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Coaching Culture with Ben Herring
Coaching Culture with Ben Herring is your weekly deep-dive into the often-overlooked “softer skills” of coaching—cultural innovation, communication, empathy, leadership, dealing with stress, and motivation. Each episode features candid conversations with the world’s top international rugby coaches, who share the personal stories and intangible insights behind their winning cultures, and too their biggest failures and learnings from them. This is where X’s and O’s meet heart and soul, empowering coaches at every level to foster authentic connections, inspire their teams, and elevate their own coaching craft. If you believe that the real gold in rugby lies beyond the scoreboard, Coaching Culture is the podcast for you.
Coaching Culture with Ben Herring
Chris Boyd: Leadership Trumps Management
What if everything you thought about building team culture was wrong? Chris Boyd, the celebrated coach who transformed teams from the Hurricanes to Northampton Saints, challenges conventional wisdom by arguing that "culture grows organically and internally" rather than being imposed from above.
Drawing from decades of experience across multiple continents, Boyd reveals the leadership principles that have made him one of rugby's most respected coaches. His refreshing approach emphasizes giving players the confidence to express themselves while creating environments where skills flourish under pressure. "The biggest difference I felt I made at Northampton was ultimately giving them confidence – the confidence to have a go," Boyd explains, highlighting how this philosophy transformed a traditionally conservative team.
Boyd's methods are both innovative and practical. He revolutionized information flow by replacing formal meetings with meaningful conversations, implemented a distinction between "training for task" versus "training for time," and prioritized skill development when players were fresh rather than as afterthoughts. His commitment to looking forward rather than backward distinguishes true leadership from mere management. "Too much of the stuff that coaches do is management, not leadership," he observes, advocating for "less structure, more intuition, more technical, less tactical."
Perhaps most valuable is Boyd's guidance on making difficult decisions. Whether telling veteran players their time is up or identifying the "critical few" factors that will drive success for a particular team, he emphasizes the importance of honesty, clarity, and emotional intelligence. His mantra "do whatever makes the boat go faster" serves as both compass and challenge for coaches seeking sustainable success.
Ready to transform your approach to leadership and team building? This episode offers invaluable insights for coaches, managers and leaders across any field looking to build cultures where excellence thrives naturally.
I think culture grows from organically and internally. I don't think you can impose a culture. Too much of the stuff that coaches do is management, not leadership. Sometimes democracy is overrated. Now we've got chaos because we've got a bit of a wobble on Work out how you get that back on track and get it going again. We made a really conscious effort in 2015 to change our information flow from meetings to conversations.
Speaker 2:We always had a philosophy that we'd train for tasks on a Tuesday and train for time on a Thursday. Welcome to Coaching Culture, the podcast about cultivating culture and leadership. I'm Ben Herring and I've been loving this side of the game for bloody ages. Today's guest is Chris Boyd, or Boydy as he's referred to. Boydy has coached everywhere and done every single role available in the coaching world in his numerous years, from assistant coaching in New Zealand, south Africa and Tonga to head coaching in New Zealand to at super rugby level with the very successful Hurricanes. To director of rugby in the UK with the very successful Hurricanes. To Director of Rugby in the UK with the Northampton Saints. Currently he is a consultant high-performance coach to the Munster rugby team in Ireland. Everywhere that Boydie goes, people love what he's done to their team. He is hugely successful and hugely respected throughout the coaching world. Here he is, boydie. Welcome along. Lovely to have you here. I guess the first question we always ask is how do you define culture?
Speaker 1:I think interesting enough for me. I think culture grows organically and internally. I don't think you can impose a culture on an organization. I think what happens is that much like a plant, you give it nutrition and you give it water, and you give it sun, and you give it the right temperature and it'll hopefully grow. Um, in the last, the last little bit, for for a plant anyway, it needs a space to grow and so you know, I risk and return safety in the environment to experiment and grow and develop. And as people buy into that, then I think it starts taking a direction. It might be something completely different. It might be that it needs a little bit more rigidity, a little bit more framework, a little bit more thing to get it to get going. But I think anybody who says they've instilled a culture, I think, is wrong. I think that culture is peculiar to an organization. But you can certainly push it and prod it and get it going in the direction that you think is the most appropriate.
Speaker 2:And what would be the pushing and prodding that sort of a head coach or the leader of that organization would need to do?
Speaker 1:I think it's always different, mate. I think it's always different, mate. I think you know every experience that I've had. You look at the expertise that you have in your management group and you look at the expertise that you have in your leadership capability in your organisation. That's on field and and off-field leadership.
Speaker 1:And you know an example at Northampton Saints we assembled what ended up to being a very, very good coaching group and I almost stopped being involved in the coaching piece as the director of rugby because that group was very efficient, very well organised, very capable, and there was other parts of the organisation that needed more attention.
Speaker 1:So it might have been the relationship between the trainers and the medical group to manage workloads of players and get the best down that track. So you know where you've got good expertise. You need to keep it ticking over and you need to make sure that it's well aligned and it's well connected. But you really you know I have a saying that I use a hell of a lot and it's do whatever makes the boat go faster. And so if you look at the ultimate success of your organization, which is long-term, sustainable, winning games of rugby or playing good footy because I think that's very important to me as well. What are the crucial two or three things. What are the critical few that, if I get right, is going to make the biggest difference to this organisation?
