Building The Greatest Sports Team In History: All Blacks' Steve Hansen

pressure you feel might be different the pressure I feel what time feels could be different to both of what we feel identify what it is and then what do we what's your plan when you start feeling that what are you going to do because when you've if you don't have a plan and you're feeling it you're gone Steve thanks for joining us you know it's a pleasure I'm looking forward to it uh let's start then with the the question that I guess defines the name of this podcast what is your version of high performance well I guess it's uh it's a number of things really but if you if you're looking at skill it's it's been able to perform the skill at the highest level under the most pressure and keep your mental fortitude in the now as opposed to in the past or being distracted by what's going on around you and um you know off field it's about making sure that you're doing the little things that make you better you know so we often I think understand the on-field stuff but we struggle a little bit with our field particularly young athletes when they start and that's where we have to educate them a bit and where did your own personal desire to find high performance to improve yourself and those around you begin you know I think when you start doing things and you don't do them as well as you like to do then you find ways to get better and if you want to win things and you don't win them you find ways to get better and it it grows within you and um you know it's like something's just tapping away in the back of head all the time demanding that you you've got to front up and I was lucky in my early coaching career I I um I came straight out of playing and went straight to coaching and I had a coach I'd been a teacher a coach you know for all his life and he taught me something that stayed with me forever you know after the game and you haven't won or haven't played as well it's not about what the guys haven't done it's what what could you do better during the week to help them be better and he said that's the question we've got to ask ourselves so that stuck with me and I think that's been wonderful help so I'm a sort of a coach as well my dad was a boxing coach Steve and um I think sometimes in this modern day and age we often over complicate a lot of the messages and I think common sense is common practice and it goes right the way back go on well it shouldn't be called common sense because it's not that common um the job of the coach is to take something that's complexed and complicated and make it simple the simply you can make it the easier it is for you know your athlete to be able to go and do it if you've got athletes who've got to think about what they're doing then doesn't matter what sport it is they're going to be slow at it because they're too busy thinking rather than doing you know I always say like you drive your car you don't think about how you drive it you just drive it until someone either Cuts you off or you just about have an accent and the next 15 minutes you know you're the sweat coming off the ground because you're thinking that much but you're not going very fast and and it's the same I can ask what continually we over Coach them we over complicate things that should just be simple messages so it sounds simple to say make it simple how did you do it good question well I think over time come to understand for the game I wanted to play and the players I had to play it I I wanted to find Rhino what's critical and uh you can't have too many there's a lot of important many things but what's really really critical if you know we do those really good we'll give ourselves a chance to win so identifying those and then for each one of those five things you find two or three things that are really critical for them to be successful what were the five for me uh set piece uh breakdown tackle protection pass and then individuals you know position specific skills like kicking for fullbacks and stuff like that so so where among making the game of rugby more simple comes the culture the the messaging to the players getting to their heart not their head how do you make all of that simple because the people that listen to this podcast are constantly looking for ways in their own lives to do that you know cultures probably the most overused word and the and the planet I think because it's is there a culture or is it just how you live and and so once you establish how you want to live and then you go about living it from the top down rather than the bottom up um things are either going to be great or they're going to be dog [ __ ] you know because there's only two types of way to live it's either right or wrong so it's a matter of establishing what's not negotiable what is negotiable and then um getting aligned on it so from my point of view it was making sure the other coaches the management were aligned then we'd take it to our leaders get them aligned and give everybody the opportunity to disagree and and robustly discuss it and eventually someone may still be disagreeing but they have to commit to it because the majority wins then you take it to the rest of the group and give them the same opportunity so we all own it it's not just Steve's idea it's everybody's idea right down to the guy that's just arrived first time in the All Blacks and has his opinions just as valuable as everybody else's so give them the opportunity to as I say robustly disagree or or agree at some point boys okay well we've still got a 23 split here what are we going to do and you know obviously the 20 kind of about the three so you guys coming with us and that means if it works you get the credit if it doesn't work you can't sit there and go well I told you it wasn't gonna work we're all in it together so we disagree and commit to it and and that's been the philosophy for a long time and and then living it from