like that's not his fault.

It's not his...

You know, and that would never be the case, by the way.

I would never do that.

Well, that's what I think.

And then again, I don't even...

I reckon some people have to tell me that, you know,

he's actually going well,

and I'm sort of trying to play it down all the time, you know.

So that's a bit difficult.

For the girls, yeah, they haven't been sort of...

Well, they sort of don't...

They don't kind of talk about it that much either,

but I don't know.

It's just one of those things as a parent,

just trying to navigate as best you can,

don't have all the answers for sure,

but, you know, we try and keep an open line of communication

as best we can,

try and keep an eye out for them and just deal with it,

you know, how we best fit, the way we think is best.

And you can't manufacture passion, I always say, in kids, can you?

And if that's what Jet loves to do,

it's what he loves to do, isn't it?

You're not able to...

to push anything in any direction, really, with any kid, I don't think.

And so I suppose you can just support them and their passion,

whatever it might be.

As it turns out, it sounds like he's got a love in the same way

and that will end up where it ends up, I suppose, isn't it?

Is that a way to think about it for the younger one?

Yeah, for sure.

I wish he was a golfer or something.

I could just go on caddy for him or something like that.

That'd be fun.

No, no, it's just kind of how it's worked out

and he's definitely passionate about it.

He's probably thought about that.

He's himself thinking, do I really want to do this?

Do I want to go down this path?

But that's what he wants to do, so we'll support him.

Like any other of our kids,

just try and give him the best opportunities as we can

for him to make the most of it.

And whatever happens, happens.

It's going to be hard to...

It's not about living up to his brother anyway.

It's just about his own path

and hopefully he makes the most of his talents

and does his best.

And if he does that, then he'll never fail.

Well, everyone, speaking of passion,

we've got a great passion for this world,

Alita Connect, that co-founded with one of my oldest friends,

a guy called Matt Waterwitz, about nine years ago.

And we connect people from different backgrounds

around the globe now to learn and share

in what we hope are these trusted environments

for personal development groups for five or six.

And we've been incredibly privileged

to have you collaborating in that world.

Can you tell us a little bit about Alita Connect for you?

Yeah, I had heard of it.

Matt gave me a call.

And just straight away when he mentioned it to me,

I thought it sounds like a really good idea.

It's, you know, I know you probably talk about this a fair bit,

about the loneliness of leading.

And I think that's the best thing about it

is it's not about, you know,

really what you are specifically doing.

It's just the common threads within,

whether it's business or sport or entertainment or whatever.

There's so many things that you just go,

oh, man, yeah, yeah, I understand.

I get that.

I'm glad you're going through that.

Like a lot of times you get off a call and think,

I think reinforcement.

A lot of think that's, I think, yeah,

what I am doing is I think we're on the right track.

So there's no, you know,

I find there's not a lot of times you go,

oh, I'm completely off track there.

A lot of it's just reinforcement.

Just being able to talk about stuff that you just don't get.

You don't get to talk about, you know, really.

Like as a head coach, you know, you don't,

you rarely get feedback or whether they like it or not.

A lot of people are sort of telling you what you want to hear.

A lot of the time, that's why you get married, I reckon,

because that's, you get sorted out there pretty much.

I'd certainly do, which is good, very good.

So I find, yeah, that just kind of,

just being able to talk on a common theme or a common thread about,

yeah, what we're all going through is, yeah, extremely,

it's motivating.

And as I said, it's, I feel like it's reinforcing, which is nice.

And Ivan, the sessions are an hour and 15 long

and busy people are able to, we find,

fit that into a schedule and you can,

and make that work, you know, a huge amount on your plate.

And I know Matt's put a lot of time into the sophistication

of making sure that hour and 15 gives people the maximum amount

of impact for their valuable time.

And he's put a lot of thought into it.

There's some brilliance in the simplicity of the facilitation.

Have you found that you get enough out of the hour and 15?

That's interesting you say that, because I didn't know that.

However he's done it, he's come up with it.

I reckon that's absolutely the perfect time.

Because I never felt like we haven't got,

through what we needed to, I never felt rushed.

Just never felt too long or, so I feel like it's perfect.

Probably what I didn't mention before is I think sometimes the beauty

of these conversations are it actually gets you out of your own misery

or head or thoughts where you can actually sit down and listen

to someone else's and, and offer something, you know, and that's,

that's good, hopefully good for them.

That's good for you too.

It's good to sort of think, oh, you know,

I'm hopefully helping someone in a completely different space that I

know.

I've never even thought of, of that, you know?

So I think it's actually good in that sense too,

just to, just to get you out of your own head and your own stuff.

Um, you know, with people that are smart and going through similar stuff.

I love the group you're in, Gus Wallen, one of the great people and true gentleman

in life, Nathan Paris is a extraordinary individual in his world.

