Mick Malthouse thinks it is "degrading". Jason Akermanis say it's akin to bullying. Matthew Lloyd says it can be frustrating. Wayne Carey has questioned it. But the likes of Tom Harley and Paul Roos swear by it.

It, of course, is the Leading Teams' leadership program, designed by former high school teacher Ray McLean that offers sporting clubs the confrontational - and controversial - "360-degree feedback style", also known as the "stop, start, keep" program.

The program is currently used by AFL clubs Carlton, Richmond, Hawthorn, Western Bulldogs, Essendon, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, even the AFL umpires. NRL clubs such as St George Illawarra and Melbourne Storm have also subscribed to his theories on leadership, while Australian cricket vice-captain Michael Clarke is a current client.

McLean recently released his second book, Team Work, which details what the leadership program is all about - empowerment, culture, framework, relationships and individual responsibility which can apply to not only sporting teams but the general business world.

In it, he writes: "At this point it is important to note that empowerment is not a fluffy, new-age management theory, but is in fact a hard-edged philosophy about aggressively improving team and individual performance.

"Our program is a behaviour-based decision-making framework for managing the entire life cycle of any given team, from a member's induction to their eventual exit from the team. It aims to develop an environment within a team where its members can play a role in developing the team's values and the behavioural guidelines that best achieve its goals.

"Our model challenges, very strongly, the Henry Ford notion of workers bringing their backs to work but leaving their brains at home."

Player empowerment is nothing new in the AFL. In 1995, then Carlton coach David Parkin handed all major decisions over to his players, many of whom, such as skipper Stephen Kernahan, ruckman Justin Madden and midfielder Greg Williams, were of veteran status. The Blues would win the premiership, although Parkin later admitted he wished he had wound back this responsibility when the playing list was overhauled later in the decade.

What, however, appears to be at the centre of the current debate over Leading Teams is the value of having players sit alone in front of their peers and have their strengths and faults critiqued by all teammates.

This style was said to have transformed Gary Ablett from being a good player into one of the game's greats when he was told, in direct terms, by teammates that he needed to change his mindset and training habits after the Cats imploded during the 2006 season.

Recently, however, Akermanis blamed the system for playing a role in his sacking from the Western Bulldogs, effectively describing it as workplace bullying. He sat stunned when former teammate Scott West even critiqued the colour of his blonde hair and brown goatee, which West allegedly felt made the outspoken Akermanis too much of an individual.

This was all part of the "stop (doing), start (doing) and keep (doing)" program. For instance, in similar meetings, fellow Bulldog Daniel Giansiracusa, an advocate of Leading Teams, was told by teammates that he needed to "put his head over the ball more", while at the same time praised and encouraged to "keep" up his strong work ethic.

Skipper Brad Johnson was told to stop trying to win games off his own boot, with Giansiracusa claiming the veteran forward had since become more unselfish. This program also allowed players to critique coach Rodney Eade.

However, this style isn't favoured by everyone. Amidst the fall-out from Akermanis' departure, Malthouse, the grand-daddy of AFL coaching, made his feelings quite clear.

"I hate it. I think it's degrading," he said.

"It depends on each club, and I'm not for a moment saying the Bulldogs have got it right, wrong or indifferent because I don't know their system. All I'm saying is when I first arrived at Collingwood, a certain young bloke who wasn't mentally really strong was out in the middle and I let those groups go because there's no use me joining them...and what I saw, to me, was appalling.

"Some will respond. They will stand up and they'll be strong and they'll come away thinking, ‘I can do this'. But it's not going to make everyone strong. It's going to make some players actually weaker. And for all intents and purposes you may well lose that player, totally. That's not the system."

The Swans and Cats swear by Leading Teams, believing its honest and open policy has been a key to their success in the past five years. Indeed, the Performance Improvement Program, as McLean calls it, has even ensured there was a succession plan for when Swans coach Paul Roos leaves at the end of the season - in this case, John Longmire.

In his book, McLean, who lives in Ballarat, includes a case study on former Port Adelaide coach Mark Williams. McLean said as Williams was an autocrat and would often overrule decisions made by his players, the empowerment scheme did not work at Alberton.

When it comes to the NRL, McLean has also admitted his system has not had great success there either, citing his work with St George Illawarra coach Nathan Brown.

"My gut feeling would suggest that the NRL still probably has a leaning toward a more autocratic coaching style generally," McLean said in a recent interview.

 "When I was at the Dragons the players found it very difficult confronting one another and managing or helping to manage peers' behaviour and performance."

In a controversial column on the AFL website last week, former Western Bulldog Luke Darcy lamented his club had not used Leading Teams in the late 1990s. Darcy claimed the insecurity of then coach Terry Wallace meant the players were not given enough of a say, and this had been a reason why they had failed to win a premiership.

Darcy even claimed that had North Melbourne adopted the system in the 1990s, the Kangaroos would have won more than two premierships and it could have prevented former captain Wayne Carey from enduring a turbulent off-field life.

Carey, however, described that suggestion as rubbish.

"To say Leading Teams would have helped them win a premiership is an absolute joke. Luke is a way off the mark there," he said.

"The one thing our system did at the Kangaroos was that we were all approachable. There was no elitist group, there were no cliques. Young players had no problem coming up and talking to me."

McLean, naturally, isn't solely responsible anymore for Leading Teams, which he established 15 years ago. Business partner Gerard Murphy has been in charge at Geelong, former Carlton and Western Bulldogs player Jim Plunkett helps the Demons, while former Carlton and Collingwood midfielder Trent Hotton had, until recently, headed the European operation which continues to spread through soccer, rugby league and rugby union clubs.

As debate over player empowerment rages in the AFL, the thoughts of Matthew Lloyd, the Essendon champion who retired last season, perhaps show the split in feeling towards this, in particular the "360-degree feedback".

Asked about how successful the concept had been accepted during his time at Windy Hill, the former captain said:  "We'd have five blokes willing to talk and 35 blokes who weren't.''