Coaching Culture with Ben Herring

Five Ways Great Coaches Anchor Teams in Tough Times

• Ben Herring

Share episode

The hardest weeks test more than your game model—they test your culture. When results wobble and the temptation is to drown the room in clips, we take a different route: start with why, connect the people, and then coach the work. Drawing on stories from pro rugby and lessons from coaches who’ve been in the fire for decades, we map out five anchors that keep a team steady when the scoreboard isn’t your friend.

We begin by reshaping the meeting everyone dreads. Instead of leading with 34 errors, we set a clear purpose for the week—restore pride, honor the jersey, make amends to supporters—so the details serve a shared why. From there, we explore belonging before pressure, showing how the best coaches switch cleanly from fierce feedback to warm human connection, making criticism about craft, not worth. The conversation then moves to growth before outcomes, using smart film work to find repeatable actions after wins and losses alike, so the session plan becomes a lever, not a lecture.

Leadership gets a rethink too. Rather than clutching the reins, we seed “leaders everywhere”: primed players take the floor in reviews, speak with confidence, and spread accountability across the group. And we close by protecting joy—the secret fuel in a collision sport that asks people to put their bodies in dark places. With an on/off training rhythm, sharp intensity at the whistle and laughter between sets, teams build bonds that endure pressure and perform when it counts.

If you’re a coach or leader who wants a room that stays connected, learns fast, and doesn’t fracture after a tough weekend, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share it with a fellow coach, and leave a review with the anchor you’ll try first—purpose, belonging, growth, leadership, or joy.

Send us a text

If you can SUBSCRIBE, RATE, and SHARE the show and series, you would be doing your bit to grow this show. Very appreciated. Ben

To subscribe to the newsletter or to get a copy of the book, jump onto:

www.coachingculture.com.au

Support the show

SPEAKER_00:

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. My team had a lot of questions in this week about how to look after your team when things aren't going your way, when results uh the scoreboard is not your friends. So water just chat about this and thought about these five things, which I think are good things wherever you are, just to keep on top of as a coach when the scoreboard's against you. How do you anchor your team when results go your way? And these are the five things through all these conversations we're doing with some of the best coaches in the world that keep coming back. Now I've just narrowed them down to five of four lots, but here are the five that we've identified here on the coaching culture podcast, which the international coaches we talk to say are important. So when you're losing games of rugby, number one, remember purpose for four points. Purpose for four points. I think this is cool. Having seen a lot of pro coaches operate, haven't been in a professional advice a long time. It's certainly something which happens a lot of is when games go to custard and you lose them, it's very easy to go into the trap of putting 34 clips down and showing this is everything that went wrong. Very common. What we often forget to do is actually like remind them of the purpose of why we're here. If you've had a massive block, the underlying thing that you're gonna do the next one is really important that you connect on first before you go through all the detailing of the specific technical things that you need to address. You need to address the big thing, which is the purpose. For example, you might start things like a purpose this week players is to restore pride or recra reclaim our place or make amends to our fans and our public. If you start with this kind of concept, and there's kind of easy ones, but it just creates a bit of a blind. Everyone understands those, everyone goes, yeah, gotcha, gotcha. When you start with those technical points and have dirty-odd clips of all these minor things, you start losing a bit of connection with the players. Player starting, uh, yes, but where my hand elbow position was on the tackle isn't the real game. And they start critiquing you like that as a coach, standing up in the room, doing all this micromanaging of all these technical points, you're gonna get that thought process from the room that they're going, eh, this is just a minor point. Come on, where's the big guts of this? And that's where your purpose is the big guts. It's the the thing that brings you all together. Purpose before your points. Remind players why we're here. You might go way back to the start of the season and say, remember, men or ladies, this is what we said at the start. This is our journey, this is what we're on, and this is just a blip. So part of the journey and the purpose of this journey is to overcome these sort of obstacles and challenges. Once you start doing that, you get a real connection and a good feeling. So that's number one. I think is a really important one just to keep keep reminding yourself of the purpose of what you're doing. I think um Pat Lamb was really good in one of the podcasts he talked about bringing everything back to love, loving the jersey, loving the brotherhood, loving what you're building. And and that love doesn't vanish when you lose. In fact, that's when it matters most. So start the week, not with um highlight reels, but with purpose. Ask your players, what are we playing for this week? Beyond the result. Write it up and live that through the week. Anchor yourself on that purpose. Not the technical points. Love that. Now, the second point is belonging before pressure. Belonging. Now, this is this is pretty uh pretty irrelevant for coaches because under pressure and losing is probably the biggest pressure, coaches often demand more. Yeah, you feel that pressure yourself, more drills, more discipline, more control. But when you have that sort of pressure without really folks like without even taking note of the belonging piece, it just breaks people down. And I've seen that firsthand. So it's it's very easy to forget. So, coaches, you know, you know you can squeeze. And I think I heard a lovely podcast the other day, the Wad Lad Podcast with James Marshall. Mark Hammett talked about Wayne Smith, easily the best coach in the world, I reckon. And he talked about how personal he was outside the meeting room, which I remember at one meeting he said he chatted to him about his family and stuff as he was going to the meeting. He got into the meeting and he shredded the team about a variety of things. And then after the meeting, he was having coffees with players, chatting away, talked again about his wife and family. And it was a really good thing because he actually felt really connected to him. Even though he's just really torn the whole team apart and individuals apart in the meeting, he still created that belonging in the whole environment. So we're not saying that this belonging piece um takes away from creating pressure, because pressure can create diamonds, as we know, but there's a context. You know, everyone understood that he was doing it for the right reasons, and it wasn't personal, it was just part of this bigger picture. And everyone felt they belonged because nothing changed. He didn't treat just because he talked to you on a meeting in a certain way because you weren't doing X, Y, and Z on the field, it had no bearing on how he treated you as a person off the field. And I think that's a massive piece that the best coaches are very good at. The moment they walk out of that meeting room or the war zone war room, as a lot of uh professional coaches call it, they are back to normal. And it's and everything that was going on in that room stays in that room. It's like a safe space. And you come out and you're you belong again, you're you're part of the group. And I think that's a cool thing to be able to do as a coach is to get that that balance and and this emotional piece. So a lot of young coaches struggle with that, struggle to be that person and then be able to flick out of that as well. I've certainly been in a lot of coaching meetings in the morning where it's been fiery between coaches, but the moment you walk out of the door and you've agreed to disagree on various things, it's it's normal relationships as poor and normal. Nothing's changed. You go for cups of tea, coffee, chat about anything else, and you you do what you said you're gonna do in that room. So that's a cool thing to be able to work on as a coach, is be able to the moment you walk in and out of that meeting room or your staff room or players' room or whatever that place is, you're back to belonging, bigger group. It's not just pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure. It just can't last doing that. So that's number two. Number three, growth before outcomes. Now, it's it this is this is a cool one, I reckon, because a lot of coaches talk about talking about where we can get better as opposed to just looking at the scoreboard. The scoreboard is a number and it shows