Both of them have had the privilege to sit down in this format with Leon Cameron,

one of my oldest friends, as it turns out.

And Jack Trengove, just a super impressive young person and everything Jack has done

throughout.

Uh, his life and, uh, success leaves clues is something we talk about a lot.

I would love to ask you, we feel like there is some, uh, patterns around why people have

success like you and one of the great success stories in recent times.

And we think that idea of self-leadership is where it starts for people.

That's hard to have an impact on others if you don't have an idea of your own sense of

self-leadership.

What does that mean to you?

Yeah.

Well, I agree.

As I said, I've sort of worn a, I don't know, like a, probably a different path.

I think a lot of, a lot of guys.

Certainly in our industry and, or probably even sport, um, in general, probably in Australia

there.

I think the general trend now is people do a lot more time in a, in an apprenticeship

type role, whether it's an assistant coach or coaching it.

Even if it's in, uh, NFL, like in VFL teams or in rugby league, it's, you know, lower

grades.

Uh, I probably didn't spend a lot of time doing that.

Just from a, as a, from a leadership point of view for me, um, you know, I captained

sort of teams when I was young.

I think I didn't really think of myself as a leader.

I just probably cared.

Yeah.

I didn't know a lot about the team, uh, that I was in more so maybe than others.

And I feel like my, my parents sort of instilled a lot of that stuff in there.

They were very competitive people.

And then, um, yeah, as I said, I fell into coaching and the only reason is that someone

saw it in me.

I didn't really see it in myself, but they saw it in me.

So I thought, well, that's going to make confidence.

I thought, okay.

And then I had started and as I said, I got into it.

I was a head coach after only three years of coaching after playing.

Didn't know, think honestly, didn't know anything really.

Bobbled my way through it.

Survived.

Do it completely different now.

I mean, I learned pretty much the first sort of one of my early mentors, I suppose, as

a player, uh, taught me more about the game than anyone else on miles, but he pretty much

told me not to delegate as a coach.

Yeah.

It's more like a, well, you know, if you leave it up to them, like at the end of the day,

you're the one that's going to, you're the one that's going to get the ass, you know?

So that's how I started.

I pretty much didn't delegate anything.

Whereas now I basically delegate everything.

Uh, as much as I can, uh, so I've gone full circle there and luckily for me, I've just

been able to survive for a long time, but you know, and that's honestly, I feel like,

you know, for the big part of my career, I was surviving.

I was happy to make the finals or stay in the job or, you know, just keep your head

above water.

You know, I didn't think that at the time, but I look back and thought I was definitely

like that.

And I was lucky enough to get a team where I felt we could win.

Yeah.

It just changed everything and just went, well, you know, obviously more confident and

using people around me a lot more.

That was the power of delegation has been huge, you know, highlight for me.

I still remember the first time I did it and how good I felt, you know, how like stress

relieved and which was pretty cool.

And I suppose, so yeah, I've just, um, yeah, I've just learned along the way and I'm still

learning and, and I think that's what probably keeps me, you know, excited about the job.

357 games in before you win your, your first.

Yeah.

Premiership.

You'd coached a grand final in 2011 at the warriors and I, I had the privilege of talking

to Craig McRae, just won the AFL grand final with Collingwood, um, a few weeks back and

a lot of similarity in my mind around the two of you, Craig was a bit the same.

He didn't see himself as a senior coach for 18 years.

He took a longer time, but really didn't plan on doing it.

But delegation, you know, is probably where he has got the superpower now to the trust

he's got in everyone and the way he's able to do that.

It sounds like a.

Yeah.

The youth level, a set of values that you're talking about today.

We, we, we see leaders in positions of, uh, success like yours, conscious about how they

positively impact people in their environment every day.

And they think about that consciously.

Is that something that impact on others in a positive way that you think about?

Absolutely.

You know, it's, um, I mean, you, you know, you, you hear things I've been reading fairly

early in my career.

Like, you know, it's, it's a lot of the stuff that people will see from you is, is not sorry,

exactly that singing.

