REFLECTIONS: Defining Culture

What's the difference between teams that thrive under pressure and those that crumble? It's not just talent or resources—it's culture. In this thought-provoking episode, I take you beyond buzzwords to explore why culture truly serves as the heartbeat of high-performing teams.

Culture lives in that gray, hard-to-measure space that surrounds all the visible parts of performance. I share my galaxy analogy: your skills and techniques are like stars, but culture is the rich, dark matter that allows those stars to truly shine. The deeper and richer this background becomes, the more brilliantly your team's talents can emerge.

One truth I've learned from my coaching journey: there is no universally "right" culture that works everywhere. I vulnerably share my own failure when I tried transplanting Leicester's successful rugby culture to a Japanese team, only to realize that authentic culture can't be copied and pasted between environments. What works brilliantly in one context may fail spectacularly in another.

Drawing from my conversations with world-class coaches like Steve Hansen, Eddie Jones, and Johan Ackerman, I reveal their unique definitions of culture—from "what we do when no one's watching" to "the glue" that holds everything together. I also introduce my biological definition: culture as "an environment suitable for growth," where leaders function as culture starters in the team's petri dish.

Whether you're leading a sports team, business unit, or family, this episode provides practical questions to define your unique cultural blueprint: What environment do you want to create? What behaviors deserve celebration? What standards are non-negotiable? Because culture isn't just something you talk about—it's something you intentionally build, nurture, and protect every single day.

Ready to transform your team environment? Hit subscribe now and join our community of reflective leaders committed to creating cultures where people and performance thrive together.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Coaching Culture Reflections
• 3:37 No Right Culture, Just Your Culture
• 4:46 The Galaxy Theory of Team Culture
• 7:01 How Top Coaches Define Culture
• 16:45 The Petri Dish Definition of Culture
• 21:49 Four Questions to Define Your Culture

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

Welcome to Coaching Culture Reflections, the midweek spark for anyone who loves leading teams and growing through that journey. I'm Ben Herring and I've been loving the Souther game for bloody ages. Each week I'll break down key components of leadership, from culture building to communication, from mindset to motivation, all to help you lead with more impact, heart and clarity and level up. Let's get into it. Hey friends, we are here at the Reflections page. We're talking about culture today, and culture is often overlooked, often treated as an afterthought in teams, but it is the absolute heartbeat of any team. It's that silent kind of force that just dictates how other people interact, how they perform and, ultimately, how they connect. So today, people, we're going to dive into that a little bit. We're going to dive a little bit deeper because it's important. So I'm going to start with this and I feel really strongly about culture. I've been loving this side of the game for bloody ages. But here's the thing there is no right culture, not one right culture. There's just one that fits your team, your context and your values. That's it. And if you're trying to copy what another team's doing, especially successful ones, it won't land because it's not going to be authentically who you are or your team is. So when you build cultures, when you're even starting at that place, you've got to find something that feels real to you, because if you're just chucking out borrowed buzzwords, your team, your environment will feel that and it's not genuine, it's not authentic and it just fizzles. I know because I've been in those situations where I've tried to do that and I've seen other coaches do it as well, and I firsthand made those mistakes. I'm pretty open about them. There's no problem with them, because part of cultures if you're a leader trying to grow them is you're going to make those sort of mistakes. And here's the reason why Because cultures are gray, they are in that gray zone of space.

Speaker 1: 2:42

They're unlike the skills and drills in a sports team or the foundations of business teams, the things you do, the nuts and bolts. They're different to those things, because the nuts and bolts of your sports team or your business is what you do every day, what makes it work, and most of the time the techniques and the skills are very black and white. If you do this technique over time you're going to get better, you're going to grow better. It's going to get to here, start here, get to here. We know that that's technique. Skills and drills lead to that. Same in any organization. You all have your nuts and bolts. If you sand this block of wood this way, it's going to eventually get to that Black and white. You know, you do it this way, you get that.

