%20copy%202.png)
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
REFLECTIONS Taming Your Coach's Ego
The silent opponent every coach must face isn't on the field—it's within. This episode dives deep into the complex relationship coaches have with their egos and how mastering (not eliminating) this powerful force can transform your leadership.
Drawing from wisdom shared by elite coaches like Steve Hansen and John Wooden, we explore the crucial distinction between healthy competitive drive and an under-controlled ego. Your ego supplies the fire that fuels excellence, but when left unchecked, it creates blind spots that limit growth and damage team culture. Players mirror what they see—making your relationship with your own ego perhaps the most important modeling you'll ever do as a coach.
Through practical strategies like switching from statements to questions in team huddles, scheduling regular ego check-ins, appointing trusted "truth tellers," and normalizing mistake ownership, you'll discover how to harness your ego as fuel rather than allowing it to become your handbrake. The episode examines specific coaching pressure points where ego typically flares—selection decisions, player feedback, and both winning and losing streaks—offering tactical approaches to maintain perspective when it matters most.
The journey toward ego mastery isn't about perfection but progress. Every time you choose reflection over reaction or listening over lecturing, you take another step toward leadership that genuinely elevates others. Because ultimately, coaching greatness isn't measured by personal acclaim but by the collective success your leadership enables. Subscribe now and transform how you lead by mastering the opponent within.
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 Soda 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. Welcome to this edition of Reflections. Today, we're talking about mastering your ego and not losing it, which is a big difference. All right, so let's talk about something that every coach deals with the ego, and, I'll be honest, your ego is not all bad. All right, so let's talk about something that every coach deals with the ego and, I'll be honest, your ego is not all bad. In fact, my good friend Steve Hansen said it's ego isn't the problem. Under-controlled ego is, and we dove into that in the podcast with Steve Hansen, which happened a fair few episodes ago, where he talked about his alter ego that used to come out, that was ego-driven, which would make him do things and act in a certain way which he wasn't super proud of, and he's taken the years to really break it down and get on top of it, but he made the point that he never wanted it to be gone. Because the ego is your competitive juices. It helps you be sharp, stay on, be be focused and laser-like and determined. It's your competitive juice, right, so you don't want to lose it, you just want to be able to get it under control and I love that breakdown and that definition of it. The late great John Wooden actually also said another beautiful quote the greatest opponent you'll ever face is yourself, and that's not just coaching, that's leading and just being a person in general. So it's really important that we actually take stock of the ego and why it's important just to recognize and reflect and be aware of it. Because your ego, your emotions and blind spots are your real opponents. If you master those, you actually master your game. Your emotions and blind spots are your real opponents. If you master those, you actually master your game, your craft, which for us here is about leading and culture. Sorry, not culture about coaching.
Speaker 1:So the ego what is it generally can be linked to? The biggest link for me is that the ego can get you in this kind of fixed sort of mindset and the belief that your abilities or, I don't know, your intelligence or even your leadership style are set in concrete, that you either have it or you don't. And when the ego is driving the show, it pushes you to do things which you may or not, always not even be realizing you're doing. Here's a couple of ones. Your ego wants to protect your identity at all costs. What you think you are, you know, and when something challenges that, you'll drive to put that in a bad light, it avoids looking wrong or uncertain and it sees feedback as a threat. Not at all, and I think everyone out there will have maybe even experienced it yourself as a coach. I certainly have, certainly was a young coach when a player, senior player would come up to me and go just to let you know I think you could have done this, this and this with that drill that you're doing. That would have been better and that's classic. And and if I was to get upset about that, that would be the ego talking ego would say things like, things like oh man, if I fail, that means I'm not good enough, or if I don't have the answer, I lose a bit of credibility, or if someone challenges me, they're disrespecting me. Now, what this actually does is shuts down curiosity, shuts down growth and it creates a culture where players feel that same pressure. We are actually mirrors of how we want the players to react.
Speaker 1:So if your ego is making you a fixed mindset person, there's a high probability that's what your players will pick up. Likewise, it'll probably flow to all other aspects of your life, your relationships, your children. That will come through more often than not, right? So what do you do? Well, first, the first thing on your list is you just got to spot your ego first, and then your owner Spot it, and then owner. And this doesn't have to be a big, you don't have to get damaging on yourself, but you've just got to in order to manage it, you've just got to be able to see it. If you want to manage the ego, you've got to be able to see it. So, ask yourself some of these questions and see what your answer is.