It won't be.

necessarily what you're saying or it's how you conduct yourself it's how you even your body

language at times um you know even the way you like you react to a certain situation everyone's

watching all the time and i still feel that's i don't always remember that but it's a good thing

to to remember you know if you if you're dragging your heels about something or you're walking to

work and you're distracted by something else you know people feel that and that's gonna that's

gonna have a negative effect on the day which means in a day that's part of part of your season

so that's the first thing the second thing is you know i love to i don't you know i don't think

about this all the time and i still still struggle to comprehend that sort of positive impact that

you can have on the smallest things doing the smallest things but but it's there and i i feel

really lucky and blessed to be able to do that i don't try to look i don't i don't get looking for

it but i do know i do

know i do know i do know i do know i do know i do know i do know i do know i do know i do know

now i think you know what i probably should have taken a little bit more time uh yeah when you don't

do it you know did i just walk straight past that guy and when i felt like deep down maybe he wanted

to talk but i was busy i had something else on or whatever i'm still learning about that i still

have to actually check myself a fair bit about that the other day i'm an introvert uh which can

be it can be um the opposite of what you need to be sometimes um i love you know i love talking to

people i love hanging out with people and all that stuff but i also like you know talking to

myself as well so that's always a struggle for me yeah and authentically yourself i think comes

across in everything you do uh to you can be an extrovert 6 a.m after your third premiership at

the right time if you if you caught at the right moment i uh i enjoyed uh listening to that fact

but even you know the humility that came across in that interview if you haven't heard um you and

carl stefanovic a big broncos fan go head-to-head that morning certainly made

made me laugh but creating and sharing a vision is uh something we see really leaders are conscious

of and you don't achieve your success without a really clear vision have you gone about that in

in your environment i agree uh i thought a lot about vision and and something that that needed

to be you know never-ending essentially so for example if he did climb everest and win a

premiership the vision that had nothing to do with nothing to do so much with that so our vision at

is to be a source of community pride that's and that's it i feel like in that sense it's so many

things so it's more than just about how we perform on the field although that's obviously a big part

of it it's you know how we present ourselves to our fans um when we're alone you know in like in

the streets and function in a restaurant at a pub at a school driving you know sitting at the lights

whatever we're always on the show like we're always you know that's and and

we have the ability to be able to affect the mood and the confidence and the and the pride in our

community which is we take very seriously and we actually feel that more now because we have

had some success you know and you can actually see it it becomes tangible like wow that's but

what it also does is then when that bar goes up you've got to keep jumping it so that's a driving

real driving force for us and it'll be the same again when we kick off soon and forget about all

if we can first things first and that's we're always trying to be a source of pride for our

community if they can be proud of what we do and we can make them feel good about that then

that's going to be a pretty good feeling for us i love it you know source of pride for

your community and it it's fascinating so not in a lot of clubs you hear this we exist to win

premierships and that language is at the top of the tree but for you that comes after bringing

that pride to the penrith community well yeah i think if we're

generally speaking if if we are a source of pride then we're probably doing a lot of the

stuff that's going to get us you know achievement that's sort of how yeah it'll like say the spoke

before about it culturally and how it looks and that you know that that that all you know it all

lines up there you know as well if our community's proud of us we're going to be doing a lot of good

stuff and if they're not if they're if they're not what are we doing wrong and it won't take

longer to realize that we're not actually living

to the news that we you know we believe in so leaders are really curious i'm and through

curiosity they're constantly trying to learn and get better does curiosity play a part in

in your leadership yeah definitely i love reading don't do it probably enough thank god for podcasts

because that's um you know that makes life a lot easier doesn't it uh just being able to absorb

you know information whether it's uh i kind of i just i look in different places for it um an

obvious one is you know any

um i love you know just i'm very curious around other sports and there's so many different ways

you can find little pearls of wisdom i've been very um influenced by you know some of the great

sporting leaders over time um just just little nuggets of gold here and there that you don't

need a lot of things that i think but it's just stuff that actually goes you know what that you

kind of relate to and go that's yeah that would work for us or i might i'm going to look into

always looking for that sort of stuff so communicating with clarity uh dimensional

leadership we talk about a lot ivan and you mentioned being an introvert and you can you

can see that in in your personality type but you're very clear your communication is very

direct from all that i've seen of you in the past and talking to you now is that a conscious thing

for you how have you gone about that the only thing conscious has been making sure you know

i'm authentic i learned that early in my life i've been very conscious of myself and i've been

very conscious of my coaching career i started at the roosters i was i was coaching the reserve grade

team i worked on ricky stewart was the coach in those days ricky was a very different very different

coaching style to me in those days i thought watching him i thought well that's sort of how

you're going to do it you know so you know i could say my first year i just thought what am i doing

just this is i don't feel like

doesn't feel right to me and so i i made a change and just yeah kind of went to my own style i've

stayed that way ever since so that's the only that's really the only deliberate thing that i

do i don't really in terms of how i communicate you know i don't waste words so too much unless

i've had a few too many drinks so i could talk a bit of shit with the best of them then

unfortunately you can't turn up to work like that so yeah uh i think i probably have got a direct

style which i've at the end of the day i think most people relate to

how important is that for you

uh everything yeah everything i love that style i love getting people's opinions

i get it you know at the end of the day most the buck will stop with me on most things if not all

of them honestly even though you're delegating all that at the end of the day like as i said

before the performance of the team that's with me that's on me but i love getting people's input