Speaker 1: 3:34

In a culture, however, it's not that clear. We don't really necessarily know, if we do this thing in an environment, how it's going to land, because the thing is we're dealing with people and that sort of that gray space that you know ethereal space that fills the gaps and we don't know. It's like a galaxy, right? If you picture that galaxy, you can see the stars and scientists can actually measure the distance to those stars and that's the thing we see. You know that is when we look up to the sky at night. It's beautiful, we see the stars. Now, that's the same in our sports teams. The stars are the skills and drills, the nuts and bolts that we are doing, and we can measure them. But what surrounds those stars is the rest of the galaxy, the blackness, the darkness, all the gray area. We can't measure that, but we know it's there, we know its importance because it surrounds the stars. The richer and the deeper that background space is that unmeasurable space is ultimately helps our stars shine brighter. The darker and the richer the galaxy that surrounds the stars are the the brighter they shine, and so those stars, in a sports context, are the skills and drills, the special moves, the wins, the losses. Those are the things that the public see and and they're what we often get stuck on. But what's really important, if you really want them to go well, is actually put a bit of effort into the background surrounds. You know what I mean that dark, rich galaxy, which is hard to measure. So the first place that you've got to go to when you're looking at this space is how you actually define this stuff, because when you put definition to something, you're making it unique and personal to you, rather than just this generic set of buzzwords that you can get so easy cut and paste what everyone else is doing. So I want to put something at you.

Speaker 1: 5:41

I'm privileged in my role here in this podcast, interviewing some of the world's very best rugby and sports coaches and high performance, international quality guys and girls. They have said what their definitions are. They actually take the time to actually sit down and define the word culture and what it means to them and I want to share it with you so you get a little bit of insight into what others are thinking around this stuff and and to take and steal the bits you like and to leave to the side the things and the aspects that don't work so well in your specific setting. That's the cool bit. So I'm going to start with Johan Ackerman, one of the best South African coaches. His definition of culture is this the values and standards we operate by. I really bloody love this because it incorporates standards into the way your environment is. Standards are actually the things that keep you accountable. So he adds values and he adds standards to his environment and he defines those two things as his culture, so what he values and the standards that he and the team hold himself accountable to. He puts those two things in and that's what his culture is. And then it's that whole different set of what actually are those values and what actually are the standards that uphold those values. And that's where he's very specific about what he does in his environment Very strong personality. As Johan Loves it Strongly recommend you have a listen to that podcast about his values and standards.

Speaker 1: 7:17

Outstanding Steve Hansen talks about the way we do things around here. That's his quote. Culture is the way we do things around here, the operative word being we. The way we do things around here. It's not what others do in their environments, it's not what the All Blacks do there or the other whales do here. It's the way we do things around here. Specific to us, our people, our culture, our environment. It's what we do. I think that's a really important thing because it's easy to actually cherry pick what the successful teams are doing and think we've got to do that here. But I can tell you firsthand it doesn't actually work and I'm going to give you an example around this.

Speaker 1: 8:00

I went to. One of my first big professional coaching gigs was at a mid-level company team in Japan and I'd come from Leicester, one of the most successful rugby environments in Europe, and I cut and paste everything we were doing and I tried to bring it into this mid-level company team in Japan and it went poorly. And the captain came to me one day and said this doesn't work here, ben. I said it does work because it was working over there. And he hit me straight back and said just because it works over there doesn't mean it's going to work here. And it was an absolute smack in the face moment for me around. You can't just regurgitate something which works there and expect it to work in a completely different environment. You know this context and you've got to be in subtle context in a way. Yeah, this captain actually said to me you don't know our background or how we learn, why we're even here. It's so different to what you were doing over there. And to not know that stuff and to try to bring it in it's not always going to work and it certainly hasn't worked. And he was right and that actually was the lead point for me, my whole cultural journey, why I'm on this tour now to help upskill coaches around the world in teams and businesses, about being really, really good with your culture, about putting time and effort into this stuff, because it's the way we do things around here in your specific environment.

Speaker 1: 9:31

I think it's a lovely quote. Here's a quote from Eddie Jones. It's what we do when no one's watching. That's his culture, that's his definition of it, the things we do when no one's watching. I think we can all understand that sort of intrinsic motivation. We know when we're fired up and we're into something and we're buying in, it's because we do the little things which we know will help, and it doesn't matter who's watching. It does not matter because we're going to go do those extras in the gym when we're running around the field, we're not cutting corners. When there's time for homework, when there's time for stuff in the evenings, we're doing it. It doesn't matter who's watching, because there's an internal driver there and, as a coach, as a leader, as a shapeshifter of culture, we've got to be the ones that actually pushes to get that bind for people to buy in when no one's watching. I think it's lovely, really do.

Speaker 1: 10:27

Here's what Glenn Delaney said. He said, quote it's an observation that others will make of you. This is cool because other people observing your culture can give a pretty damn quick snapshot of how good that culture is. If you, for example, think about your family, if someone you didn't know come and sat at your dinner table for 15 minutes with your whole family, they would have a snapshot image of how you are as a group, your interactions, how you treat each other, the tone, the sentiment, the feeling, and often people can do that that don't know you better than you can do yourselves, because when you're around it the whole time, when you're immersed in something you don't see it's shifting when it moves or tweaks, just like in a family. It's not till your in-laws come around and say, look, how big the kids have got. They've shot up over the last six months. And you don't realize till you put that line on the wall and you go, oh wow, because you're around it the whole time. This is probably why the best coaches in the world, the best leaders in the world, get people in regularly that don't know the context.

