"I know (coach) Mike Hesson will bring a calmness to the dressing room. There won't be arms waving and finger pointing. It's the time for the players to keep together, to close the doors and build the fence around them and look at the plan of what they can do for the future.
"They have to salvage something out of this last game and that will only come if there's a calmness about the way they play."
Like most observers, Lees was stunned when Kiwi captain Kane Williamson decided to bowl after winning the toss in Canberra.
But he defended the skipper, saying that decision would have been taken by the team brains trust.
"He has to carry the can and that's what's happening today," Lees said of Williamson. "I feel a bit sorry for him because he's the guy who has to go out there as part of the toss and has to let the opposition know what we are doing.
"If he decided that on his own, I would be amazed. They've all decided that and at the end of the day it's a committee decision. While Kane Williamson won't be feeling great about it but I can assure you it wasn't all his decision.
"It certainly would've surprised some players, even in the New Zealand camp. When the toss goes up, and the captain comes back into the dressing room and one says 'we're fielding' and the other says 'we're batting', there would have been 11 players in one dressing room a high and there would have been about five players in the New Zealand team saying 'how did that happen? Why?'"
Listen: Martin Devlin speaks with Warren Lees
Lees said the decision was symptomatic of a lot of things that went wrong.
"That was one thing of many on the night. There may have been a bowling plan and either we didn't follow it or we weren't good enough to execute it. I think it was the latter," he said.
"We made some improvement from the first game but in actual fact the ball was just everywhere. The experienced players are showing they are trying to do different things.
"But the younger players concerned me around the adrenaline rush they get around ball four or five of an over when they've just been hit for two boundaries and all they can think about is getting to the sixth ball as quickly as possible. They almost run back to their mark. It's like 'let's get this over with as quickly as I can so we can go and have a rest on the boundary'. I think that's the inexperience coming through."
Lees also quizzed whether the Black Caps had done their homework ahead of the Canberra clash.
"Even listening to Australia's captain after the game saying history says this pitch may rough up a little bit in the second innings, when the night sky comes in, the ball will reverse, the history of results of games and how many runs have been scored on that pitch in the last six international games....did we not look at all of those things? It appears we either didn't do that or we were above it. Now, there's something wrong there.
"We really have to pick up our fielding and do the little things well. You could see there was a bit of sloppiness in the field as they got a bit ragged."
Lees wouldn't buy into any criticism of Williamson over his captaincy style versus his predecessor.
"There's a difference in the captaincy style of his and former captain Brendon McCullum," he said. "I think that's fine, we accept that. I think he's a very bright young man. Right now, he probably doesn't have confidence in his players and he has probably gone back to living in hope with one or two.
"But he will have a similar attitude to Mike Hesson."
He added that it was not all doom and gloom and Australia itself was an example of how quickly things could turn.
"They look like they are a world beating side all of a sudden but it wasn't so long ago that there was a lot of a panic in Australian cricket. So we will come out the other side. I just hope we get some confidence so that when we get back here for that big summer, our public are going to see our team at their best."
"We don't mind losing by 20 when there's a big score like a 300 plus. We don't mind losing if some of our players have looked like they have given their very best and performed on the night.
"But repeat mistakes hurt the most and mean a close loss becomes an absolute thumping and that's what we got last night. It's hurts but sometimes you learn a lot from those losses."