the top down I think you know it's really really important so what were the non-negotiable expectations that you did set then um the first one was team first an individual second I always felt that I wanted to care about my athletes um but I didn't want that care and love and support to get in the way of making tough decisions so if I made the team more important than the individual then the team would demand that I'd make those tough decisions and if we could educate our athletes and our management to understand that as well then we'd all make the right decisions in them in the moment that we needed to make them because it was more important for the team than it was for myself now we didn't get that right all the time you know those guys uh the young men and they make mistakes but you know we got it right A lot of the time so that was non-negotiable having alignment was non-negotiable so couldn't do it if we didn't agree that we had to be aligned and then the third one was that the players would drive that alignment from a standards point of view and and or that would lead it sorry not just drive it but they would lead it both on and off the field you know I I wanted them to drive the bus as opposed to me being the driver I love what you said there about Kevin about players because I think often people assume Elite Sport is quite a brutal harsh environment and yet to hear somebody's successful as yourself talk about caring and wanting to get along with players is important would you explain for those outside of that world then that maybe would be surprised at hearing that why it is so important well it's a tough job as you've just said you know it's a really really uh mentally pressured environment and human beings just by Nature want to be loved we all want to be kid people to care about us we want to be valued and when I started coaching I always I'm like I'm a reasonably simple person so I'd always use the philosophy of my own career and things that happened to me the good and the bad and and of the bad things I didn't want to happen to other people like people not being brave enough to to tell you the truth about selections not being honest enough to say we are sit in the pecking order not caring enough to be able to say well look you know you don't need to be here today you go and sort out what's happening at home so I just naturally took that into you know in over years you refine it and you get better and you grow as you have more experiences so I just think it whilst it's really important the team comes first your team's made up of a whole lot of different people who have different things going on in their lives and need support some need a kick in the bum and some need a cuddle but you know no one's ever been hurt by giving them a cuddle have they it's an interesting one isn't it this caring for people because it's the right thing to do but your job actually at the end of the day is to win games of rugby and win trophies so can you give us an example of when you knew that caring for individuals actually translated to performances on The rugby pitch oh there was no light bulb moment that said that I just knew that that's how I wanted to catch and um when I did it I knew I I had an athlete who would give me more so I guess that that maybe that was the light bulb moment I suppose but the more you knew the athlete knew that you cared about him and you trusted him and and you were able to be vulnerable enough with them to share things and normalize things uh the more they would give you can we talk about alignment as well because that's something that's come up in the conversation three or four times already I think we all learn more when things aren't going right that when they when they're going well could you give us an example of a period in your coaching career when you have the alignment has not been right and it's you've had others two times probably uh the alignment wasn't right with the process and it was my fault because I became too outcoming um focused when was that one was my second year as a Canterbury coach we'd won the competition the first year and I wear away flowing and um and I was I got so demanding because I wanted to win again that it got in the way of actually caring about the athlete and you know came across as a prick really and didn't care enough and value them enough and started missing things because it was all about winning and probably the the last time it happened was 217 and uh Lion's tall again because I really really wanted to win that and it became more important than actually doing what was right uh you know but you recognize it and both times I went back to the groups the two different groups and said like I'll stuff this up and this is what I've done and apologize and yeah let's start again so how do you avoid complacency then because that's a really interesting challenge when you describe that first year of a country like winning and then wanting to win again but without wanting to compromise your values yeah I think it's about setting up a blueprint that you can um go to when you're successful so for us we we had five things we had a have you thought about them in columns First Column was about who we were what's our identity what's our Legacy and I'll come back then the second one was about how fast can we learn every day about what's going on not just in our game but in you know take information from all over the place third one what are the uninconvenient facts that we're prepared to admit to ourselves out loud as opposed to you know wallpaper paper over the cracks um the fourth one was how fast can we adapt and adjust in games when things aren't going the way we want them to and the last one was okay what's the big audacious goal that we're going to try and achieve um so we sat down um and tried to identify what they were and it was interesting because when we went to the identity and it was a word that