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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
REFLECTIONS: Off field equals on field
What makes championship teams truly exceptional? The answer might surprise you. It's not extraordinary talent, cutting-edge tactics, or even flawless execution during competition—it's what happens when nobody's keeping score.
Drawing from Sam Vestey's remarkable success with Northampton Saints, this episode reveals how elite teams deliberately build three critical foundations off the field: communication, organization, and connection. These aren't soft skills or nice-to-haves—they're the bedrock upon which championship performances are built. When Google researched what made their highest-performing teams successful, psychological safety emerged as the dominant factor, far outweighing individual brilliance or experience.
We explore practical, immediately applicable strategies for developing these foundations in your team environment. From two-minute check-ins and "name-action" protocols that sharpen communication, to creating task boards and mini-teams that build organizational muscle, to vulnerability circles and non-sport gatherings that deepen authentic connection—these tools transform team dynamics in profound ways. The most powerful insight? When players feel safe to communicate, take ownership, and connect authentically off the field, they perform with remarkable clarity and resilience when the pressure mounts.
Championship moments don't create exceptional teams; they simply reveal what's already been built through deliberate culture work when no one was watching. If you're frustrated by your team's performance under pressure, ask yourself: have we built the foundation when it's calm? Remember, what shows up on the field is always a reflection of what's been rehearsed off it. Subscribe now and join the conversation about building team cultures where excellence becomes inevitable.
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 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. If you want stuff on the field, you've got to build it off the field. Now, this was inspired by the podcast with Sam Vestey.
Speaker 1:We did that before the Northampton Saints final and Sam was awesome around flipping the thinking we do about the value of the cultural stuff off field. He was really big on that. Three big things that he wanted his Northampton Saints team to be is to have excellent communication on the field, excellent organisation on the field and amazing connection between the players on the field. And he realized where in his schedule are we actually improving these things, these big rocks that he wanted? And the answer was we have to do it off the field. There's only so much we can do on the field. We've got an hour 90 minutes on the field together, but we've got the rest of the day off the field to actually be doing these things. He made the comment if we want to get our players better at communicating on field, we've got to be doing lots of it and practicing it and exposing them to communicating off the field. Likewise with organization, likewise with connection. This is the guts of what culture is all about Doing the stuff off field or away from the actual nuts and bolts of what you're trying to achieve, doing it there. So when it comes to the rugby, or it comes to the sport or it comes to the business foundations, you're actually better at it because you've practiced. Comes to the business foundations you're actually better at it because you've practiced. So here's some things that I reckon we need to think about as coaches. You want better communication during the game. Get them talking more off field. You want more organization under pressure. Give them responsibility to organize something, whatever that is travel, team dinners, kit duties, whatever. You want stronger connection between players. You got to create more moments where they are connecting as humans, not just as players.
Speaker 1:So it's easy to dismiss this culture building stuff as just wishy-washy type stuff, but it's not. It's actually what builds your foundations and there's actually a lot of research on this to show that psychological safety't talent or IQ or experience that mattered most. What was actually the biggest one that Google Analytics found out was that psychological safety was the biggest driver of team success, and that's amazing, I reckon. And what that is is that feeling that you can speak up, make mistakes, ask questions or even, I suppose, challenge ideas, without that fear of embarrassment or even punishment. So, in other words, when people feel safe, they perform better.
Speaker 1:Now here's how this ties into those three things that Sam talked about communication, organization and connection. How this ties in With communication. If you can get clear communication on the field, they've got to be feeling safe to do it off the field, normalizing a lot of open, honest communication. When it comes to organization, giving players off-field responsibility builds their confidence, which is key to psychological safety. And when it comes to connection, when players actually know a bit deeper about each other, they feel closer and they're more prepared to back each other up on the field without hesitation. So if you are a coach or a leader thinking you know, why aren't my players communicating better on a game day, flip it. Ask yourself this instead when and how are they actually ever practicing communication the other six days of the week? The other six days of the week, because what you grow off the field is ultimately what will show up when it matters most. So what we're going to do now, we're going to just chuck in a couple of things that we can do for each of those ones that Sam Vestey and the Northampton Saints talked about how you can do it in your environments, your teams. A couple of things in each aspect.
Speaker 1:So let's dive in Communication. How do we build it up so when they need it, under pressure, they've got it? Here's a couple of things you can do immediately in your team the daily check-in, a two-minute rule here's something where you can just get players to check in with another player, rotate it up. Start of the week here's your partner for the week. You have a two minute check in and you can rotate these daily, weekly, whatever what it is is in a team meeting or before you start.
