REFLECTIONS Public vs. Private

What makes a truly meaningful team culture? It's not just putting values on a wall or running team-building exercises. According to Ben Herring, it requires a deliberate framework with three essential components working together to form what he calls your "culture circle."

The first component challenges conventional thinking about success. While public definitions of success—winning championships, hitting targets, earning promotions—certainly matter, they create an emotional rollercoaster when they become your only measure. That's why Herring advocates developing private definitions of success focused on growth and development. He shares a powerful story about a shy player he transformed into a confident public speaker, explaining how this "private win" provided deep fulfillment regardless of game outcomes. By maintaining these parallel success definitions, leaders can find meaning and purpose even during challenging seasons.

The second component involves articulating a clear philosophical foundation for your culture. Herring's personal philosophy—"I'm here to grow great people"—serves as his North Star for difficult decisions and conversations. When faced with challenges, he can simply ask: "Is this growing great people?" This philosophical clarity prevents reactive leadership and ensures consistency in your approach.

The third component focuses on core values, but with a crucial distinction from typical approaches. Rather than brainstorming generic values like "honesty" or "respect," Herring recommends identifying just 1-3 values that truly matter—values you're willing to act as "gatekeeper" for. These should align with both your personal convictions and your organization's identity. The key is choosing values you genuinely feel strongly about and can authentically uphold, not just buzzwords that sound good in a team meeting.

When integrated into your "culture circle," these components create an environment where both public and private success can flourish. And the ultimate measure? What people take with them when they inevitably leave your circle. Are they better humans for having spent time in your environment? That's the true definition of cultural success.

Looking to strengthen your team's culture? Subscribe and share this episode with a coach or teammate who's on the same journey.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Coaching Culture Reflections
• 0:48 Creating Your Cultural Framework
• 1:51 Public vs Private Success Definitions
• 6:15 Philosophy Beyond the Game
• 7:53 Values You're Gatekeeping For
• 11:04 The Culture Circle Explained
• 12:59 What People Take When Leaving

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:25

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 this side of the 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. Cool people, here we are, and today we're talking about how we put a framework in around creating our culture, because culture isn't always just done right. We've got to put a little bit of work into it. So how do you get it? How do you get the cultural framework that you want? We've come up with this really simple way to just narrow down your values Three things inside a circle, circle being your culture. Three things is you've got to be able to define what success looks like for you, and that's separating out the public and private. Two, you've got to have philosophy on what your culture is and why. Massively important. We often talk about philosophies for the way you play the game, but how do you get it for your culture? And three, the values you are gatekeeping for. They're the three things we're going to talk about in this little circle, okay, so let's start with how you define success Massively important for coaches and leaders, because we can get in trouble when we start defining success around winning and losing. Okay, that's very easy to do, so we're going to break it up into two groups here.

Speaker 1: 1:55

So how you define success you have your public definition of success and you have your private definition of success. So, publicly, we all know what success looks like, right? As coaches, we understand that winning is trophies, premierships, titles, shields. That is the public definition of success and I've been around long enough to know that that is just the public expectation, particularly in the pro world. But in all levels of rugby and sport and probably business as well, the public will define success that way. What they can see Understand that it's like a water off a duck's back a little bit. That is just what it is. That's the reality. However, if that's our only definition of success, if that public version of success is all we define our own success, for our motions are going to be like a roller coaster up and down, up and down, because we can't always control a lot of that. We can certainly put big frameworks in to get that as much as we can, but it's not always going to be the case. We're going to be bound by a whole lot of things which are out of our control Injuries, we might walk into a team which is way below the standard, and we've got to work and just try to grow better. So winning is not always the measure of success. But, really importantly, we've also got to have, as coaches, as leaders, a private definition of success. What that looks like privately to you. I think that's really massive. So that helps you keep whatever's happening publicly. You have your own separate, private version of success.

Speaker 1: 3:31

I'd like to give you a little example. It's a coaching professional team. We brought in a young man who was a big man and we wanted to grow him big, not just on the field, but off the field as well, like having a real big presence among the team. So we brought him around to our house for dinner and we asked him whilst he was having dinner I'd like you to be the orator for this team this year, and the reason I want you to have that role is because I want you to grow your public speaking, I want you to be a bigger version of yourself. You're a big player on the field. I want you to grow off the field as well. And so he said, yeah, that's exactly what I'd love to do. So the very next day I said to him look, every time there's someone in our environment, you're going to be the person that gets up and thanks that person for coming.

Speaker 1: 4:14

So the very next day we had a speaker as we often did into our team room and we asked this young player, brido, can you come, thank John for speaking to us today? And he got up, walked across the stage really really quietly, humbly, shoulders tucked in, and just said thanks John, and then walk back to a seat. And I thought that was awesome start. And so every session then, when that happened, I'd just have a little bit of feedback to him Mate, why don't you try to get two sentences, maybe three sentences? How about next time? You don't wait for me to encourage you to do it, you just get up and do it. And throughout the season we did this kind of thing Just keep plugging away, keep adding little bits. And I'll never forget the end of season shareholders meeting where we had the whole wider community come in for a brilliant barbecue where we thanked sponsors and shareholders and board members and all that sort of stuff and without any sort of prompting, he jumped up and he spoke for two minutes, beautifully articulate, thanked everybody, told them this wonderful story about how it reminded him of his homeland in the Pacific Islands and brought the house down and I just went.