we'd used a lot you know our Legacy et cetera Etc and I asked in a leaders meeting and it was um I think there's 12 players and that four management and we couldn't answer as distinctly as we wanted to well we have to find out what that is so what we did was we interviewed every living all black past and and current and asked them what were the values or the core things they saw that made them cherish the All Blacks and we came up with a series of of things and then we put players attached players into those different areas from the past and that so okay that's what we're representing so that's what we have to deliver on every day um we went at the inconvenient facts and admitted to ourselves right oh well let's look at the teams we're playing what are they as good as they'll be better at some things than us they'll be the same as asset some things and then they'll be not as good in something so we've got to stay in front of them in this area catch up here and try and get ahead of them here so there are things you do every day and that allows you to not just concentrate on what you've just done so it's bigger than that and then and your big audacious goal like ours was when I first got the job we just won the World Cup in 2011. and I had to go to this interview and I'm you know I'm thinking well what am I going to say to them you know like we're number one in the world so I can't come and say well we're going to be number one in the world and they'll go we already are and it'll look like a dick so I and I I thought about it and talked to Tash my wife about a lot and then I came up with the idea of okay well let's be the greatest sports team in the history of the game and then once we had that established what I wanted to do was be able to say what that looked like and would feel like so I came up with these ideas and anyway that's what I said to the board when I went for the job they gave me the job but then I took it to the team and did what I was talking about before give the management a chance to rip it apart and they they all had a crack at it and but they liked it enough to keep it the way it was then we talked to the leaders and they liked it and then we took it to the young guys and they all liked it so it basically stayed the same but what it did do was it moved people's asses from being comfortable in the back of the chair to the front of it and I don't even know if some people thought we could we could achieve it and I don't know if we did or we didn't achieve it doesn't matter What mattered was we had a whole group of people collectively owning that idea trying to achieve it and you know as I said to the group it doesn't matter whether we achieve it or not guys it's what the public this is a story We Leave Behind they'll tell us if we've achieved it or not and and you know like you're only going to achieve it to have to do it again so that's never ending and then we would sit you know immediate goals for up and coming competitions and then midterm jobs so as an example like when we come here in 250 in the World Cup one of the goals we wanted to do was become the second most supported team behind England for the English fans because if they got knocked out who were England going to Fan support why can't they support us it'd be nice to come to Twickenham for a change and have them shouting for us so everything we did off the field had that in mind and again the boys all bought into it really well and you know the time we did get here we did have a great fan base it was english-based oh there was that lovely moment one day after you won it where that I mean what you've just said makes perfect sense when Sonny Bill Williams gave the gave the young trespasser gave him his medal afterwards that yeah he wasn't really a trespasser it's a sports game fan wasn't it really yeah yeah I'm going over the top of where we're at the chase passing I reckon yeah sometimes we just we we've you know Common Sense again we just forget the moment that this is an important moment for that child even that adult you know like they've just witnessed something that may keep them in the game forever will actually make them come back to the game so we shouldn't get too heavy-handed with them that's the magic thing about sport but sometimes for people and you would have seen this throughout your career the the size and the scale of something can derail people would you truly take us inside what life is like when you take on the All Blacks because there can be very few sports teams where the pressure is is similar yeah let's uh the pressures the the word it's the one constant it's you you know that and we would talk about a lot uh during my time and every time we'd come back together we'd we'd talk about it we'd go right oh the one constant thing we're going to get here guys is pre-shift because we're going to be scrutinized but don't be frightened by that they actually embrace it and understand that whatever the external pressure is will have an internal pressure that's even higher so so therefore that that external pressure can't touch you right so if someone you know like we lost an 07 in uh France and uh and Cardiff and people go you know some they don't know what to say but they say some stupid stuff oh yeah really she's really annoyed me when you lost that game and I said what do you think it did to me you know like I'm annoyed too pal you know he's not yeah but I had to fly all the way over here I like to fly all the way home and and they sort of get it but they don't get it it's because I love the game and they love the team and you don't want that's why you don't want it to change yeah you want the people to be there really rooting for your team because it's a hard job when they're not but you need to understand it's there you need to have to admit to yourself it's there and then you can put some plans around it so what what pressure you feel might be different