Unlocking a team’s ‘why’ can make all the difference in the drive to success, according to World Cup winning rugby union star Maggie Alphonsi (pictured).
Speaking at the fourth Women in Protection Conference today, Alphonsi took delegates through her journey to winning the Rugby World Cup in 2014 and the leadership lessons learned along the way.
Alphonsi revealed she discovered rugby union at secondary school through a conversation with a PE teacher when she asked about the bruises and black eye her teacher was sporting that day.
Upon taking up rugby, Alphonsi revealed she felt accepted in the sport and loved it so began setting goals including representing England, getting people to know her name and winning the World Cup.
After two unsuccessul attempts she completed the third goal in the 2014 World Cup final with victory against Canada.
Alphonsi revealed what the team did differently during that World Cup as she explained that finding out what every member of the squad’s “whys” for competing made all the difference.
This included a member of the team who had alpoecia and wanted to show it was possible to be successful with the condition while another wanted to make her late grandfather proud.
For Alphonsi it was her single parent mum – who she said gave her life to enable Alphonsi to live a life, who worked three jobs to enable her to reach her potential having grown up in a council estate in Edmonton, North London.
“We listened to all of everyone’s different reasons and all of our different whys,” Alphonsi said.
“We realised we all had different reasons. We all had different whys.
“We all have different reasons to why we want to achieve success and when you understand what your why is, what other people’s whys are, all of a sudden it’s a bigger driver. And when we understand what other people’s whys are, we want to help them on their journey as well.”