Speaker 2:And does that change, like everywhere you've gone? That's a different critical few basis. Yeah, it is it is.
Speaker 1:So when I went to the Sharks with Plum way too conservative, way too conservative, and that was part of their culture, part of their history but they were so risk adverse that they just needed to trust themselves a little bit more. And in fact, the Northampton was the same. The biggest difference that I felt that I'd made at Northampton was, ultimately, the best thing I could give them was the confidence, the confidence to have a go. You know that organisation was. You know people will always talk about mistakes. You know it's too. You know, whereas I think, if you're going to make a good, long-term, sustainable difference, you've got to take the mistake part away and get people to challenge themselves to execute their skills and decisions under zero time and pressure. At the end of the day, jeremy, as you know, the higher you go, the faster the game is. You've got to execute your skills and make your decision in less time and space, and so, to me, the confidence and trust to do that, I think, is absolutely crucial.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, mate, I've spoken to the coaches you referred to. At Northampton was the likes of Sam Vestey, Phil Dowson, Matt Ferguson, Alan Dickens, those sort of guys. But talking to Sam the other day, he spoke really highly of the influence you had on him, backing him to start with, and I think you might have said publicly that he was one of the best decisions you've ever made from a coaching point of view. Sam Vestey, Is that like he just ticked?
Speaker 1:those boxes for you. Well, the thing about Sam is I didn't really know what I was getting into there, but I asked around and said I had a bit of a mantra when I went to Northampton People had said to me when you go up north, take somebody with you, so when the club turns on you or the proverbial hits the fan, you've got a mate in your back pocket.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that actually annoyed me back pocket and that actually annoyed me and so I made a decision that in the playing roster and in the coaching and management of that club our mantra was young, English and high potential. So I went to everybody I knew and said who's the best up-and-coming coach with the highest ceiling in England? And pretty much everyone said Sam Vestey. So I picked up the phone. He was at Worcester at the time and I picked up the phone and said Chris Boyd, here, we need to have a chat about footy. And a couple of conversations later he committed to shift from Worcester to Northampton and I think he was encouraged by the fact that he knew that I was going to give him massive amounts of oxygen to breathe and massive amounts of opportunity for him to be whatever he wanted to be, without any restrictions or controls. And I think I think in a coaching group that that belief in your system and your process and the trust in people to deliver it is massively crucial.
Speaker 1:I've worked with under a couple of guys in the early days that I considered were micromanagers, and I didn't particularly enjoy it, and so for me I was always of the mind that I needed to give Sam and Dous and Ferg. Those guys some steer and some guidance and direction and challenge around what they were doing, but ultimately that rubbed off into the playing group. So you know, as an example, part of the thing that underpinned our game at the Saints was fast and relentless. Okay, so we'd go to training and at the start of training I'd remind them that the thing that underpins our game was four things. But twining that together in our DNA was fast and relentless. So I said at this training session I'm only going to judge the success or failure of this training session on how fast we can be. I'm not going to judge it on how many mistakes we make or how many times we make a wrong decision or how many times we don't get our skill away. I don't care about that. I just want you to be fast, fast as you can go.
Speaker 1:The players thought we were nuts, yeah, and sometimes it got a bit chaotic, but out, you know you've got to work our way. Now we've got chaos because we've got a bit of a wobble on. Work out how you get that back on track and get it going again. And, by the way, the one thing it can't be is slowing it down. So you work out a way how you're going to make this thing get back on the rails without slowing it down. And so I just think and it can't work with every group, but in that particular situation I have a huge amount of respect for all those guys that bought into what we were trying to do and they were invigorated by it. Probably lucky, we got the right guys in the right seat.
Speaker 2:Well, it's certainly testament to what you're trying to achieve, because almost the Northampton way now is there's no fear of mistakes, it's all about having a go pulling trigger. That's the Northampton way now, right? So the freedom you gave the coaches back then they have run with then and now also continues on today. Talking to sam before the final, that's all he spoke about was I don't care about mistakes at training, it's not about mistakes, it's about effort and attitude being 100, and he talked about that same speed that you just talked about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amazing um, well, you know, the thing being that I think was critical there, and it's changed a little bit, when I first arrived in 2018, the game was dominated by Exeter and Saracens that didn't want the ball to play in Saracens' case because they, you know, they feel more comfortable defending than attacking.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and in Exeter's case at that time, they'd scrum for a penalty kick down the line, maul for a penalty kick further down the line till they get five metres from the goal, and then they were almost impossible to stop from a from a mall pick and go five meters out from the from the line, and that was absolutely 100 percent their modus operandi. And so I had felt, um, that we had to be something different, because we weren't that and I felt, actually, for the good of the game, somebody needed to play the game a different way and try and be successful. And actually I think it's been bloody good for the English game that Harlequins enjoyed some success, bristol have enjoyed some success, northampton Saints have enjoyed some success. So it wasn't the big clubs with the powerful forward packs that were dominating. There was actually another way, and I reckon that's really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how do you know, Boydie, about the read on people? As a leader and a head coach and director of rugby, that's a huge part. You talked about having someone on your side when you went somewhere new. But how do you know to make those gut calls around coaches and even players and people in your environment? How do you do that?