to the pressure I feel what Dame feels could be different to both of what we feel identify what it is and then what do we what's your plan when you start feeling that what are you going to do because when you've if you don't have a plan and you're feeling it you're gone you're not going to pull it out your backside and say well I'm going to do this now because you're not in just camp what sort of plans would you put in place then for because obviously some players would Thrive under pressure and we've all seen you know players University Thrive Under Pressure because they're prepared for it right it's not it's not the pressure that's making them survive it's the preparation that's making them proof and the plan for okay when this gets hot you know it's tiger War sort of time in the In the Heat of the game they're not worried about the scoreboard their plan is forget the school what their plan is to stay right here where my feet are stay in the now what's the job I've got to do let's do that job as really good as I can and hope like hell the guy across me he's worried about the school board or he's worried about the mistake he's just made and I think that's the difference so having those mental skills like for a long time the All Blacks didn't want to admit to ourselves that we were chokers at World Cup and the reason we didn't is because the people at the top didn't have to own it because you've got the sack so the next guy coming in well not my fault I didn't joke so I'm not a joker but in 07 we got the opportunity to do it again and you know we had to sit there and say well [ __ ] what what are we going to learn from this what can we take out of this pain and put it until we parcel that's going to make us good we won two World Cups because of the fact that they allowed us to have another go and we took the learnings and you know um Bob your uncle SpongeBob got there and got the job done so what were those learnings all about pressure we have to admit to ourselves that there is a lot of pressure so how are we going to deal with the fact that we haven't been in a final before how you know what we're what is that pressure doing to each of us individually that we haven't been there before um so we walk towards it things are going to go wrong so what are that what are we going to do if they do go wrong I don't know if you remember 11 but we lost more first fives than most teams ever done us so um and now we as long as we're getting taken out boy pineapples all the time that's the second word I had to use too by the way I've got two one um for the for the listeners I've got three words to get into this what was the first one SpongeBob just to set the context of people listening to this uh Steve's got his family with us and they've set him um a challenge for three words in the interview right we'll we'll see if it's called pineapple see if us and the viewers can uh can yeah we can spot the third anyway sorry to take away from the importance no this is really interesting I think what's really good for people is you know specific things that you've done so nicely transferable to whatever life our listeners are living you know yeah well I think that's right like we get into trouble because we we don't expect some things to happen so we feel threatened by it and then we'd uh get aggressive fight flight or freeze which we've all we will understand that term we don't know how to deal with it and and then the simple thing is we go there every day we we something will threaten us that we didn't expect so the more things we can plan um that might happen that we don't want to happen the better we'll be off to reactor when it does happen does it make sense and you know that that can't take you away from what we want to happen so this is how we want to play this is what we want to do this is what we want to achieve Okay so we've got that we've we've spent our week making sure that we've got Clarity we add the intensity and once they've got that Clarity and then we add the you know the the accuracy right okay we're ready to rock and roll but have we taken any time to think about okay what if we don't get that where are we going to go both individually and collectively so we would spend a lot of time we used to call them what-ifs so what if this happens and you know though most of the time it's pretty successful see what if I'm fascinating on that is because it makes perfect sense but it challenges again this this notion outside of that world of thinking that everything's got to be positive that you can't allow room for the negatives in particularly this generation I think of uh Z generation they like the world to be positive they also like to have an opinion and I also like to voice it so okay we'll give them that opportunity to do those things and have and take some ownership of it and okay what does positive look like okay well now what's going to happen when we don't get that boys we can't go Helly belly and say well we're done on that yeah you know opposition ain't going to stop and and it's a like I look back at the 19 World Cup and the hardest thing to do at World Cups this is why they're so hard to win is going back to back to back you've got to have three great performances to Win It if you're in a draw on the side of the draw where you've got real big opposition like we played France in 15 we played South Africa and we just got through that game and then we hit Australia well it was probably the hardest game of South Africa 19 we we had a few problems with Ireland that had beaten us I think just before the World Cup and and we came out and smashed them played really well then it was about getting ourselves back in the right frame of mind and I'm not you're not talking about a big drop you're talking about one two three percent across the board of a Time and you're comfortable you know but you can't go into a test match a World Cup semi-final comfortable England