Speaker 1:You just ask your players to pair up in your partners and ask questions which they can talk about. Easy. You start off. Ones are things like you know what'd you have for dinner last night or what's the best vacation? You let them talk freely for two minutes and then you get one of them to present what the other one said Simple sort of stuff. Right, as you get better, you can start putting in more edgy questions, like ask your partner how their romance life is, for example, and that you know could be scary to ask. But gee, you're going to get some amazing responses. You'll get the odd person that will come back with something either really funny or really deep and really emotional, and that's when you start getting some really cool communication happening and it's also a bit of fun too, right?
Speaker 1:Second one is in trainings, or even around about trainings, we start doing the name and action rule. Put this into place when you're getting on the field, so every instruction or call must include a name. That's the name. So, tom, and then the action. You're doing this, tom, I've got first pair of hands. Steve, I've got second pair of hands, sally, you're on first. It encourages real clarity and ensures your communication is not just yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, or I've got. I've got Name and action. I reckon it's a lovely principle to get into your culture's all the time, and some of that early season stuff or early training stuff is actually wonderful to start making this automatic.
Speaker 1:Another one which is a good idea to actually understand how the communication is looking is actually micing up. This is actually a common practice for coaches, where you actually mic up in a coaching session and you listen to yourself back and you maybe get a mentor to listen to it with you and you can see your tone, urgency, clarity in your words. You can actually pick up tics that you do as well, some things you say over and over again which you may not think about. You could actually probably monitor your language in terms of the obscenities you might be yelling out. This, too, can be done, though, for your players. In certain situations meetings and things like that you can actually mic them up or record them and then get them to watch it back so they can actually critique themselves about how well they're doing in terms of their communications. This is kind of really massive, like toast master. If you haven't doneters before, highly recommend it, because it gives you techniques on how to review people's communication. So good Coaches, too, you can also listen in to huddles on the field and you're not listening for anything technical just how your captains, your leaders, your players are speaking when they come together. Are they panicked, are they flushed? Are they saying good stuff? Are they all over the show? Bring it back to just a couple of key rocks. Get them to work on their breath, work what's important now, the one action step you want them to be saying, and you actually have those little breakout groups off the field to just analyze how it went. You get real buy-in, and leaders, particularly and those people that are focused on getting better on that front really love this sort of feedback.
Speaker 1:When it comes to the organizational part, what can you do off field? The principle is give your players your team ownership, not just orders. I think that's massive. So, for example, let the players lead the warm-ups or the recovery, the cool-downs at the end, because this builds leadership, planning, confidence, a little bit of independence as well. I certainly know at home when I've let the kids run up the road choose the ice cream they want for dessert. They absolutely love it and it's amazing to see how well they work together and organize who wants what and what's the best way of splitting the different ice cream for all the different needs of our four kids. And the other thing it does is also take away from your own workload. If you're coaching solo and you normally have to do the warm-ups or the cool-downs, it's actually taking it off your hands and giving it back to the players is a wonderful way to just sit back and you can then connect on a different level, not having to worry about actually doing something in the session. If you have trainers or S&C staff, it's a good one for them to be organized to actually train the players and how to run it and what they should be putting in, and give them a bit of delegation to call in players and sit down and plan it out. That's that organization off the field.
Speaker 1:The second one I think is a really cool one is to designate a task board. Okay, so it's almost like that chore chart you get as a little kid sometimes. You do the washing, it's your time to do the washing. It's your time to do the dishwasher, it's your time to sweep the yard. That kind of thing in a team environment you could do it like you know. It's your time to do the barbecue, set up the cones, carry the kid away, clean up, shed, lead the video, review points, and then you rotate those roles, so everybody's accountable. You have little chore tasks to do and then just make sure that they're checking, seeing what they have to do and then planning something before they even step onto the field before they even step onto the field.
Speaker 1:Another one which I think is a great way for organization is to get mini teams sorted in your groups. Now, a lot of teams do this, where they divide up the bigger team into lots of mini teams. So when we're on the field, we can just break them up into whatever it is colors or amateur teams. So we might say red team over there, blue team over there, and everyone knows straight away. But instead of this being run by the coaches and the leaders, you actually give it back to your players.
Speaker 1:Get them to design the draft of what it's going to look like for this year, what sort of events we're going to do, what sort of competition, how we're going to pick our teams. A lot of teams I've been in. It's a big event at the start of the pre-season where a group of the players do a draft and they pick who's in whose team and then they go away. They design a t-shirt, they design a name, they design a color, all about it and they're trying to create their own mini culture of what that teams look like. And it's bloody fun and sometimes coaches get dragged into it, because we've been in a number of them where a staff 100 meter race and all the mini teams vote on who's going to win, and it's a great connecting. But the organization around that to organize that sort of thing is wonderful. Players have to step up, players have to take the lead, players have to connect with the coaching staff about can we do this? Is this too much? Is this all right? Wonderful, wonderful way to get that organization off the field.