Speaker 1:Well, I think trying to work them out as human beings often is not that difficult.
Speaker 1:You know, I think the worst thing that you can find is a coach that's got a massive ego and it's all about them, and I never have been not interested in those sort of people and there's a few of them in the industry, as you would know and so being collaborative and open and part of a team and want to belong to something bigger and more powerful, I think is a really good place to start. And you know, I can remember 20 or 30 years ago going to an NPC coaches meeting and I won't tell you who it was, but one of the NPC coaches there. They'd set up a thing where they got the Palmy boys had come in and we had to draw out of a hat. We had 15 minutes to prepare a lesson that was to be 15 minutes long and you use the boys. One of the coaches of that thing said I don't share my intellectual property, I'm not prepared to do that oh, okay you know, and I sat there and thought, goodness me, I, I just don't get it.
Speaker 1:And so we've always been really open. I've always encouraged people to come. Where I've been, I've been privileged to have a lot of opportunities to go into other people's environments. We've always had an open-door policy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think the person is the critical thing. On top of that, they've got to have the capability and capacity to deliver their craft, and my personal belief is that if you're a technical assistant and I would classify a scrum coach, a line out coach, an attack coach or a defense coach or a kickstrike coach they've got to be masters of their trade. Knowledge is critical. You can't players know if they've got a defense coach and no disrespect to say to a prop who's a defense coach he doesn't have the subtleties or nuances of back three defense because he's it's never been part of what he's ever been involved in. And so I think you've got to be really, really good at your craft and a good person. And if you get the both, I think you'll be to be really, really good at your craft and a good person. And if you get the both, I think you'll be a successful coach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. Yeah well, boydie, certainly when you're talking about successful coaches, you've been one mate and you've had a pretty illustrious journey man. You've been through New Zealand, south Africa, tonga and mate, and then there, then England. Is there anything in those environments that you've picked up which have just been absolute gold nuggets for your coaching? Like, when you go around different places, like that, you're exposed to a whole lot of different things. Have you picked things up from those different experiences, culturally or otherwise, that have made a impact on your coaching?
Speaker 1:I think. Well, there's always a potential conflict between culture and high performance. So if you look at the Tongan example, culturally you wouldn't get a stronger connection in an ethnic group anywhere. You know those boys are absolutely connected. A lot of it's through their faith and through their song, really well connected. But there's a real fine balance between letting that culture flourish and trying to be preparing teams as well as you can be inside the bounds of you know, making sure you get through your reviews and your previews and your training and stuff like that. So getting the balance between culture and high performance sometimes is a bit of a challenge.
Speaker 2:How did you go with Tonga? Did you get it Badly?
Speaker 1:Badly, Badly, yeah, yeah. And so what were some of those examples, Boydie, what did you get? I mean, the first time I did Tonga in 2011,. The first meeting we had was scheduled to start at 9.30 and all the boys were there at sort of 25 past nine and they started singing. They just started singing and 10 o'clock they're still singing and the meeting was scheduled for 9.30, which meant the bus driver was waiting to go, the meeting hadn't been done, the bus driver to go to training was waiting. It meant lunch was going to be late. It meant that the afternoon medical was going to be, you know, was all put out because the boys were singing.
Speaker 1:And I said to the guy who was leading at the time I said, mate, are we going to have this meeting? And he says yeah, when the boys finish singing. And to them, that was far more important than having a meeting on time. And you know it took me a little while to work out that you know what's important and how you can change the way you structure things and do things. So you're still getting through the work you need to get to, but it's within the bounds of what's important to them. So, yeah, that was really interesting.
Speaker 2:Do you start singing? Is that how you got around it?
Speaker 1:No, I can't sing, got around it. No, I can't sing. You know, white men can't sing or dance. You know that I love it.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, yeah is it's a fascinating dynamic, isn't it like that? And did you, did you find you were able to shift the high performance there? Or was it always a a battle against that enriched culture, was it Um?
Speaker 1:I think I think a lot of that depends on um, the strength of the, the perception of the historical culture, and um and the ability of the guys who are the guardians of that culture. Really, really good. Senior players generally have got a fair chance that they're going to either be successful or culturally sort of strong. And the best example of that probably was with the Sharks in that sort of 2008 and 9 or 9 and 10 period when you know they had guys like you know, john Smith and Bismarck and Yanni Dupacy and the Beast. But the guy that was pivotal there was a guy called Johan Muller who was often the captain. But Johan, he drove that forward pack immensely, immensely tough. You know, after training on a Tuesday full scrums, full line outs, full mauls, and that would go for north of half an hour often. And one of the things I learned from that is whatever you put your energy into, you're going to get better at. And so you know I remember a guy come out.