you whether you won or lost, but it doesn't show you everything in the game. I remember uh a guy I coach with, Ryan Martin, who's who's probably one of the best coaches in the world. He's actually currently coaching two, head coaching, two professional teams, probably the only coach in the world that can do that. Very good coach, and he used to talk about showing clips of where we can get better, where we can grow rather than just the outcome. So if we lost the game, he would often get up and show, I've got three clips to show, and he'd show them and go, look, here's an opportunity. If we'd just done X and X, we would have probably scored there. And then this one, if we'd done the same thing, we we might have scored there. And those two scores would have won us the game. So he just put a little bit in context and just highlighted a little bit of growth where we can get better and commented on. Likewise, he's I've also seen him doing it, saying, Yes, we won the game, but look here, we could have scored here if we'd executed executed this skill, or done a lot better here if we'd executed the same skill. So he's talking about the growth element rather than getting hung up on the actual result, because the result can hide a lot of things. Sometimes things look better, sometimes things look worse than they really are. You I think we all know when you lose a game by a last minute penalty against you, all of a sudden everything's done terribly. It it sort of it it it masks the lens in which we look through it. We then look through it with this lens of everything's negative, everything could have been done better. Reversely, if we kick that final goal in the last play of the game, we look through the lens of everything was done. Wow, how good were we? Whereas if we're focusing on the growth element, did we execute the skill set here, here, and here, yes or no, regardless of the outcome. That is when you start getting that concept of growing more than just relying on the scoreboard. And it and it does players can always buy into it more because they can actually action stuff rather than saying we we were no good, we lost the game. When you can say, if we'd just been able to execute this skill set better, we would have been able to score this, which would have influenced things, and then you can actually build a training session around those kind of things. You've actually got actionable steps, and the players can all see that. And I love that. So that's where we've got to be really on when we lose. That keep reminding yourself about growth before outcomes. Love that. Fourth thing, well, a lot of people on this show, some of the leaders like the Steve Hanson, the Edie Jones, they talk about things like everyone's gotta be a leader. Uh leaders everywhere. Now, it's very easy when you're losing games of rugby or sport in general as a coach to think you have to take the reins. And I and I understand that. When results wobbles, the temptation is for us to just pull it tighter. But the real belief doesn't just come from one strong voice, it's so much better when it comes from heaps of them. So when every player feels like a leader, then that's when you've got a really powerful team, and that's when the power comes from. So the ability to step back and give the floor to someone new in a huddle or review is actually quite a powerful thing. And and that leadership spreads and it and and with it accountability. But it is hard, of course, because you haven't necessarily got people wanting to step up in those moments. So whilst you are the leader and at times you will have to do it, it's also a great uh thing to show the group that you're actually still wanting everyone to be accountable, everyone wanting to be a leader. I love that little concept of try like guiding someone through a review, helping like asking people, preempting them with questions. Johnny, what did you what would you do different here? And if you've already had that conversation earlier in the morning, he can answer it with confidence, which then spreads to the people around him. Oh wow, Johnny was really clear on that. And Timmy, what did you think about your decision making here in this example? And if he again, because you've talked to him in the morning, gave him a heads up, made him feel like he's belonging, getting a little bit of insight, then he's more confident to speak up with confidence. Some of the worst thing you can do sometimes is uh in those meetings or reviews is not give people uh a bit of a heads up if you're gonna come at them. And then the r the answers you get uh are laced with a little bit of agitation or a little bit of resentment. You're putting someone on the spot like that. Taking that little bit of a moment, say, hey Timmy, this is the clip I'm gonna show, mate, and this is what I've seen that we could have done better. And in this example, it's you. Are you comfortable with me coming to you to answer this question? And this is what I think already. What do you think? He says, Yeah, and that's fair enough, right? I well, I'll come to you, and you make that point about yourself rather than me have to do it. And that way, it looks like accountability and it kind of is accountability. And little Timmy, who you've just given a preempt, felt feels special about it and actually feels part of it and wants to be better. And when he's answering the question, it it makes him feel like a leader, and and he's really a lot better at buying in than had you have just said it all. Because after a while, like a f a dad figure at home, there's only so much dad can say before the kids just take it all as whitewash, white static noise, and they disregard everything. So leaders everywhere. Take those moments to just check in. I think it's a really important one just to in those hard weeks when you're losing, go around little one-on-ones, have a couple of coffee schedules, one or two, however many coffees you can drink a day. Pick someone in there, particularly in a professional environment, you could where you've got all day, you can have one, two, three, four. Even in an amateur environment, you can just text one or two people, or maybe the nine and ten, say come in a little bit early, and let's just sit down and have a little bit of a debrief about a the game, but then more importantly, about anything other than the game, just to reconnect as a human. That's powerful. I know it sounds some to some people that stuff is a bit like oh fluffy-ish. You know, a bit, a bit, yeah. But honestly, those little connections go a long way to making players actually play for coaches. And you you certainly notice it when it's not there. So if you take over, you you've got the potential to lose the group completely and lose yourself in the same time because you'll get caught up in this swirl. The last one, number five, is to protect the joy. Protect the joy, and now this this one also for a lot of particularly older school coaches where you think you have to come with fire and brimstone. This is not how uh the best coaches in the world operate. This there's always time for fire