Craig Tiley remembers the exact moment he knew he would hire one of his team members. 

She had left the job interview and was walking up the corridor. There, she saw a crumpled piece of paper lying in the middle of the floor. 

“She stopped, she picked up the piece of paper – it wasn’t hers – and threw it in the trash,” he recalled.

Then and there, Tiley made the call to offer her a job. 

“Why? She paid attention to detail, obviously had a great deal of empathy and was humble because she was cleaning up somebody else’s mess,” he told Helen McCabe on the latest episode of the FW Leadership Series podcast. 

As CEO of Tennis Australia, Tiley has one of the most high-profile, high-pressure sports leadership roles in the country. Each year he is responsible for helping make the Australian Open a reality. 

In a remarkable interview, he reflects on the key lessons he has learned on his path to the top. Here are three of our favourite takeaways. 

Coach a team

For anyone looking to be a leader, Tiley has this piece of advice: Coach a team. 

“Go and learn how to get other people to perform against the framework and the strategy you set,” he explained. 

This was how he cut his teeth as a leader, starting out at the University of Illinois – or, as Tiley described it, “this little college town in the middle of nowhere”. 

There, Tiley caught the tennis world’s attention. He led the fastest tennis program turnaround in US collegiate history. Under his coaching, the university won two national titles and broke a 100-year-old record for most consecutive wins.  

“I got motivated by the challenge of people saying it couldn’t happen, because I was trying to win a national title that had been dominated by five schools over the last hundred years,” he recalled. 

“[And I was] in the middle of the cornfields of the state of Illinois where the weather is, seven months of the year, snowbound … it’s not a traditional place where you develop great players.”

The university’s tennis program soon became the US benchmark, producing athletes who not only played in – but went on to win – Grand Slams. 

“It’s a reminder [that] it’s not the place, but it’s the people. And you can put a good team and a great team of people in any place and they’ll achieve great things,” Tiley said. 

Four tests

There are four central traits Tiley looks for when he hires. 

He delves into each of these qualities in detail in the podcast episode. They boil down to embracing change, letting others take credit, helping outside of one’s remit and possessing a “can-do” attitude. 

Speaking to the second trait of letting others take credit, Tiley explained that it signified humility and ability to work in a team. 

“Most people hold on to credit like they want to own it because they feel like it elevates them,” he said. “But actually, it elevates you when you give other people credit.”

The E-Word

As someone who works closely with some of the world’s top tennis stars, Tiley knows a thing or two about egos. 

“I’ve realised that everyone has an ego, but what you have to manage is how they display that ego,” he said. 

To fellow leaders he says: If an ego is causing conflict, “don’t train it. You need to change it.”

Or, as he elaborated: “If the signs are that they’re displaying an ego that’s going to come into conflict … I don’t spend much time trying to change that ego. I try to change the person.”