Speaker 1:An Irish guy came out to us in the hurricanes and I said, yep, you can come in for a week on the condition that when you leave you're going to give me a full, frank and honest debrief on what you've seen in the week that you've been here. And he says, yeah, I'll do that. And I said I don't want any niceties. And he said to me I said okay, what did you see? And he says you're amazingly good at what you're good at and you're absolutely terrible at what you're not. And I said to Mark, I explained that. And I said to Marco explain that. And he said well, all your training involves catch, pass, running. You know all that stuff. He said the spontaneity in your players with the ball in hand is unbelievable. You spend less time on defense, so your defensive understanding is not as good as it should be if you're an island. And your high ball, your kick game, your kick strategy game, you've almost not practiced all week and it would be the number one thing we'd practice an island and so you're rubbish at. You know contestable kicks, contestable catch, when to go long. You see you don't practice at all and you're no good at it.
Speaker 1:And it got me thinking that you know you have to understand what your knitting is, what you want your DNA to be, because you can't. You know, if you're a rugby league coach, I reckon you've got enough. You've got no contest for the ball, no scrum, no line out. You take those out of a rugby union week and you can fit everything in. I've never, ever worked out how you can fit everything you need to get through into a rugby union week when you play on a Saturday and you need some recovery and some rest. So you've got to make a decision. I've got to limit that. I've got to encourage that Again, you go back to what's going to make the boat go faster.
Speaker 1:Who have I got this week? What can I just tick the box on? So we need to do three minutes of clean out. Two minutes of clean out, that'll just tick that box. But I need to really put an emphasis on set piece this week, or the breakdown this week, or the kick game this week or whatever. You've got to make decisions all the time on what's important, because you just don't have enough time to do everything.
Speaker 2:Would you suggest after hearing that sort of information? Boyd, would you just say that's a great observation, but we have to pick something. We're picking this. You'd rather double down on what you do rather than then go. Yeah, you're right, we need to practice our high kick and our long kick. Is that what you're?
Speaker 1:meaning the ability of what your coaches can make a difference in what your team needs to be, as good as they can be, will always be different.
Speaker 1:But the one thing that I'm firmly convinced on if I was coaching in a development situation, so if I was coaching, you know, a high school first 15 as an example, I would put 80, and I know this is not the best way to win games of rugby, but I would put I would put an 80 emphasis on core skills and almost no emphasis on um, technically, where how we're going to play the game.
Speaker 1:And I just think you've got to be a bit brave about that, because you can give a high school team a half a dozen core patterns on attack or some strategies on attack and kicking that the opposition probably aren't going to be able to cope with, but you're not actually encouraging the skills that going to make them better rugby players in the long term. So there's a massive friction in my mind between the ego of the coach who wants to be the champion coach versus the coach who will get a satisfaction that when guys leave him they're actually bloody, really technically solid at catch, pass, clean out, tackle, aerial catch, whatever's appropriate. So if you get the physical and technical bits right, then let somebody at the top end of the game worry about the tactical part. That's where I sit, anyway.
Speaker 2:Boy, I love that too. I agree with that one. It's tough for the ego for a lot of coaches to do that, though right To put that sort of shift, especially at the high school level, um, yeah, into the like, let someone else do the the winning stuff later on. Like, how do you, how do you deal with that sort of ego? You actually said a quote which I quite enjoyed. You said, um, uh, life experiences teach you to be calm. Is that? Is that what you're saying now? Something which your life experiences are different now because you've had that experience?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I think it's unfair, but it's life. So if you're a player and you're a young player and you have a poor performance, you're probably going to get dropped. You're probably going to get dropped. If you're a medium player, you know with some degree of experience and you have an off game, you've got enough runs on the board that the coach is probably going to say well, ben wasn't his best today, but I've never seen him have two bad games in a row. Or I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, or you go to him and say Ben, that was far from your best work. I just need you to know. If you play like that again next week, you won't be playing the week after. So I'm firing a shot over the bell. If you're an outstanding, if you're the top-end player, who's the marquee player? Most of those guys are self-driven anyway, but because they've got so many runs on the board, you're going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1:Now the same applies to coaching. If you're a young coach and a player questions you and you go back and say well, actually I haven't thought about it that way. What do you think? If you're a young coach, the player's probably going to go. He doesn't know what he's talking about. But if you're a young coach, the players probably can go. He doesn't know what he's talking about.
Speaker 1:But if you're a vastly experienced coach and I go back and say, or you go back and say, or that coach goes back and says actually that's quite an interesting way of looking at it. What do you think would be the answer to that? You can get away with that because your experience gives you the benefit of the doubt and it's just. It's just how it is. And so if you, if you're an ambitious young coach, you're going to have to be really, really brave to swim against the tide. But if you're an old gray-haired bugger, who's bit, who's happy, who's happy with his lot and feels content with what he's done, doesn't matter, I'm not bothered. So you get into a different mindset and it's very, very hard when you get these external pressures to win and play. Certain people and you know, do things culturally how you're supposed to do it. You've got to be brave to swim against the tide sometimes.
Speaker 2:Have you been brave? What's your bravest story, Poyty?