Speaker 1:Then it comes down to connection. How do we get that trust without you know, when the scoreboard doesn't matter, how do we build the trust? Love? This kind of concept, as we have designated into our week, is non-rugby or whatever your context is. Non-sport challenges things like cooking a meal together, recording a skit or even doing some sort of charity work, and then it's shared back to the team in any sort of meeting, even at the start of training. It could just be a bit of a laugh around. This is what we did after the game, and so did this because you know, when you share laughter you create that deeper bonds. We had a wonderful one one year where we actually did a draft for which players came out to whose staff members house on a on a Tuesday after training. We all finished training and then the draw got made and you came around to certain coaches' house and it was a wonderful connection point between players and staff. The players all came together, they turned up at the coaches and the staff members' house and we cooked them a meal. Gee, that story lasted a bloody long time.
Speaker 1:Another cool thing a lot of teams do and it's a great way to really get connection is you have stories or story circles or life jerseys, some teams call them where a player shares a story of their life or why they play, and often, man, these get like raw man. They're super raw, super vulnerable often and quite often they're really powerful and they build a lot of respect and they build a lot of understanding quite quickly too. A lot of ones we've done is a common one is called hero, hardship, highlight, and you just talk about one of those things for a couple of minutes either a hero in your life, a hardship you've been through, or a highlight. And as a coach and a leader, you probably want to start this off yourself. You probably want to lead it, to set the tone of how you want it delivered, so I might share a real hardship in my life and get quite personal about what that is and just be vulnerable. Myself, as a leader, set the stall out for what this is all about. You might get your leadership groups or your captains. You might sit them down and say we want to start this in a certain way. Would you be able to deliver a real personal one? And it's amazing when your senior players and your senior staff present vulnerably. What that opens up for the rest of your team is absolutely phenomenal and you'll, without question.
Speaker 1:If you do these sort of stories and it only takes a couple of minutes and you can do them before every session, every training run you do, whether you're amateur and you're just training twice a week, you start with one or two straight after the other. If you've got the ability to have a little PowerPoint presentation, do it. If not, you don't need it. You can bring props or whatever, and what you'll find if you start with powerful ones seeing your people being vulnerable man, the flow on is incredible. It's a great way to come together as a team and it's often the things that players remember most at the end of season is about how so-and-so shared that story about that Gosh, it was powerful, awesome. The other one that I think is a really good one for particularly rugby teams or all sports teams, whatever context, professional or amateur or otherwise blocking your time for non-rugby activities, like things like team hikes or quizzes or beach days or whatever it is, because you know when you connect, it's not the stuff you're doing on field, that's just connecting you, it's it's all that stuff that you get off it.
Speaker 1:A great way to do this and I've had huge success around this and getting buying and connection with the team is at the very start of the year you get some of your leaders, your senior players, and you say I've looked at the whole calendar of the whole year and here are my two places where it would be great to have a real social gathering with all the team staff, players, partners, let's get it in here. And you throw that back to the players and say can you organize this event and what that's going to look like and what the theming is and if it's dress up or what you want, and I'll help at my end, make sure that happens and the buy-in that players get. When they know that on the calendar, that's when we're having our big connection point. It goes down. So so well. Our big connection point. It goes down, so so well.
Speaker 1:The only thing I just do caveat on that is, regardless how the season's gone, if you've lost every game worst case scenario you've got to run through with what you committed to at the very start. We said in three months time, on this day, we would have a big social barbecue dinner at this place, dress up theme, and we're going to go through with it. Regardless if we've won, lost or drawn every single game, then the players appreciate that they can plan, they can schedule, they can organize themselves and they can actually put off other things, knowing that this is the event that's really going to bring them together. It's a really good idea and if you've got the opportunity, highly recommend doing that early in the season. But it's never too late. You can always chuck it in late.
Speaker 1:Now, these little tools we've talked about, I don't reckon they're extras. I reckon they're absolute foundations for you, because the tighter you get your group off the field, you know, the sharper and more resilient they'll be on the field. They'll communicate better, they'll organize better and they'll be way more connected. And you only have to look at Sam Vestey's Northampton Saints with their energy and the connection that young group of players have is outstanding and, as a result, they're making finals all over the show and some of their players are lighting it up on the higher stage as well.
Speaker 1:So the next time you're frustrated about these things, that your team maybe isn't clicking under pressure, ask yourself this have we built it? Have we built the foundation? Well, no one's. You know it's so hard to grow communication. You know, in the middle of a storm and you don't build trust in the final five minutes of games, and you can't expect clarity or connection when it's absolute chaos if you haven't practiced it.
Speaker 1:When it's calm and that's that's every day of the week what shows up on the field is always a reflection of what's been rehearsed off it. Talk together, come on, talk together, plan together, Come on, plan together, laugh together and struggle through things together, because that's when team culture is formed, that's when performance is built and that's where championships begin. You know, long before the scoreboard even comes into play, because if you want it on the field, you've got to build it off the field. 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.