Leadership lessons: picking the team

Joe Schmidt, Ireland coach

While sport isn’t always a perfect metaphor for business, sometimes the parallels are genuinely instructive. Squad selection is never easy, and deciding who gets on the plane to Japan has been tough for all the coaches – in most cases, the last selections have gone down to the wire.

Lessons can be learned from understanding the two key factors influencing the calls that were made.

The first factor is the coaches’ deep insights ...