Speaker 1:Mate, I don't know whether they're brave stories, but you know, the hardest the thing I've found really hard, but you have to be honest and factual about it is when you have to either tell a very good player that he's not going to be contracted again or he's not going to get picked for a playoff game because the young bull is now better than the old bull. And you know, I had one guy at the Hurricanes who I went to and said mate, time's up, I'm really sorry. These are the reasons, but you're not going to be contracted next year. And he said no, you can't do that to me. You've got to give me one more year. And I said I can't mate that to me. You've got to give me one more year. And I said I can't mate. You're blocking the way for some guys who are already as good as you and if I give them some more oxygen, they're going to be better than you.
Speaker 1:Your time is done, and when you have a huge amount of admiration for those guys for what they've done in the past but it's an honest assessment in your opinion then you've just got to make those decisions. And so I thought it was really interesting that Scott Robinson's come out the last week or so and said that on reflection for his first year in the All Blacks, he probably should have been braver with some of his selections. Ha, I didn't see that statement. First year in the All Blacks, he probably should have been braver with some of his selections.
Speaker 2:Ha, I didn't see that statement. How did you deal with that one Boydie? Like the aftermath of that? Obviously you don't feel great, but how do you stay strong in the face of that, because obviously you like the player.
Speaker 1:Oh, particularly if you like, you know, I mean particularly if he's a hundred games been an All Black icon. But he, you know, really difficult, really difficult, but at the end of the day it's very hard to do but you've got to deal in fact, not emotion, Mm.
Speaker 1:Yeah you know, you've just got a, you've just got a deal in facts and, at the end of the day, you have to be, you have to be sure and be committed to what you're doing. You can't be wishy-washy or half, it's like no, I've made this decision, this is how I've made the decision, this is what I'm thinking and this is a consequence of my thoughts, and that's how it's going to be. Has to be, has to be, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it, mate, and that Hurricanes era was a bloody good era for you. Like, obviously, you made the finals and won the finals first one up. What was the culture like in that crew, was it? Did you make some big cultural shifts around that team?
Speaker 1:It was really interesting because if you look at that evolution, you know, you know Coops had been there a long time and you know, really, top, top human being, good bloke. And then Hammer Mark Hammer had come in and he felt that the place was a bit needed a bit of a shake up and some more, you know, some more structure and some more honesty, and wasn't tough enough. And I came in after Hammer and I think I was a little bit lucky with my timing because I'd been at Wellington for three years before. So there's quite a few of the guys that played for Wellington that weren't All Blacks played for Wellington then went on to the Hurricanes, and so you know, I was in a lucky enough position which I wasn't when I went to Northampton because I didn't know anybody when I first went there.
Speaker 1:But I was able to pull some of those senior players in and say, okay, I'm only here to make a success of this. What do I need to change? What do I need to change to make sure that we give ourselves the best chance of winning titles regularly? What needs to change and there was some pretty common themes came back from guidance that I trusted around as an example. Most of those guys felt an overburden around meetings. So one of the guys said to me you know, you just have to. You just have to find a way to get information around without meetings. So we made a really conscious effort in 2015 to change our information flow from meetings to conversations.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so the numbers of meetings went down, the length of time that we were in meetings went down.
Speaker 1:But I was really at pains with the senior players to say, hey, not having meetings doesn't mean that conversations don't stop.
Speaker 1:If I find that all that connections that we need to make in a week on the field and off the field, if those connections not being made in a informal conversation, then we're going back to meetings I have to be convinced that we're still exchanging the information we need. And so, as an example, instead of the leadership group meeting every week, I had two or three guys that would go and have some conversations with two or three other guys, and then they'd give me the nod and say we need to get together this week or no, we're perfectly fine and everything's going along nicely. So. Or they'd come to me and say, look, boys are really happy with where we're at, but we need to be a little bit better on our timekeeping, or we need to be a little bit harder on something, or we need to make sure little bit harder on something, or we need to make sure we get better at something. And so I'd say, okay, well, I'll work that into the program, or not sure about that. We need to talk about that a bit more.
Speaker 2:Um, so they were conversations, not sit down meetings would you go to them, some of those key guys, and just say, look, I think this aspect was not up to scratch, and they would go back, have a discussion and go go. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's a good one to drive, and likewise would they also go. No, I think you're wrong there, boydie.
Speaker 1:Is that the sort of yeah, 100%, yeah, I mean, one of the most fascinating conversations that I had was with Dan Bigger when I went to Northampton Saints. He had been signed for the following year already by the previous regime and so I went over there. We had a bye, we had two byes of Super Rugby at that time and so I wasn't taking over until July 2018, but I went over for a week in March and a week in April when I had a bye week. And one of those times I met with Dan and we were just chatting away and you know he's pretty direct and pretty old school and stuff like that and I said to him I've got a bit of a feeling that the next three or four years of our lives are going to be pretty tightly intertwined and that if I'm successful, you're going to be successful, if you're successful, I'm going to be successful. So I think our relationship because you're new to the club, but you'll be straight into that senior player role because of your experience and I'm new to the club.