and brimstone. That's that can always leave a mark. But more importantly, is the joy's gotta be there in this game because rugby is a competitive combat sport, and a lot of times you actually ask yourself what is the appeal of sticking your head in a dark place where it's gonna get hit and hurt. So the joy is why a lot of players do this. They have joy in the game, they love it, and they don't can't always articulate why they love it. There's something inherent there, and it's the joy of it, for whatever it is reason, for certain players and athletes, they love this side of the game. So we've got to protect that and make sure just because we're losing, doesn't that doesn't come out of our game. I've had coaches over the years that as soon as we start going on a little bit of a losing streak, they come in angry and they don't like the sight of players smiling and laughing and giggling in between sets. But you only have to go to some of the best uh rugby and rugby league environments in the world to know that some of the best ones operate when there is that sort of banter and laughing. You go to the Melbourne Storm and watch their training, they rock up, they're on their bikes with their music, they're laughing and joking, the whistle goes bang, they're into it, and it's full bore. The whistle blows and there's laughing and banter, and someone's taking the piss out of something, the next whistle goes and they're back into serious mode. Whistle stops, is joking, laughing, and it's on and on and on. And the the banter and the laughter in between actually creates the intensity when they're on. It's that on is on, off is off, and off is just joyous and it's incredible to watch. And those are the bits which bring groups together. That's why most players love playing this team combat sport, because it's it's the the social interaction. These are amazing, I reckon. And here they are again. When you're in a losing rut, or I'm not even talking a rut, I'm just talking one again one game potentially. Here's the five points just to check in at number one, remember purpose before points. Whenever you're starting your meetings, just remember the purpose of why you're there, what you're doing it for, rather than just getting into the nitty-gritty straight off the back, technical points, do this, do this, do this. Get to purpose. We're here for this reason. Number two is belonging before pressure. Easy to flip to putting pressure on players, but a little bit har easier to forget about they're here to belong to a bigger group, a team sport, a combat sport. Make sure we connect with that. Don't lose that belonging piece. Wayne Smith was the example. He can be he can make people feel belonging, but when he's in, the pressure's on and then he's out, and they're belonging again. Bigger thing. Number three is the growth before outcomes. Always look at the growth, both for better and worse. Not just did we win or lose. That is that is fixed mindset stuff, and you're gonna walk down a horrible path if you just focus on the outcome and what they're focus on the growth. How can you do something better? What what what bits can we tweak? Do we do it right? Could we get better? Do we not do it right? Where where's the growth aspect for us in this? It gives you actionable steps and players appreciate it because they want to know what they can do better, and you've just given it to them rather than just saying, you lost your rubbish. Fix everything. Fourth is the leaders everywhere. You gotta start like instead of tightening the reins as a coach after a loss, think about opening up. Think about how many later leaders can you help grow in this period. How many can you make buy-in to what you're doing, bringing it back to that purpose? How many can you make accountable? Giving little bits of insight to people before you hit them up in a team meeting or review or public setting. Give them a little bit of understanding and context beforehand so they can actually be accountable and actually stand up like leaders. So you're actually helping leaders grow by doing that. You're not just putting them on the spot, you're helping them. You're setting up environments for them to actually lead. And and we it's like putting your trainer wheels on a bike for a kid. You don't just chuck them on the bike by putting them on the spot with a question. You say, here's the trainer wheels, off you go, practice that for a little bit. That's what you're doing when you're giving a little bit of insight to questions. Here's what I'm gonna say to you, here's how I think you should reply, have a think about it, and reply when I ask you. That's training wheels. It goes a long way. And after time, they won't need that. The fifth thing and the final thing, and arguably one of the most important things, is you the joy's got to be protected in any group. When you're losing, it's very easy to get negative, to get down on life, because that's the stresses on a coach. You feel like you are responsible for the wider public, the fans, everyone watching, it's it's on you. You feel like you're being judged first and foremost. Important not to filter that down or let that waterfalling cascading effect go down to the players. That's that's for you to deal with. So don't ruin their joy because you're under pressure. And that's an easy one. I know I've been in that one myself. And I think most coaches have that feeling. When you lose, one, two, three on the row, you start feeling it. But you that's what you're protecting your players from. You've got to keep the joy and the love of this game. And if you do that, they keep turning up, wanting to be there, giving their all. Because this is, remember, a contact sport where they're gonna get hurt. So you can't just be telling a player to do it. You gotta, they gotta want it, they gotta love it, they gotta be into it. And that's where the joy creates that. You can't ask someone to put their head in a dark place if they're not really into it or loving it, and they're certainly not gonna do it over and over again. You gotta keep the joy. And the biggest time is to do that is when you've had losses. Because everyone's watching how you respond as a coach and how you influence the team. So we gotta keep that joy, and you gotta keep it yourself where you can, and that's a lot harder. But that's another whole episode. So this is it, coaches. Anchoring a team when results go against you. That's what we gotta do, that's what we're here for. Five big points. Because when those five things are in place, the scoreboard just becomes one small measure. The real measure is how your team grows, how it sticks together, and how it keeps moving forward. That's the challenge, and that's the art of coaching. And this podcast highlights that by some of the amazing guests that are on it that have been through it at the highest level for up to 30, 40, even 50 years in a couple of people's cases, at the highest professional level. This is what some of those people are doing. Until next time, go well with your coaching, and I'll talk to you next Wednesday for the next reflections.