Speaker 1: 5:15

That's my private definition of success. This young man has grown out of sight, loved it Now, whatever's happening on field. As it happened, it was a very successful season but my actual success definition of success was that moment right there, that ability to have grown someone, and that was my focus point throughout the season. The rugby was just what it was. I always do the best I possibly could to prepare that team, but my private wins were over here like that, and I had a number of those private success moments throughout that season and that kept me on the level. Whatever was happening publicly, I still had my private wins I could still achieve, regardless of the public definition of success. I think it's a lovely concept as a coach, if you haven't done it separate out what private and public success looks like for you have a couple in every season you're with of private wins, private little successful moments that you can possibly have and then every week, work on how you're going to grow to achieve those private successes Absolutely wonderful.

Speaker 1: 6:15

The second point in a framework for developing culture is your philosophy for what you're there for. I think as rugby coaches, we all get taught to have a game philosophy. You know, play fast, attack in rugby, attack from all corners, whatever it may be. That gets taught pretty quick when you go to those courses and things like that way. Back when you start coaching, people tell you have a defined way of playing. But very rarely do we actually have a defined thing, a philosophy for the wider culture of our group. What do we want this culture to be? What's our philosophy around a culture? What is it all about? And when you take the time to actually sit down and go yeah, that's me. That is powerful and it gives you a framework and a reference point to keep coming back to in your environment. So to share my own philosophy, which has grown over the years, but ultimately it comes down to this I'm here to grow great people. That is my philosophy for this culture and every time there's a challenging point, I can ask myself is this growing great people? Is this approach? Is this what I'm about to say now growing great people, or doing the opposite. If I'm essentially having a very hard conversation and I want to take it in a certain way, I check back and go is this right to go down this way? Is this growing great people? And potentially it may well be, but if it's not, then I pull back. So, when it comes to the framework, that is the underlying, that is the sentiment that runs through what you're doing. What's your philosophy outside the game, outside everything else, and that's ultimately what it comes down to.

Speaker 1: 7:50

The third thing is the values which we are gatekeepers for. In any environment, you've got to have some values, you've got to have some standards and things that are important, and I want to challenge you not to just get into this thing. That's often done in these culture sessions, where you just put on a board. You write down words like honesty, respect, all these loyalty, all these sort of buzzwords which get written down in a brainstorming session, and they're all very lovely and they sound great, but there's no meat to them. There's no bones to these values. Often you'll get instructors coming in and everyone will throw up their words and they have a board of 20 and then they'll narrow it down to 10 or 8. But they don't mean anything because they're not really personalized, they don't have a story behind them, they don't have guts to them. So here's the challenge With your values. It's one, it's two or it's three at max. Now, how you get to that? Now that's the challenge.

Speaker 1: 8:49

You've got to find out what you know, what drives this team, what drives the history, what drives the logo, what drives the people in the community around it? You know where has this team been in the past? What is it all about? And aligning the values that are important to you and the team together. Mesh them, because you've got to as the leader of this group. You've got to know that you really feel for these values. You can't just throw honesty out there if it's not a big deal for you. You can't just chuck out loyalty if you've floated around all over the show and will continue to do so. You can't chuck out about respect if you're shown very little, because it defeats the impact of these values. So one, two, three, align it with the history of the club, and there's many ways to do that, which we can dive into as we go. But don't pick weak ones. Pick strong ones that you can influence.

Speaker 1: 9:38

Now the phrase I love to chat about is you are the guardian of these values. So if we take a circle like this now, this is your culture. Now people come into that circle from the top for all different reasons. At a professional level, you get selected into these teams because you're good enough. At a junior level or a childhood level, parents may force their kids into your circle, into your environment, but regardless when they're there, then these three things we talked about kick in in this circle, that one. So, as soon as they get inside your culture, the first things you put in are the values, the one, two or three values that you've highlighted, that you can uphold, that you are the gatekeeper of. Now, as the leader, you are the gatekeeper. So those are the big rocks you look at.

Speaker 1: 10:31

Whatever your values are, you've got to uphold them. You've got to create standards and boundaries and things you tolerate and won't tolerate about it, and this is really massive. This is massive because this is your key things as a head coach that you're looking for. You're looking forward to rewarding behaviors which live up to those values, the behaviors you want to see. So every time you see it, you go yes, our values may be honesty, and look at little, tommy. You've just shown great honesty with that. You celebrate it, you make it big. Likewise, if people break it, you can come in hot and quick and go. That is not our value. But you've got to define them, otherwise you won't know If you have too many. And trying to pick up on everything, it's weaker, it's generalized, it's vague One, two, three, bang them, bang them. So you know, in that circle those values feed in to your philosophy. Whatever your philosophy is, those three values feed it, they grow it and if you know your philosophy, those values should align pretty damn good and that underpins everything you do inside that culture.

Speaker 1: 11:34

It then divides into two parts A, the public successes and B, the private successes. Philosophy will feed both of them. If you've got your actual rugby ability going well and you've hit your values, you've hit your philosophy. You should see improvement in that public definition of success. You should have on-field improvements. Likewise, on the private side of things, you should actually have little wins along the way, individuals growing as people ticking off little things you set out to do with them. So it's a 50-50 split Once then, from both of those public and private.

Speaker 1: 12:12

When they leave your environment, success looks like what they leave with, because in rugby, but in all business and a lot of life too everyone leaves a culture and changes. In rugby it's very short-lived, in business it's a little bit longer, but people always ultimately leave, even family cultures. When kids grow up, they leave. They come back intermittently but they do leave. So success looks like what they walk away from your culture with. Are they better people? Parents, husbands, wives, friends, fathers, mothers All of that stuff can be taught inside your culture. Whether it's a sport or otherwise. The sport or the business can often be just a vehicle to drive fantastic values and a fantastic culture. 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.