Speaker 1:So I said we need to be absolutely tightly joined at the hip around stuff. And he said to me yep, I agree 100% with you, but you need to be in a position to be comfortable about taking feedback from me, and I said, mate, I will take as much feedback as you want to give me, but it has to be at the appropriate time and in the appropriate manner. So I said don't want to be chatting to me in the middle of a training session, for instance, but let's make sure we stay really well connected. And we enjoyed a really, really good, really positive relationship and he was very honest with me at times and I was very, very honest with him at times. And the thing I loved about Dan is he is just so competitive, just so competitive Like just hated losing anything, and I thoroughly enjoyed working with them. But we had a very, very good, very good understanding around how and when and what we connected about.
Speaker 1:Loved it, and so that idea of coming away from meetings and those conversations, your relationship with him was just based on lots and lots of conversations and the openness to have frank discussions both ways, yeah, and the only thing you've got to be careful about conversations is at least in a meeting it's very transparent and everybody hears it, and so you've got to be very careful with your conversations that they are interpreted really accurately by the people that have made it and are listening, because communication requires two things. Right, you've got to have a speaker and a listener. Most coaches are really good speakers. Not a lot of coaches are very good listeners, and so if you're going to go down the conversation route rather than the meeting route, you need to be really sure that the messages that are getting delivered are the right messages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why do you think coaches, generally speaking, aren't good listeners?
Speaker 1:I might be being a bit hard on coaches.
Speaker 2:Nah, you're a good boy, dude. What's a skill set to drive change in that aspect? Or how do you become a better listener? Because it's an important trait for a coach, especially a modern coach.
Speaker 1:I think what sets good listeners apart, I reckon, is that they're constantly curious about how they can get better. They just want to get better. And I think it's the same with players I reckon world-class players. If I look at the guys, you know Courtney Laws I'm sure he won't mind me saying but, Courtney Laws, we had a lot of young kids in our system in Northampton and we, Courtney, we'd had a conversation about perhaps him changing from lock to six and really going about that and what that looked like to change in his game for him to be, you know, a world class six.
Speaker 1:And he stood up in front of a group, the whole group, when we were having a discussion, and said I want to be the best six in the world. And he said I'm not sure if I can be it, but I'm going to try my hardest. I'm going to give everything I've got in the next two years to try and become the best number six in the world. And I know what I've got to do and how I'm going to do it. But he said you've got to put yourself out there. And all the guys that were world-class players, they were all open to learning, they were all open to conversation. They all wanted to be the best they could be, and if that meant you could have a small part of an influence on them by giving them some information that might make them better, then I think that's what it's about. The guys that are a bit more about themselves are not always that good listeners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what is it for coaches? Do you think Like? What does a coach do you know, like that sort of trying to improve? Is it just being open and like looking out for things? What is it that a coach could do to get better?
Speaker 1:I think you've got to look outside the box, get better. I think you've got to look outside the box, challenge yourself all the time around. I think, as humans and coaches are the same, I think if you look at the amount of time that you look back, the amount of time you look in the now and the amount of time you look in the future, I would say 90 percent of coaches spend too much time looking backwards and not enough time looking forwards. And so, to me, you're dreaming time, you're thinking time. You've got to get in your head. If you get tied up with always looking back, you need, you need to look back from reference points, but if you keep looking back and you're not looking forward, then you're not going to grow. And so you know. I just think that desire to be better, desire to grow, desire to be the best you can be, I think that's really strong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that phrase. Dreaming time, boyd, like dream about what the future has got in store and how exciting you can make it. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, I was lucky enough at the Saints and the Hurricanes 20 to 30 minutes drive to the training base and 20 or 30 minutes drive home, okay, and I tried really hard to discipline myself that as soon as I turned my car key on and the car going to work, I was thinking all I thought about was what does success look like today? What do I need to make sure I've nailed how do I do that? Where do I put? What are the critical few things for today? Where do I need to put my energy? And so at that time I'd never put the radio on, I'd just sit there and it was making sure I knew who I needed to connect to today, where I needed to put my energy, how I needed to present myself, how I was going to be, and that was it.
Speaker 1:And then the day happened when I got on the car to go home, I turned the key on and my reflective process started. How was the day? What were the things that I was trying to achieve today? Did I achieve those? What were the barriers to achieving? If I didn't, how could have I been better? Blah, blah, blah. The minute I turned my car off.
Speaker 1:My wife probably won't agree with me if I say this. Linda probably won't, but the minute I turned my car off, I tried to walk inside the house and have been finished around what I needed to have done and how I did it. So I think one of the things about reflection is that it needs to be a process, not a dreaming. Now, if you get that process right, then what it does allow you is when you're sitting there watching a movie and you've lost interest and your brain starts going somewhere else, that it goes forward. It keeps going forward about where you want to go and what you want to do and what are the you know, because all the to me, that's the difference between management and leadership. Management is all getting all the day-to-day things, but leadership is about where am I going to go and how am I going to get there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually lovely that almost like a reference point, isn't it? That drive is like bookending the days between you know what you're going to do and then reflecting on what you did do and then sorting off. It's almost that drive is like a physical you know statement. It is the bookends of the day, bang, bang. That would almost be a must-have for any coach, because a lot of coaches don't switch off right, like that's part of the coaching, the churn of coaches where you're just so in that you never switch off.
