You Don't Need the Armband to Lead

I was at Stadium Australia on Saturday night.

I was one of seventy-four thousand, three hundred and ninety-seven people roaring for women on a football pitch. As a former player, I never could have imagined a crowd like this for women. I'm not sure I'll ever fully get used to seeing it, but it makes my heart so full.

When the final whistle blew and Japan's 1-0 victory was confirmed, the silence was almost physical. Then something shifted. The sadness was palpable — you could feel it move through the stands like a wave, but underneath it, something else. Pride — deep, unambiguous pride. They played their hearts out. They did us proud, every single one of them.

Then I watched the post-match interviews and read Steph Catley's and Caitlin Foord's posts on Sunday. And that's when the leadership lesson hit me.

It wasn't the captain who stopped me.

Sam Kerr is one of the greatest footballers Australia has ever produced. The armband, her presence, the weight of expectation — it's all hers, and she carries it brilliantly. She is the face of the Matildas.

But it was Caitlin Foord and Steph Catley who I couldn't stop thinking about on the drive home to Canberra.

Catley holds the vice captaincy. Foord holds no formal leadership title. On Saturday night, you wouldn't have known the difference — both on and off the field.

After the match, Foord stood in front of the camera and said it plainly: she'd had three big chances. She needed to do better. That's on her. No deflection, no hiding behind the result, no retreating into "we gave everything." Just clean, clear accountability — the kind that's genuinely rare, and genuinely powerful.

And then came her post on Sunday. She wrote about the weight of a final loss — how it sits heavy, how you replay the moments over and over, knowing on a different day you could have done more. But what stopped me wasn't the self-reflection. It was this: "I wanted this so badly. Not just for me, but for this group. These girls I've grown up with, fought beside, shared so much with."

That is not individual accountability. That is collective ownership — the kind where your personal performance and your team's outcome are inseparable in your mind. She closed with this: "And I truly believe our time is coming. It has to be."

Not a player's consolation. A leader's conviction.

And then there was Catley's post. Thirty thousand people liked it within hours — and when you read it, you understand why.

She wrote about the moment the final whistle blew. About looking around at her teammates, her friends, her family, and feeling the weight of every single one of their hearts breaking. About watching their sacrifices, their triumphs and failures, and knowing the toll it had taken for each of them to arrive at that moment — only to fall short. She wrote about looking up into the stands, all the way to the very highest seat in the stadium, and seeing and hearing every single fan. She wrote about the pride she has in this team, about loving being Australian. And then, after all of that — "We're down, but we'll be back."

That is not a player processing a loss. That is a leader holding her entire community — teammates, fans, country — in one breath, and then standing back up. That's leadership and that's grit.

And in the comments on Foord's post, Catley wrote simply: "No one in the world I would rather stand alongside out there."

Two leaders. The day after the hardest loss. Holding each other up in public.

Before the final, Catley had sat with Foord during treatment, watching Japan's semi-final, working through where Australia could expose them. No one asked her to. No role required it. She did it because she understood that her responsibility extended far beyond her own performance. She was invested in the outcome as if it were entirely hers to own.

That's not what a player does. That's what a leader does.

But it wasn't just what they said. It was how they played.

Words after the final whistle are one thing. Ninety minutes of action are another.

What I witnessed on the pitch on Saturday night was a team that simply refused to accept the narrative being written for them. Down 1-0 from the 17th minute, against a Japanese team that had barely conceded all tournament, the Matildas didn't retreat. They didn't manage the game. They didn't slow down and play it safe — they accelerated.

The intensity in the second half was extraordinary — pressing high, creating chances, pushing forward with the same urgency in the 85th minute as they had in the 25th. There were no dropped heads, no fractured body language, no quiet acceptance that it wasn't going to be their night. Every player on that pitch was leading. Not waiting to be told to push harder. Not looking to the sideline for permission. Just driving forward, together, because that's what the moment demanded.

That kind of collective resolve doesn't come from a coach's instruction in the 60th minute. It's cultivated. It's cultural. It's what happens when an entire squad — not just the captain, not just the leadership group — has internalised the same standard and holds each other to it, silently, constantly, without being asked.

They lost. But they never stopped leading.

Amazon figured this out a long time ago.

One of the most distinctive — and most misunderstood — things about Amazon's culture is that leadership isn't a layer on the org chart. The Amazon Leadership Principles don't begin with "for managers" or "at the senior level." They apply to everyone, from day one, regardless of title.

Ownership. Bias for Action. Are Right, A Lot. Deliver Results.

These aren't aspirations for the people at the top. They're the baseline expectation for everyone in the building. The belief is simple: if you wait until someone is promoted to expect them to think and act like a leader, you've already lost.

Foord and Catley weren't leading because someone handed them the responsibility. They were leading because that's who they are, and because they're part of a team where that's simply what's expected — of everyone.

Most organisations get this backwards.

We promote people into leadership and then wonder why accountability is thin on the ground. We treat leadership as a reward for performance, rather than a practice we cultivate from day one. We wait for the title before we extend the expectation.

And then we're surprised when the team doesn't perform like one.

What I saw at Stadium Australia on Saturday night wasn't just exceptional sport. It was a masterclass in what genuine leadership culture looks like — not just at the top, but through the whole squad. Players at every level speaking in terms of collective ownership, shared accountability, and what comes next.

No excuses, no blame. Just honesty, and the next step forward.

The question I'm sitting with this week — and leaving with you:

If you stripped away every title and every reporting line in your organisation tomorrow, who would still lead?

Who would still call out the problem? Who would still stay back to work through the strategy? Who would stand in front of the room after a hard result and say — that's on me?

That's your real leadership culture. And it has nothing to do with the armband.

Steph Catley looked up into those stands on Saturday night — all the way to the very highest seat — and saw every single one of us looking back.

Catley says they'll be back. Caitlin Foord believes their time is coming.

So do I.

— Cindy Schwartz

Rewriting Leadership Norms