Speaker 1: 11:43

A lot of these coaches that I'm talking about here actually encourage people to come in, with the only caveat being I want some honest observations of what you saw around our environment, because that's the snapshot, that's the insight to how your culture is going. When you get someone that doesn't know it, they're stepping in with a fresh lens and a fresh viewpoint and they're taking things with just what they are, just what they're seeing, and that's an important bit of feedback. So an observation that others will make of you is quite a cool definition of how your culture's going, your environment is. I also believe strongly that, if you're not doing it already for whatever reason, getting people into your environment to give you feedback about how it's going is a massive thing for you to do. You've got to do it. A lot of coaches have a little bit of resentment and a little bit of concern about bringing people that don't know in, but I can tell you it's absolutely phenomenal feedback for you.

Speaker 1: 12:48

I regularly get in like different people in headmasters, principals of schools. I ask them to come in at times and say have a watch, you've got full access to everything in this pro environments. But at the end of the day, just tell me what you saw, and some of the stuff that they see you would never see. Here's an example of that. I had a principal come in for a session that I did an hour long session, and then when we left, I said what did you see? And he said well, did you notice how many people stayed and put away the chairs at the end? And I said I didn't said two. Two people stayed and those two people were also the two people that were putting away the rubbish and the gym weights that I saw earlier in the day. He said those are the kind of people you want to build your leadership groups around because, without anyone asking, they're inherently doing what's best for the environment. And it was some odd picks, some players in the team which I probably wouldn't have given them much kudos for, but that little bit of insight was absolute. Gold Goes a long way too for mentoring and, the same thing, getting people to come and regulate your environment, to just make those sort of observations.

Speaker 1: 14:01

Karen Crowley, the ex-Italian coach, said it's your ID, your identity. You know when you think you're talking about your identity it's lots of different things than that. Your personality, your strengths and weaknesses, how you interreact, your biases, your lenses all that stuff is you and so it is with our cultures, our environments. They're a buildup of the goods and bads, the strengths and weaknesses of the group, your ID and how you identify with yourself. And there's goods and bads in all of that, but it's uniquely us. Whatever it is, you've got to be proud of it, just like an individual person. Of course you've got the stuff you want to work on and the stuff you want to sort of remove from your ID the traits which don't always serve you well. Cool thing your identity. Franz Ludica said two words. Franz is a very top-drawer South African coach coaching the Kubota Spears in Japan.

Speaker 1: 14:59

He just called culture the glue the glue, and I freaking love that the glue, because the analogy is that glue keeps things together, sticks together Whatever's trying to pull you apart. The glue is the thing that keeps you together. The stronger the glue, the stronger you stay together. And in a sporting context, that's obviously your wins and losses, the successes and failures, but that's the same. In business, there's so much pulling you in different directions. The culture is the glue that keeps you together. I love that. I love that immensely.

Speaker 1: 15:36

Now I want to dive in to what I think, what I hold myself, how I define culture. Now, I love the biological definition of culture, which is culture is an environment suitable for growth. You think about a petri dish with the bacteria in it. That is, in science, called a culture. Now, it's an environment suitable for growth. The bacteria are sitting in there, growing, feeding on themselves, growing a culture, a colony inside that petri dish. I think I can extend that metaphor to say that our sports teams, or our teams in general, are inside a petri dish. They're our own little bubble. Whatever our world is, whether it be a rugby organization or a business organization, that's a group of people inside a petri dish and they're all feeding on each other and growing or poisonously dying.

Speaker 1: 16:39

I think it's a really important thing to think about the people inside your petri dish, inside your group. They're either growing the environment or they're killing it. It's a powerful statement. And in all petri dishes, in the science lab, there is a scientist that's making experiments inside that lab, inside that petri dish, dropping little bits of other bacteria and seeing if it grows or if it kills what's living inside. And so too, as leaders in our teams, in our environments, that's our role to that invisible force. We're chucking in something to the petri dish, to seeing if it grows the people or kills them. And it doesn't necessarily matter if it kills them, because it's not actually killing them, it's just an opportunity to learn and grow. We go, ooh, that experiment didn't work and ooh, that one did. I think that is a really cool definition for us as leaders.