Speaker 1:And I think it's a fair point. But I went to one guy who said if it's not written down, it didn't exist. Now, I've never written anything down, I don't, I don't do that. But for him his argument was how do you, how do you know the recurring themes? If you look, if you've got your, if you've written some notes around what last week, last month, last year was like, and you keep picking up the same trends when you go back and it highlights, as, say, tempo and that word tempo, you might miss it. But when you go back you think, oh, actually tempo. There's obviously an issue or timekeeping or optimism or something. If it's in your book, you can pick up those trends. If it's in your book, you can pick up those trends. To me that's the difference between science and art, and I've Keep going.
Speaker 1:You know it's a bit like. You know you say to a coach what's that player like? And one coach will say, oh, he makes 16.5 tackles a game. He's got a high speed running meters of 10.8. He's spitty carries left to right really positively. You know he's got all the science. And another guy will say I think he's got great instinct at the breakdown about when to leave the ball and when to go and when not to, and so those are very different. You know you've got the science and the artist and I think coaching is a nice balance, like teaching is, like mentoring is like fathering children is is a balance between art and science, all of it, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is Well. I'm actually intrigued just for that, boyd, because I don't write much down either, Like and how much are we talking that you don't write down, like you don't write reflective notes? Is that what you're talking about?
Speaker 1:No, no, you just no. And it's the same. Sometimes I can't remember people's names that I met yesterday. You know, in that respect I've got a poor memory. But when next season's draw comes out, I reckon within 48 hours I could go to the team and say big picture now. There's no detail on this, but big picture now. This is the season. And I could sit there and say we've got Bristol at home in week one, we've got the Leicester away in week two. I'll remember all that draw off the top of my head. Just look at it once and it stays in there.
Speaker 1:But most importantly for players, if you can give them the framework of what the year looks like, then for me that macro organisation is massively important. Massively important to get the big framework right. Important, massively important to get the big framework right. I don't put any detail into any of that because we know we're going to train on a Saturday. We're going to train on a Monday, Tuesday, we're going to have Wednesday off, we're going to train on a Thursday. We're probably going to have a captain's run, although I have a real question mark over what the hell a captain run actually is for.
Speaker 2:Don't get sad Lestie, Start with a captain's run.
Speaker 1:We had some nice debates around captain's run. Yeah, you know how much, whether it's going to be an hour and 15 minutes, whether it's going to be an hour and 30, whether it's going to be indoors, whether it's going to be outdoors, whether it's going to be focused on A, b or C. I worry about that when we get there. But we can book the framework within 48 hours of getting the thing. We can book the whole framework out. So I reckon that, and the thing that players want to know, and coaches, most importantly when am I going to have weekends off? When am I going to have weeks off? When's my downtime? You know, and if you can tell a guy in July that he's going to have the third week of March off and it's the school holidays and all the stuff, you can go to Mallorca or something around that and he's got six months to plan it. They love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now, that's a nice little piece of art right there that creates those magical things around the culture and the connection, isn't it? Yeah, hey, boydie, look, it's got time, mate, let's rip through. But I always like to finish with the same question, mate, because it comes up with some really interesting answers, and the question I'd like to finish with the same question, mate, because it comes up with some really interesting answers, and the question I'd like to finish on is this is what's one thing that you believe about rugby or coaching that you reckon most of your peers would disagree with?
Speaker 1:I think too much of the stuff that coaches do is management, not leadership, and so I'm massively driven by less structure, more intuition, more technical, less tactical. I do understand at the highest level of the game that you can Sam Vesti is a master at unpicking defences with very particular strikes, and I think there's an absolute place for that but I think the game is far more about a group of men going out there and feeling their way through. The game is far more about a group of men going out there and feeling their way through the game and understanding the flow and the momentum and the changes and the shifts that they need to do. So I think the softer stuff you can't get away from you've got to have a good scrum and you've got to have a good line out. You've got to have all those things. Yes, to have a good scrum and you've got to have a good line out.
Speaker 2:You've got to have all those things yes, but I think the difference between very good and great is softer skills. Yeah, and it's a lovely statement. You said that just getting out of the management head, not the leadership head. That's an interesting statement and I think you're right that you get caught up in the weeds, as some people say, which is the management stuff, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Two full-time nutritionists, and you know I couldn't help but noticing, at the end of the gym session before they went off to training, you know they'd spent the last hour mixing the drinks for them, protein shakes, the shakes for them. And I said to them, why are you doing that? And they go oh, because we're a bit pushed for time. And I said, is it important that the players do that? And they said, oh, absolutely, it makes a big difference. And I said, why don't we encourage the players to do it themselves? And they said, oh, they'd never do it. And I said, well, it can't be important then that I'm going to do it. They'd never do it. And I said, well, it can't be important then, they're not going to do it. And you know.