had come off a disastrous 250 World Cup that was hungary's heck and they wanted us but what happened to them the next week they couldn't reproduce it because subconsciously they thought they'd done the job it's not it's not a conscious thing it's a subconscious thing so you've got to work hard at those things as well yeah so I am conscious is that I'll say in that hindsight is the foresight of a Gob shy yeah so when you look back on that period now what do you think you maybe could have done differently to have spotted those signs oh look I should have known that because you're always vulnerable straight after that and I did I did feel it in my bones but at the same time we had a couple of injuries one of them was a skipper and I didn't want we didn't know if he was going to play or not and I didn't want the group going and [ __ ] we've lost the skipper you know we coach has been in a demanding demand and now we're lost at Skipper like we can't win this so you're trying to keep positive around that and I think probably got too positive and and uh you know it's a slippery slope explain too positive well you know we were in the right space boys we're ready to go you know and knowing if Rito wasn't there then we'd lost a big chunk of who we are and they had a lot of belief in this Gap you know here's an important part of the [ __ ] so you're trying to I wouldn't have done using the word [ __ ] to make them feel good but you're putting them in a place where I already is not here but we're still okay we're we're really our coach says we're ready to go we're ready to go but probably in hindsight I might have been better I've just if he's not there then he's not there they'll cope with that and let's be really focused on being demanding and let's set that attitude where we're going to take this game rather than wait for it to happen like England came out and took the game waited and got smart you know smack smack some act like [ __ ] now we better start now because this is this is not what's meant to be happening yeah it's very interesting getting the line right isn't it between building them up and realism I think you can just never be authenticity can you so even if as a coach you're having some slight concerns is it ever a bad thing to say to the guys look this is the situation we're in no that's not a bad thing but yeah I think like when you look at that week you know it irks me but when I look at the whole time that whatever 170 107 test matches is head coach you know we've got most of those words right so can I keep giving myself an uppercut yeah I probably can but you know get over it Stephen how harsh are you on yourself yeah I'm pretty nice yeah does it benefit you sometimes not now that I finished coaching it doesn't benefit me to keep still beating myself up over it like I can't change it I can't say Eddie can we Replay that game hey World rugby can we go back and have that week again until we can fix it so you do have to get over it you know you've got to put your big boy pants on and get on with it do you speak about you have an alter ego sometimes it comes out I can't remember the name you gave you alter ego when you get hyper competitive oh Stanley Stanley yeah I didn't give it my wife and a couple of friends gave me this for Stanley here Stanley comes out because he just it just becomes a bulldozer and there's no care there's no love he just charges I'm winning we're playing cards whatever it is yeah and what and what often Stanley out what what the circumstances where that happens ego and pride because you want to win you know like your pride is the biggest stumbling block in the world because it doesn't allow you to admit your mistakes it doesn't allow you to lose um you know and it's just another word for ego really so here you go we all have an ego um and we just gotta Master it and when your pride becomes a problem um you don't Master it so it gets in the way I guess and yeah so then Stanley comes out he's just charging and just did suddenly it does Stanley only come out playing cards with the family or doing stuff or did he also come out in your coaching career I think I think Stanley came out and you know in the second year with that can retainer it's only about in 215 um Lion G I think Stanley came out there that we didn't have a name for for it back then Stanley's reasonably knew it's probably coming out more since I've got that Avenue to be competitive yeah but we've got him under control now see most of the time so I mean that's something I can identify with as I'm sure a lot of our listeners can like how have you learned to control that side of your character well you say the reaction it has on other people you know and no one wants to play cards because Stanley's going to come out right so I want to play cards so I can't you know I've got to check Stanley and you know the kids don't want to play well I want to play with the kids so you know I've been allow them to win occasionally yeah that that's what happens you see the reaction of what you're doing to other people like I'm reasonably sharp tongued and and um it would be quite often people would say oh you know he likes last word Steve and I'll go well it's because I can think of the last word however I've come to understand that it's not a bad thing sometimes okay well you can have that and walk away from it because early doors I probably punished hurt people and not necessarily because I wanted to but because of what I you know just to win that argument that that banter conversation the reason why that's interesting is because obviously you know you create these really fascinating and winning cultures with your Rugby teams but where you can't control is is outside factors so you know you've spoken about your players coping with external perception I wonder how you coped with external criticism I'm thinking mainly from the media and you know a lot of people listening to