Speaker 1:Do I get defensive when someone questions my game plan? Now, that is a question that is thrown to coaches a lot, especially in a squad of potentially 30 or 40 people, which is what I'm used to dealing with you get a lot. Well, coach, do you think this is going to work? Why are we doing this? This doesn't seem like it'll work, and I remember when I started coaching and I spent hours and hours on footage and doing that like planning out things meticulously, and someone would say I don't think this will work, I don't think it's very good. Who's watched nothing, and I would get frustrated and angry and defensive. But as I got more experience, as I learned to sort of manage my ego and spot it, I was able to ask and why do you think that, without any defensiveness, pure curiosity, and some of the stuff that would come back was pretty legit and genuine sort of stuff. And I think it's important to actually ask that question back and not be too defensive, not to?
Speaker 1:Another question you can ask is do I talk more than I listen? Do I talk more than I listen? I think Mike Cron always says it best and I quote this a lot coach must have big ears. You're picking up, and in order to have big ears and good listening, you need to listen and speak less. What you actually pick up is all those other things you also need to know. Do I need to be the smartest voice in the room? That's a tough one, because when you start coaching you actually think you do. But as you progress, as you get more experienced, you realize you don't want to be the smartest point of the voice in the room or person in the room and probably in any facet of your life. I don't want everyone following me. I want to be chasing someone as well.
Speaker 1:Now, these are all ego flags. Now, owning it doesn't mean beating yourself up, and I really stress that that is not what we're trying to achieve here. This is not a slap down or a beat down against yourself. It just means being real with yourself, just saying what is? I did this. Don't tie any emotion or guilt to that. Even though that's hard, that is hard. But I'll quote Ryan Holiday Ego is the enemy of what you want. Ego is the enemy of mastering your craft, because it's taken away that curiosity, it's putting up blockers and boundaries and going hard no's to stuff. So you want that kind of awareness in order to take that power back to say no to that. So here's a couple of things that we can do. Well, here's one thing that we can do after tough moments, you know, whenever you felt like you know which is I probably didn't do that. Well, just take a little bit of moment, have a little debrief. Do the debrief you do with your players, with yourself. What just happened? What did I feel? Was that about the team or was that about me? Do this for a week, and you'll be amazed at what comes back from it and how much more open you are to doing it. Make it a point. What just happened? What do they feel? Was that about the team or about me? Do it for a week.
Speaker 1:Steve did make mention, though, that you don't lose your ego. You just master it. You'll hear people say, drop the ego, but the truth is this that your ego actually holds your drive right. It's the reason you care deeply about results. It's that edge that pushes you to train harder, to plan smarter, to expect more demand more, all that stuff, and you don't want to lose it. You just want to be able to control the temperature a wee bit when you can.
Speaker 1:You've just got to make sure you're making an effort to stay competitive and humble. You need to make an effort to push standards without needing the spotlight to show that you were right, and when you can, you need to back yourself but still admit when you're wrong. That's really important. That's when ego becomes a fuel for excellence, not a handbrake. When you get those things right, especially that one about admitting when you're wrong. When you can do that well, you know you're mastering and getting on top of and owning your own ego, because when you start out coaching, admitting you're wrong is the hardest thing to do. But the more you do it and the different contexts and the practice, you get better at actually how you admit you're wrong and turning that wrongness into something which is actually right, a right way of doing things, and you're showing that example to the team. So when a mistake happens on the field, no one's hiding away thinking they're wrong, but they own it.
Speaker 1:And I've loved it when I've asked groups of players that I've coaching around, show them a video clip and say you know, I want to elaborate on what they've just seen. And when a whole lot of hands go up and people pull them up, themselves up and say I didn't nail that clean out, I was too high, I needed to get lower. I'm going to make a real effort on that this week, I go, wow, look at how their ego has just gone down. An ego-ridden player would not be putting their hand up and admitting such a mistake. And if you can create a culture like that, you're on your way to having a hugely successful team that's accountable to themselves and to each other. And you are the lead of that, okay, and it's important to remember. You are the lead of that, okay, and it's important to remember. You are the waterfall that flows down to everything underneath.
Speaker 1:Okay, massive, just want to raise a couple of topics. Here's a couple of things for you to think about, because this is where the friction comes in your egos. This is where you're going to be tested. Selection decisions that is, without question, on this podcast. The thing that all professional international coaches say is the hardest thing about coaching Selecting teams and telling people they're dropped or they don't have a contract. It's tough. And then you get people questioning your call, and that's tough for the ego and actually, a lot of times, you doubt yourself as well. You're not sure. So that is a burning. That is a fine balancing point. Feedback from players, you know often when you start coaching, it's what do they know? They haven't watched this countless hours of footages I have, but it's feedback, you know, of reality is their perception of reality. So let's dive into it. Let's be curious.
