STAN Alves used to refer to Leading Teams founder Ray McLean as the bloke who asked the dumb questions.
But 30 years after the St Kilda coach was the only one to respond to McLean's letters, Leading Teams is still having a profound impact in the AFL after playing a role in helping Brisbane go back-to-back in 2025.
Last year, Leading Teams celebrated 25 years since McLean and Kraig Grime founded the organisation in 2000. If you look closely enough, their fingerprints are on the premiership cups of most of the dynasties this century.
McLean was working in the Royal Australian Air Force, based in Adelaide, when he first tried his model in the SANFL with Central District, helping run pre-season camps and leadership programs.
Central had never played in a Grand Final at that point, and after losing 12 straight finals from 1972, the club finally won a final in 1994 and reached consecutive Grand Finals, on the back of the empowerment program McLean ran in Elizabeth.
By then, Saints coach Alves had heard enough from across the border. The Melbourne Team of the Century member hired McLean as a HR consultant at Moorabbin. The only problem was, Alves didn't know what title to give McLean.
"I had sent a letter to other coaches and never heard anything back, but Stan was the only one to call me," McLean explained.
"They interviewed me and offered me a role as an HR consultant. They didn't know what to call me. Stan used to refer to me as the bloke that asks the dumb questions. The fact that I wasn't a coach but got involved in the coaches' meetings and had this idea that we build a broader base of leadership."
"In the Air Force, I didn't fly, I was an education officer, so it was a pretty similar environment where you had all these guys who flew who didn't rate people who didn't. It was a bit like that in footy at that stage. There was some scepticism at that stage about a guy who hadn't played AFL; you were the outsider looking in and it did make us question a lot of things around how we did things.
"When I started working with Paul Roos, one of things that struck me was he always said he played 350 games of AFL footy but couldn't remember a coach asking him what he thought. It was really about us trying to empower the athlete. This all sounds stock standard now, but in those days it was crazy. Why would you be talking to the players? It's the coach's job to do that."
It took a couple of years for the players to buy in. The penny didn't drop at St Kilda until 1997, when the Saints started 1-4 and then recovered to reach the 1997 Grand Final. The following year McLean moved to Collingwood under Tony Shaw after the late Danny Frawley had endorsed the program. But everything really changed at the end of 2001 after a chance encounter with Paul Roos at Melbourne airport.
"I ran into 'Roosy' at the end of the season where he was the caretaker coach. We bumped into each other at the airport. He said: 'I don't know if I'm going to get the job, but if I get the job, will you come to Sydney?'" McLean recalled.
"Sydney was where people started to take a bit more notice because in our first year there was a lot of change with Tony Lockett and Paul Kelly and other older guys retiring. In the Herald Sun, Sydney featured prominently as a wooden spoon tip and I kept the article. We finished third that year. We didn't have the best list, but there was something about them. The players brought that 'Bloods' concept back to life. Sydney is where we had most buy-in from everyone.
"The chance meeting with Roosy was pretty significant. I was there all through his tenure and then halfway through that was whether or not our model would apply more broadly. The question was whether we could work with more than one club. Neil Craig came along and when he got the job at Adelaide, we started working with both of them. Then there were others in the business that worked at other clubs."
Sydney ended a 72-year premiership drought in 2005 with the famous Bloods culture central to the period of sustained success under Roos. Since then, Leading Teams has worked with almost every other club – 16 of 18 – including an important involvement at Hawthorn under Alastair Clarkson when the club won three straight flags.
That's where the connection with Chris Fagan started. In 2016, when the Hawks' then head of football was appointed Brisbane's new senior coach at the age of 55, he made sure Leading Teams was involved from the outset. McLean came up, then handed the baton to Queensland-based facilitator and former Carlton and Richmond player Simon Fletcher, who had worked at Gold Coast in welfare before joining the business.
"We started because as soon as 'Fages' got the job, he made it pretty clear that part of his platform was to get Leading Teams in," McLean said.
"He and I worked together at Hawthorn. We had the full support of all the people around 'Fages'. They built that culture really well. When they had issues around performance, the players took more responsibility for performance."
McLean said any partnership between Leading Teams and a club wouldn't work successfully if the coach didn't believe in the model. It hasn't always worked, but the most success has followed when the senior leaders at the club believe in what Leading Teams can offer.
"It's pivotal. It's the same as when we work corporately – if you have the CEO of the business that ums and ahhs a bit, it will be very hard to fly," he said.
"I've worked in the AFL for 30 years and I've never had longer than a one-year contract. That was always designed because at the end of the year people could be frank about if things were working or not and so could we. If the coach and the other key senior leaders are not pulling in the same direction, it will have its problems.
"If you want to maximise performance, the Brisbane model is not a bad one. Most people would agree they've had their fair share of success. It doesn't mean our model is the only way, but for clubs that rely on the coach and assistant coaches as the leaders, the most obvious problem with that is they don't play. (The aim is) creating an empowered environment where you have problem solvers (the players) that feel that responsibility on game day."
Leading Teams has grown into a company of 35 people based across Victoria, NSW, South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia. McLean retired in 2025, but someone he crossed paths with during his time at the Saints is now the chief executive officer running the business.
When Dean Anderson moved from Hawthorn to St Kilda at the end of 1992 after playing in two premierships across 87 games for the Hawks, he was shocked by what he walked into. He was just as shocked by the impact an outsider had on transforming not just the club, but the industry.
"St Kilda was a horrible football club when I went there," Anderson said. "People didn't leave that place better people until Ray turned up. Stan Alves was very big on that and supported Ray. It was so bad; they had no money, no infrastructure, wrong people in wrong jobs, they didn't care about players.
"Ray turned 'what does it mean to belong at this footy club?' on its head. What did that mean? It meant being the best version of yourself to help the footy club be successful. He transitioned that place very quickly. He was the pioneer and had an enormous impact. It turned the industry on its head in terms of behavioural expectations and it has helped footy clubs, helped the AFL and helped individuals."
Anderson spent 30 years in banking after his playing days and sat on St Kilda's board for a handful of years before being appointed Leading Teams CEO in 2022. His focus has been on growing the business in the corporate sector, which now makes up 90 per cent of what Leading Teams does.
"It's very diverse with what we do and who we work with; you name an industry and we will have done work in it," Anderson said.
"Ray and Kraig had a belief that the program worked for any given team. They thought there was a bigger world out there outside of sport and started to grow and started to win business through their networks. Education would be the most dominant form of business we do working with schools. That generally involves teachers and we do a lot of work in the lower socioeconomic areas. The corporate work is small to medium-sized businesses that don't have really strong HR departments and need support, so we do a lot of work there, that's a pretty big part of our business."
Anderson, who is the father of Gold Coast captain Noah, believes the Leading Teams program doesn't just impact people professionally, but also in their personal lives away from work, as they raise a family and remain connected with friends.
"This line of work has helped me as a leader at work, the way I've lived life and how I've run a family. What's the best version of myself? For me, I've got a full understanding of when I'm at my best and the people I work with know where my gaps are and they help me with that. it helps me with work, family and friendships in a massive way," he said.
"Leading Teams helps you become a better human being, helps you become the best version of yourself, because what we do is give people feedback to help them be better. It's very logical, but a lot of people don't like feedback to help them get better. But as long as the feedback is coming from a genuine place and people care for you, then you can blossom. It's not just work, its everything. It's been a blessing for me."