this won't be in the position you're in but they will feel judged and challenged by other people what advice would you offer them yeah look I think none of us like to be judged in a negative way like we're all pretty happy to pick up the the positive judgment yeah but we certainly it hurts when you get uh the negative stuff but you've got to come to understand that you're doing the best you can if you can look in the mirror and say look I've done the best I can here I've been honest I've drawn my ass off is there anything else I could be doing no do these people know all the circumstances no most of them don't uh are they hurting because they're not getting what they want which is a team winning or whatever it may be yes probably so you just forgive them and move on like it's because it's better for your own Mental Health people you know I'd like have perceptions because you win all the time well you must be a great coach they have the same perceptions if you're losing all you must be a [ __ ] coach and I often I have a jackal to myself because I coached a team that has the most losses in a row at test level and I have a team that coaches most has won the most so I'm a [ __ ] coach and a great coach you know so I'm just I just say to myself we're just a Coach Dave you know so don't let it knock you and and like you know where you want to go and and if you're taking the group with you and they want to come there too then eventually you'll turn it around you won't like sport is so good because it doesn't let you win all the time just doesn't no one can So eventually you get a kick in the bum and as you said before we we learn a lot more from that because we go deeper because it hurts as adversity um and you know that was one of the things it was used to say to the boys why do we have to lose to learn why can't we learn when we want it we can do that we're going to win more often so that's what we all want to do accepting that we're still going to get beaten occasionally because some consciously we're going to get comfortable and and once you get comfortable then you'll make mistakes you know you talking about high performance like you compare yourself to a surgeon and he's going to do an operation on your knee you don't want him getting comfortable I want him doing the best job he can do on that now and we would talk about that and I'll say boys right we're going in to do an operation here you know we we're going in at 95 here are we going to totally commit it and um you know that's that's part of my performance isn't it if you get comfortable you're going to get punished so what would you say you did Judge your coaching success by because like you say you've had the most losses and the most wins so if I can just give you an example of when a coach gave us a really fascinating answer to this was when we sat down with Rob Baxter access to Chiefs and he said it took him 10 years into his coaching to realize the most important question was would I be happy for my son to be coached by me what would you say your criteria I've always had the same criteria from the day started to the day of I finished coaching and it's the greatest pleasure I get is when I can get an athlete to achieve something that he or she wants to achieve and couldn't achieve until you came along and gave her a little help or him a little help I get a real Buzz out of that I get a buzz out of yeah teams individuals within teams being able to achieve what they're trying to do and and you can do that at any level of catching and I I didn't I was never ever worried about getting sacked because I knew well that's why I get my buzz from so I'll just go back down to the local club and do it down there you know yeah and how much freedom in your setup is there for you you know are you um are you a control freak do you want to know everything that's happening at all times uh I would say that I'm an Empower but um when I first started I was probably a control freak yeah because I think we all are because we think that's what we have to be and we and we're not trusting enough and uh our own abilities to not want to know But as time went on I I hopefully uh others would say uh yeah he he would let us do our job I'd be demanding though and we had one Mantra in the group in the management group was if you're going to make a decision that's going to have or possibly could have an effect on the performance on Saturday or want to know about it before we introduce it if it's not going to do that then don't have to tell me so I saw myself as the helicopter over the group we had a leadership system that went coaches which fuzzy drove um well-being which Gilbert Anoka drove we had uh Logistics and Commercial which Darren Chan drove and then we had the players the leaders group driven by whoever the captain was it now the two captains were basically Richie or or reader so they got on and did their but then yes you had moments where like for example um that kills the strength and conditioning coach and we're having trouble with Dan Carter in 215. had been pulling calf muscles for a couple of years and and I've one day I just because I've got an interest in horses and I understand a long time ago an old trainer said to me said son just because they're biomechanically they're not they don't have the right shaped legs it doesn't stop them from running fast it'll just stop them from being able to do that for a long time and if you look at Dan hey biomechanically is a mess and I thought what if we took some weight off and no he wasn't fat but so I asked him I said well what weight will you win mate when yeah when you weren't pulling a Cowboys and he said oh you know 93 maybe I said what are you now 95 and like he's doing the jockey ads at 95. so there's no it's muscle it's not yeah so into Gillian we talked about it I said why don't we take a couple of kilo off and see if you know because we both agreed to buy mechanically