Speaker 1: 17:43

We are the culture starters. We are sprinkling that little bit of something into the mix and seeing how it goes. I remember when I was younger we used to have these yogurt makers where you would take off the lid of a jar, chuck in some milk and water, add a little culture starter, mix it up, put it in the fridge overnight and in the morning it was yogurt. Inside that jar, the culture starter, which was that little bit of bacteria fed on itself, grew, mixed with the milk and the water and ultimately fermented into yogurt. And that's what we are as coaches we're the culture starter, that little bit of bacteria that's throwing things into the mix. Sometimes it works phenomenally.

Speaker 1: 18:31

We may say I'm going to throw this little bit into my environment, this little thing that we're going to do, and if it takes off, it feeds on itself and player after player, team member after team member embraces it, loves it, and then it starts taking a life of its own, forming something completely different. And that's the wonderful, that's the joy of culture. And we, as the leaders, we got to start that. So here is your mission statement, your little challenge that you need to get onto If you want a great culture, you need to actually start defining what it means for you. And why is that? Well, you can't lead something if you haven't defined it, you can't teach it, you can't project it and sure as hell you can't ask your team to buy into it if you aren't clear on what it is. So this is the first point you need to define what culture means to you, and to you. I mean, you listen to other things, you take snippets, but it's not what Google says, it's not what you heard in the TED talk. It's you, what you resonate with, and it may take a little bit of time to actually buy in yourself.

Speaker 1: 19:41

Ask yourself what does a strong culture feel like? How do you know when it's there, when you walk into a room, and what behaviors are non-negotiable for you and your environment? Because, like otherwise, this culture thing becomes a buzzword that everyone just nods along to and no one's quite sure what it actually means. When it gets tough on a Monday morning after you've had a big loss and everyone's finding things hard, okay. So when culture is not defined or it's undefined, teams drift a little bit. You know, people start to fill in the blanks with their own assumptions and that's where cracks form and communication and effort and trust. But when the culture is clear I mean really clear, like defined by you and understood by everyone, it gives people something to hold on to. It becomes like a compass, a filter, a reason to show up in a certain way, even when it's hard.

Speaker 1: 20:35

So you need to take the time to actually write down and take a series of notes, start the process in the journal of what culture means to you. Actually, make it a priority. Put it in a journal. Be a scientist yourself around how to form a culture. Do it Because, remember, there's no right culture, there's just the one that fits you, your team, your context, your values. You don't have to copy what others are doing. So this is what I want you to do right now.

Speaker 1: 21:05

Here's a couple of questions for you. If you're leading a team, sporting, business, family, whatever it is, ask yourself these four questions as a start point. You know this is the very thing. Number one what kind of environment do you want to create? In other words, what kind of culture do you want to create? That's number one. Have a think about that, just give yourself a bit of perspective. Okay, have a think about that, just give yourself a bit of perspective. You can also ask yourself if you can't answer that one, put down what do you definitely not want your environment to be. Number two what behaviors do you want to celebrate? What are the things you're going to be really joyous about seeing in your environment? Write those down as well, because then, when you see them, if you know what you're looking for, when they do happen. You can be on them as a leader and celebrate them, to bring people up so they understand clearly that this is the behavior we want.

Speaker 1: 21:59

Number three what do you tolerate? What are your non-negotiables? Whether they be standards, you're upholding values, beliefs. What are the things that you are really saying? This is my big rocks, for example, like for me, my language. I don't mind a swear word, but I don't want ours to be a culture of swearing. I tolerate a little bit, but not an enormous amount. That's just for me. That buys into some of my bigger picture stuff around the culture. I want my culture to be a well-spoken, polite enough, well-mannered enough environment. So I can tolerate a little bit of foul language now and then, because it is a red-blooded sport we're playing. But certainly when it breaks a certain threshold which I'll know when I see it I won't tolerate that.

Speaker 1: 22:52

So there's your star point if you're leading a team, chuck those questions out, twirl them around in your head, have a think about them, go deep on them, get yourself a bottle of wine, go rent out an airbnb for a weekend and dive into culture. What kind of environments do you want to create or you don't want to create? Number two what behaviors do you celebrate? And number three what do you tolerate? What standards are you prepared to tolerate in your environment? Because culture is not just a mission statement or a buzzword set, it's standards. It's what gets lived every day, day in, day out, especially when no one's watching. That's it for today's episode. If this sparked something for you, hit, subscribe, share with a coach or teammate or just sit with the questions. That's where the good stuff starts. Catch you next time.