Speaker 1:Losing streaks Now, this is an obvious one, right? This is where you say to yourself I'm better than this, I'm too good for this, this is not me, and yet you take it personally and that can drive you to excellence, but it can also drive you into being an absolute dick in the way you behave and you forget the humans in front of you. You forget your morals, your standards, your ethics, how you talk to people. You don't treat your team the way you'd be treating your partner or your children or someone else's children. You're just all about I'm better than this, and what it's actually saying is I'm better than the team. Same applies to winning streaks.
Speaker 1:You know, it's very easy when you've got an ego to say I've got this all figured out, everything we're doing is great, I'm nailing this. In these sort of times, it's important you actually breathe, reflect and just be honest around yourself. You know what's actually going on and not get swept away and this little voice inside your head which tends to keep running around in there justifying every decision or blaming every execution. So get out of that statement. Here's a couple of things you can actually do right now when you are wanting to expand your ego, a couple of ones that I love, which I've donegest one I love is switching from statements to questions in huddles. Every time you get in huddles, instead of saying things like we didn't get this right or we didn't do this right or we lost because we lacked urgency, try this. What do you think was missing out there? What could we have done differently in the first 20 minutes? Now? These are very different questions. 20 minutes Now. These are very different questions. And why it works is it removes the pressure to always know to be the voice, which is an ego trap, and it models curiosity over control, and this is what we want our players to be. We want them to be asking good questions, so we ask good questions in return. I think it's lovely, don't you? Absolutely love it? The coach's mirror Now, this is a cool one which I actually got off, steve.
Speaker 1:It's just take five minutes, probably on a Sunday night, but you can do it any day you want and just reflect on where did my ego show up last week. Was I open to feedback or was I resistant? And did I react to protect myself or did I do it to support the team? And just keep notes. You keep notes on your phone or on a journal or in a book in a book if you're old school, but over time you'll see patterns and you'll see progress and you'll see you write more and you're more open to actually seeing when your ego actually showed up. And that is the star point. Being able to see. That is the star point. Being able to see it is the star point for getting on top of it.
Speaker 1:Another great one is nominated what we call a truth teller, and it could be a trusted assistant or senior player, or, in my case, it's my wife and it's her job, or, in your case, it could be your assistant to call me out if I get stuck in my head and I always love it Like I'm talking to Steve Hanson, eddie Jones these international quality coaches actually have people on their books that are for this purpose and in any team that they go down so they can call up and say this is what I'm thinking, just check me if I'm being silly here or I'm in my own head. I have that with my wife and she often pulls me up and said have you seen it this way? Do you understand where that player is coming from? Do you understand his context? Do you think you might have worded it too strongly in that circumstances? And it's absolutely awesome.
Speaker 1:Another great one is a little rule to put in place about publicly admitting one mistake per month. Just make it a rule. You can even narrow it down, make it more, you can make it weekly, if you want it. In a team meeting, just casually say, right, men, woman, I stuffed up that sub call, or I didn't explain that drill well, or this one's on me team, why it works. Because this doesn't make you weak, trust me, it actually builds trust. Players learn that mistakes aren't shameful, they're actually part of growth.
Speaker 1:Your ego gets used to be quietly put in the back seat, so to speak, by just admitting wrong. If you do it and you take it like it's nothing, you just go oh my bad, I got that wrong. I didn't make that sub call. Right, sorry about that team. I'll work to be better on those ones going forward. It's not weak, it's strong. And if you're doing it enough, your ego is getting put squarely in its place. So it's important around when we're talking about this ego is not to get too hung up on the negatives of it.
Speaker 1:No coach gets everything perfect. The best coach is just stay nimble and adjust fast. I think we've talked about it as the aq your adaptability quote and the ability to react to whatever's happening in front of you and the game plan really goes to plan. You have to pivot, you have to make calls on the fly and sometimes you just got to trust your gut, even when it's uncomfortable, bounce ideas around you, the crew that you enjoy and pull trigger and just go for it.
Speaker 1:What we're trying to do in coaches is not eliminate the ego, just manage it. And every time you choose to reflect over react or listening over lecturing, you take another step towards the kind of leadership that's actually top draw, that actually gets you in positions of coaching fantastic teams and that lift teams, not just yourself, and that's exactly what being a coach and a leader and a team sport is all about. Stay well, we'll see you next time. 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.