wasn't great would that help well we did and he never pulled another calf muscle so you know that that's your role as the helicopters not uh not to get in the way but to actually find solutions for some things and think about some problems that they probably don't have the time to think about and so would you set quite strict rules then because that's the great thing about that is you're standing off and you're empowering your people so our rules important so they they know exactly the parameters they're working to or not expectations I like but I don't like roles because they stop people from sometimes gone where they should and I often say rules are there to guide the Brave and inhabit the foolish interesting and when I I'm working in Japan at the moment and it's a society that's got a lot of rules and and it it doesn't inhibit them you know and we're making some progress and getting some change there but oh it's like pulling teeth out of a chicken like what in particular in Japan have you challenged you give me a glass you're you're ranked higher than me in the in the picking order so I have to go down there with my glass right you know or you bow I have to bear like they're beautiful cultural things that are all about respect and honor and they're great Traditions but they're getting in the way of progress because inhibiting me from being able to challenge you so we can get your idea on that table and we can smack it with a hammer and turn it into a great idea or say well actually it's a [ __ ] already let's get rid of it so you know what I told me everybody because I'm meant to be at the top of the picking order so they're all trying to go low so I'll go down here and make a joke of it yeah and make it it's okay um understanding that is it is their culture and respecting it but when we're in this environment it's okay to be yeah there'll be people though listening to this where that uh that scares them a bit they might be a business leader going well the rule is you come in at nine o'clock the rule is you're you don't work from home four days a week the rule is we all sit together for lunch you know people often use rules to create culture what would you say to those people well you just repeat what you said you use the word create culture yeah I'd say they use rules to force the culture and if they're forcing it they don't have a culture it's got to happen naturally it's got to be something that we all own and we want to be responsible for so you can't create something with a rule you can only Force something with a rule and every rule will get broken so then what now what we're going to do we're breaking the rule like if you break an expectation uh well we can live with that we we can there'll be a consequence but it's not the same as your brow while he's broken the rule you're going to have to drop them or you're going to shoot them or whatever you have to do I don't know so yeah I I personally I I'm about expectation I expect you to live the values and and the things that we've said we want to live you know I want you to make decisions that are based around those things I don't want to make a rule that's going to make you have to do that what I love about that as well is that allows people to fall occasionally without being punished or ostracized or demonized for it yeah well we're all we're all four you know like I I see players and like all human beings from time to time who want to be perfect I've never like I could go to our guys all the time I go tell me the best game you ever played and he tells me it's the right agent did you make any mistakes in that oh yeah I saw there you go so stop trying to chase somebody that no one is ever going to do because you're always human nature will say oh I could have done that better I could have done this but just be satisfied that you're actually doing these things really really well and then what is it we can take out of that performance that we can keep and what is it that we can go away and grow and get better at what about people then that are they're in your group and you're allowing the culture to mold them into the people you want rather than the rules but to just not getting it they're just not right how would you advise people to deal with that well again I think there's an old old saying that we use you can't change the man change the man at some point if they're not going to come with you then that's not the place for you to be and what did you employ to try and get people to come with you well you try all the the things we've been talking about you know give them opportunities to understand that this is what the expectations are of the team you've set through meetings you've set through one-on-ones um you know well I'll give you an example without um Alfie Thomas probably the second best athlete I've ever catched superb athlete know behind Sony Bill and he'd be next when I first come to Wales he wasn't a leader but he was seen to be a leader by his peers because when I always find it ironic when people name captains or you're a leader and you know who the leaders are when the [ __ ] it's a fan and everyone goes what are we doing and it may not be looking at the captain well they would always look at Alfie what are we going to do elf anyway elf um he was in a part of his life that I wasn't quite clear for him and he was drinking and you know but he he was quite best physique you could ever see so it was obviously training but he come during the week and he wouldn't try you know he just didn't want to be better than anybody else or work harder than anybody didn't want to show didn't want to bring his book and write things down so we had a conversation some Alpha I've got to let you go but the doors open if you change then uh you know we'll we'll look at bringing you back and um so he wins and you know I just lost my best athlete yeah and I'm hurting I'm thinking God I hope you change