Blackcaps legend Stephen Fleming wasn’t “overly ambitious” about becoming captain when he was thrust into the role at a young age.
Fleming, who was New Zealand skipper for a decade, became the youngest captain in the nation’s history when he took the reigns at the ripe age of 23.
He is often regarded as one of the finest captains to play the game and believes that he grew into the role over time after not being overly keen on it to begin with.
“When I was 23, I wasn’t overly ambitious about being a captain, so a lot of my captaincy and leadership is learnt,” Fleming told Baz and Izzy on SENZ Breakfast.
“There are some social skills you may have that allow you to communicate a bit better and have stronger relationships with players that others might not have at the time, but I was very lucky that I had time to develop those.”
Fleming believes that leadership comes in all forms, some are born with it and others take time to develop it.
He now tries to take a collective approach to leadership in his role as the coach of the Chennai Super Kings in the IPL.
“I think there are some alpha athletes that stand out and they often become the leaders by default and (they’re) not necessarily the best leaders,” Fleming said.
“There are leaders that are cut short because they don’t have the results or don’t have the time to learn or change the mistakes that they’ve made early on.
“A leader in one aspect might not be great in another. So the ability to work out what players you want in your team to be contributing at key times is more important.
“I’ve almost gone away from using leaders to a more collective situation where a number of players can contribute and make really substantial contributions by the past experiences that they’ve had.
“So you don’t need a leadership tag or a captaincy badge to be the leader at that moment.”