you know i love getting different views and then and then for me to be able to from that

point of view to be able to say okay this is this is where we're going to go i just think it's i think

that's one of the great things about coaching it's that's actually how you learn you just pick up

little nuggets from people you least expect you know it could be like a like an intern or something

it could be anyone you know and i just feel that's um yeah i feel that's an essential part it's easier

when you get older i think um because you yeah it's easier to be a little insecure from time to

time and you feel like oh if i'm supposed to be the head coach you know like i'm feeling like this

guy knows more than i do or he's smarter than me and i'm like yeah i'm going to be the head coach

you know that takes a bit of time to to be able to get over i reckon and and just you know be able

to i guess establish that maturity and confidence um and i feel like at the moment i'm certainly

at a better place there to be able to yeah collaborate properly i mean who's been the

greatest leader in your life uh i think probably probably my dad he actually had a fair bit to do

with me in sport as a kid i was the youngest of three brothers and

he didn't coach my brothers in anything but he coached me in soccer he's quite influential in

athletics that we did a lot of as a kid i actually played cricket with him actually played cricket

like park cricket with my brothers and my dad uh for a couple of seasons and that like just stuff

like that like just like i think i said before my dad's a very conservative like pretty straight dude

like very straight you know if he could manipulate stuff to win something he would do it you know

like you know like the old uh underarm

bowl my dad yeah he thought that was okay that's in the rules you you can do it and that was it

that's that you know so not really like that i don't think i was sort of always looking at that

going geez i'm not sure about that anyway but you know i did i did sort of like the pragmatic

way of winning it stuck with me forever you know and i still kind of think of i think of him a lot

actually when we make decisions or do stuff and i think oh my god is that is that a bit

of a line in terms of you know i think oh no the old man's like he's super straight if he thinks

it's all right i reckon we should do it if you want an idea of how tight the cleary uh family

and brothers are you you gave a kidney to older brother ash at a time where you know it was either

you or your other brother and the the testing came out that yours was the most compatible and

understand that was not even a blip on the radar for you you're always

going to look after the brother can you tell us about that yeah um it sort of came uh fairly

i know i think uh ash first when he first found out that he had some kidney kidney damage they

were talking like 20 years he might have to get one and like i think it was like maybe 18 months

later mate you know then your kidney so i didn't know anything about donation really i didn't know

how it worked um mom just called one day and said hey we've all got to try and you know get tested

because you know family's the best match and so i was like okay like yeah and then so we

the only thing i really checked was um you know if i

you know is it sort of like hereditary through the family and if i give one is that what if my

kids need one you know that was the only sort of thing we really checked up and once that was sort

of you know it was pretty much okay i was actually quite thrilled that i got the gig um so i

definitely had the best kidney in our family just that's just for bragging rights um and i yeah i

got the gong so um that was just from there it was just yeah full steam ahead you get all the tests

it's quite a it's quite a pretty full on

process it takes quite a while but to be able to do that for my brother like made me feel good you

know like it's of course it helped him but like oh it was sort of like a bit of a euphoric moment

for me too to be able to be able to do that you know and yeah he's still going strong uh what was

that 27 so six years now so i mean i'm i couldn't tell don't feel any different so everything's

going okay for me too are you closer on the back of it um i guess so we're pretty close before that

uh he's my best man um always been pretty pretty you know tight with my brother so probably i mean

yeah he ended up he's got three kidneys and i've only got one so i feel you know he's one out of

it but anyway we're a bit obsessed with uh collaboration and what we're trying to achieve

with a leader and a leader connect and as we said earlier we're really privileged to have uh

you

part of uh that program and i like asking this question in the spirit of that is it has it been

someone you thought i'd love to collaborate with that person on anything in your life that you

love to get into your sphere is there a name that jumps out at you in terms of collaboration

yeah not really i reckon there'd be so many i would be open to you know if you sort of you

just threw one out if you ran me out one day and said hey what about doing a work with this guy

probably go yep um yeah so no one particularly in particular but

you know i just think there's so many there's so many cool things that everyone does but if it's

from like a leadership perspective there's a lot of a lot of commonalities in and around because

at the end of the day we're all what doesn't matter what sport business it's all about people

um i think and you know if you can um do some stuff cross codes and all that or cross business

uh i think that would be pretty fun well i mean i love the wisdom that you shared today and your

brilliant uh man you're a great man you're a great man you're a great man you're a great man you're a great man you're a great man you're a great man you're a great man

matter of fact language it's an incredible sporting success i love the father son element

too and the whole family aspect to it is just it makes me smile every time i think of it and see it

and the humility and the giving back to the community as well is just it's a great story

in that in that part of the world and i really appreciate you taking the time today thanks again

no thanks to us very kind words man i appreciate it thank you for listening to the empowering

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