man and three weeks later I got a ring from his coach and he said oh look you've got to have another this guy's changed animal so I said okay thanks and again back to the same horse trainer that taught me about the legs I'd once said to him or that horse looks really fit you better put him back into training because we used to graze them on the farm and he said you give me a yell when he's he said oh why is that not sure because he's bucking so I'm back in today it looks real fresh it's well you give me a ring and when he's backing every day and I'll bring him back into work so I put the phone down thought right off he's really serious he's changed he'll ring me back and in another week's time to say [ __ ] I'm into you come down what she did do then I sent Scott Johnson down to Sam and Scotty had a chat time and he came back and he said I think you need to talk to him he seems to be on a different plane and so we bought him in and sat there and we had a great conversation and I said right I'll judge you from this day forth on the things that we've just talked about that we need from you and he you know he went on to be one of the greats and and um kept in the lines you know and that was satisfying when you see him being successful because we tried to change him we had to go right to the bottom of the world to do it but we tried other things but that's what I mean if you can't change man they have to change them so he hadn't changed we wouldn't have got him back but he didn't so you've got to be flexible enough in your thinking to be able to say well let's give him another go nothing serious being we've got a great athlete out we always like to talk about a specific moment on um on high performance and just delve into it a little bit more deeply and often you know when it comes to the life that you've lived it's about winning the trophies and the titles and all of that but I'd really like to talk to you about the moment that you decided to to walk away because I think that that is a really interesting thing we spend our lives being told never quit never never give up you know sometimes the best thing you can do is is to step away from something yeah well look 20 years as you don't get 20 years for murder damn so that's a long time and it's a long time without your family um sure don't apologize yeah it's a long time without your family and you know you owe them something um at some point the team needs you to allow them to try something different yeah and it's just now it's time so pull the trigger and get out I think um you know the emotion around the family is is totally understandable and I think sometimes it's only when you step back and you you're you're in probably quite a reflective period of your life now where you look back on what happened and I think we can't have a conversation about your success without actually paying the respects to the you know the amazing blended family you've got and how the people around you had to allow you to do what you did yeah that's right and you know you keep talking about him I'll keep crying so um I said that they they miss out I don't know how many birthdays you miss I'm tasked with a wonderful job trying to keep everybody together and then you come back and you're in and you're out yeah you know so it's easy for me not so easy for everybody else so you just you know so grateful um because we were allowed oh well I think we're in a great place as a family um everybody's achieving the things they want to achieve and they're all striving I guess to to be better and within their own setups and I saw some of them are still fine in their own way and that that's fine like that's life but as a group you know we love and care about each other and you can't ask for any more than that nice well I'm so pleased to chat to you here in London where you get to have a bit of a break with the family yeah before they get even louder outside let's do this um we finish with a few quick fires the first one is the three non-negotiable behaviors that you and ideally the people around you would buy into honesty loyalty and hardworking very good what's your greatest strength and your biggest weakness my competitiveness is both of them your greater strength's always your biggest weakness how important is legacy to you to me I think you know what you leave behind is pretty important what story you want yeah grandchildren to hear massive what advice would you give a teenage Steve just starting out uh I've been mentally more aware of how to use Mental skills uh be a little bit more patient um don't be in a rush to uh think with a certain parts of your body as opposed to your bigger head and the the final one is um for people that have listened to this been a really fascinating conversation It's the final question really that you'd like to leave with the answer ringing in areas what would you now say is your one Golden Rule for for living a high performance life oh be the best version that you can be you don't compromise yourself um don't compromise your integrity just because you think it's going to be something beneficial to you it's got to be a bigger cause than you yeah so try and uh be vulnerable enough to not put your hand up when you don't know um and you don't have to tell the world everything you know sometimes it's better to listen to what other people know I love that I think um we've caught you in a really nice reflective period in your life and thank you very much for spending a bit of time with us sharing the things you've done and the thoughts you have from it yeah thanks it's been wonderful

Channel: High Performance

Views: 101,640

Keywords: Podcast, The High Performance Podcast, Jake Humphrey, Damian Hughes, Liquid thinker, rugby, all blacks, tries compilation, rugby world cup, new zealand, dan carter, jonah lomu

Id: ZuS94nI1NFQ

Length: 52min 2sec (3122 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 10 2023