Speaker 1:So we went into this evolution of professionalism where timekeeping and microstructure and microorganization became really critical. And so, as an example, we always had a philosophy that we'd train for task on a Tuesday and train for time on a Thursday. So if we're training for task and we can't get our strikes right, if we have to repeat them, if we have to stop and have a discussion to get it right. And it meant that training went from an hour and 15 to an hour and 25 because we needed some remedial coaching to go in there. Everyone accepted that it was task-focused. You don't have the luxury on a Thursday. This is preparation for Saturday now. So if we've got four strikes in our 15-on-15 team training and you get three of them wrong, too fucking bad.
Speaker 1:You don't get a chance to rehearse it. So I think having discussions with people around what lens you're going to look at their training in, what you're going to judge them on and what's important, I think, for everybody to understand, that I think is critical.
Speaker 2:Gee, that's good, boydie. Train for tasks and train for time. So, just out of interest, did you have your early sessions in the week with task focused, and then the later in the week because you wanted to be sure to keep the legs sharp? Yeah, it was time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so everything about Thursday was we're going to do an after warm-up, we're going to do an out-out. I'm a massive believer. It's one thing I couldn't change with a couple of places I went to. But I had an epiphany at one stage where we always used to do our extras after training and it's like what is that about? If it's important, why are we doing it, tacking it on at the end of training?
Speaker 1:So at Northampton Saints, for instance, every single training session we had three three-minute blocks or three four-minute blocks or three five-minute blocks, depending on how much we were putting into our skills. And that was at the start of training and the the sort of unwritten rule was two of those blocks with yourself and one was to help somebody else. So I said you, you go away and organize it. And so I'd hear dave ribbons would go over to dan bigger, say we want to do halfway kickoff receipts, can you come over and kick to us? And he'd say, okay, well, I'm going to do clean out in one and I'm going to do catch pass in two. So on the third block, we'll do kickoffs. So, ribbo, I'd go over to the props and say third block, we're doing kickoff receipts with Dan, so that organized all the thing. But we did micro and small unit and individual skills three blocks at the start of training, every session, every session.
Speaker 2:And the concept of that is when you're fresh and you're in best form. That's when you're doing the stuff.
Speaker 1:And also it leads into what you're about to do, when you go into 15 on 15 with some level of liveness around it, whether it's full on or body in front or, you know, shoulder on only or whatever level of physicality you put to it. But I think those sharpening those little skills where it's player driven driven, I think is massively important, massively important.
Speaker 2:And you would have had to drive that to start with, would you just push the importance of it?
Speaker 1:that's your role sometimes democracy is overrated yes yes.
Speaker 1:So sometimes you've got to say I take your point. I can remember we signed a guy at Northampton Saints and I said to all the boys, all the coaches, go and have a look at this footage and come back, and I don't want any discussion. I just want you to tell me should I sign him or not and I don't want you to have any discussion, I just want you to go away. I've got Roscoe to put the footage on your laptops and we're going to meet at three o'clock and you just say yes or no. They all came back and said no and I said well, that's unfortunate, because I signed them yesterday.
Speaker 2:Who was it?
Speaker 1:It was Joana Augustus, who was, you know, who, in my opinion, was a great signing for.
Speaker 2:Northampton. Does he know that it was a unanimous no, no, no, so I hope he doesn't listen to your podcast.
Speaker 2:Well, he'll think you're the greatest coach in the world after that. Hey Boydie, what an absolute pleasure. I really. It's a privilege and a pleasure for me to chat to you. It's been a long time between drinks for myself and yourself, so it's just lovely, mate, and you're a bucket of wisdom, mate, and you've had a career. It's what the grey hair is all about, mate. It keeps. Well, you've still got them, mate, so you're going good, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It either falls out or goes grey, one or the other.
Speaker 2:Love it, mate. Thanks for your time. Okay, let's keep in touch, eh. Here are my final three thoughts from a conversation with Chris Boyd.
Speaker 2:Number one bookending your day. Boyd, he used a great example of every time he'd get in his car in the morning on the way to rugby, he would preview what he was going to do and have a checklist to see if he nailed it. Then, when he finished the day, he used the car ride home to review everything he set out to do. The purpose of this was so, when he walked through the doors at home, he was more present and more connected to what he was going home to. That's the ideal. It doesn't always work, but that concept of bookending your days with your own personal preview and review is an outstanding concept for coaches and leaders to have, whether that's in rugby or in your business life as well, whether that's in rugby or in your business life as well.
Speaker 2:Number two the quote that Boydie said too much of what coaches do is management, not leadership. I think this is a great reflection tool for us as coaches. Have a think about how much of what you're actually doing is actually just admin, and if there's a lot of it, then maybe it's worthwhile thinking about how you delegate that admin to people who love and enjoy that stuff and want to do it as their priority. If there's a lot of it, then maybe it's worthwhile thinking about how you delegate that admin to people who love and enjoy that stuff and want to do it as their priority. Doing this will allow you to free up your own time to be better at doing the big picture, leading and coaching, which is what you're there to do.
Speaker 2:Number three train for task and train for time. This is a cool concept about separating what your trainings are actually for, whether they're for growing the task that you're trying to improve or the focus being time. It's really important to actually know and have a bit of intention about what you're going into that session to achieve. This applies to pretty much everything you do in life. So what a great concept for us as coaches training for tasks versus training for time. Until next time, stay well.