Reflections: Bens Coaching Playbook

https://www.coachingculture.com.au/Bens_Culture_Playbook Download

Ever notice two teams run the same drills with the same energy, yet one takes off while the other stalls? We dig into the invisible factor that decides that split: culture. Not the poster on the wall or the pregame speech, but the lived behaviors you tolerate, the way mistakes are handled, whose voice carries, and what gets ignored. Drawing on years of coaching across countries and age groups, we share a practical Culture Playbook designed to help you start quickly and build deliberately, so you’re not stuck firefighting after standards slip.

We talk about why coaches default to what’s measurable—reps, times, systems—because it feels safe. The gray zone of culture is harder to quantify, but it decides risk-taking, cohesion, and resilience on game day. You’ll hear specific prompts to diagnose your environment, simple starting points to protect psychological safety without lowering standards, and a clear picture of what culture is and isn’t. We also explore the generational shift shaping modern teams: younger athletes crave clarity, purpose, and connection. Ignore that and players will play small or check out; design for it and your group grows faster than your drill plan alone ever could.

This conversation is a map, not a manifesto. You’ll leave knowing where to begin, what to reinforce, and how to make your systems land in soil that helps them grow. If you’re a coach, manager, or leader who’s ready to coach the gray with intent, grab the free Culture Playbook from the link in the show notes, listen through, and choose one behavior to reinforce this week. If this helped, subscribe, share it with a coaching friend, and leave a review so more leaders can build environments that truly perform.

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

Chapters

• 1:34 Why A Culture Playbook
• 2:50 Culture Gets Ignored Because It’s Invisible
• 4:09 Safety In What You Can Measure
• 5:25 Same Drills, Different Outcomes
• 6:47 Stop Firefighting, Build Deliberately
• 8:08 What Culture Is And Is Not
• 9:08 Why Coaches Struggle With The Gray
• 10:17 A New Generation Needs Clarity
• 11:11 You Don’t Have A Culture Problem
• 12:09 Download The Playbook And Start

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:47

Welcome to Reflection. And today we're going to talk about something that I've just put together. I've just written the c the culture playbook, my culture playbook, which is a PDF which is free to download. You can download it at the top of this episode and all episodes. And it is a framework around how you actually can do stuff which actually absolutely improves your environments and your teams, whatever your team is, whether it's a rugby team, a sports team, or any sort of office leading team. And the reason why, I just want to give a bit of the background, why I did it, because I've been chatting to a lot of coaches and a lot of them have been asking me where to start. Where do I start coaching culture or improving my environment? Because whenever you go to courses or whenever you stop and think about your sessions, you you don't necessarily put much weight into growing the environment because it's a little bit sort of gray, right? It's in that sort of, um, I'm not sure if I should. I don't know what the outcome is going to be if I focus on the culture aspect. And so I've gone about writing down the 10 most important things you need to do when you want to start improving out of sight, your team's environment, and your culture. And it's in that PDF. And I just wanted to outline it today and why I've written this and why I'm giving it out. Because here it is. In short person's language, we just don't teach culture. We talk about it, we reference it, we complain about it, but we don't actually teach it. It is not taught. I've been to loads of coaching conferences, and it's just not done. And if it is done, if at all, it's just a token you've got to get your culture right. Attacked on the end. So most coaching education is built around things you can see. Things like drills, game plans, systems, conditioning, set piece, video reviews, and now all these are important. All of them are absolutely necessary. But the culture sits in all the invisible spaces. And because it's invisible, it gets ignored. And as I've said at the start, what a coach has uh has said to me yesterday, Ben, I know culture matters, but I just don't know where to start. And that was that sentence is just confirmation why this playbook on culture exists, right? So what why is it that coaches default to sort of this black and white setting of only coaching, everything but the culture, the jewels and skills? And now I've moved around the world coaching. It's been all over, and I've jumped into different countries, different languages, different environments, and everywhere I go, I see these same things happening. That coaches coach what they can measure. And the reason is because it feels safe. It's a safety mechanism. It's the default pattern is I know if I do that drill, I can improve it to that. And I'll just stick with that. You can count reps, you can count sprint times, you can tick boxes, but culture, man, that lives in that really uncomfortable gray zone. The gray, not black and white is gray, and the gray is uncomfortable because it asks different questions. It asks things like do players feel safe here? Do they have a voice? Do they trust each other? Do they trust you? Now, those things don't show up on any sort of data analysis. If you're if you've got data analysis, it won't show up on their spreadsheets. But it does show up on game day. And even though it does show up on game day, still hard to measure. Still hard to measure. Now, the same thing, like you can even like show this even better when you've got two teams and you have a very similar or the same session plan, same drill, same intent, and and one team improves and the other stays flat. And the effort looks the same, the energy looks really much the same. But it's the environment that is different, which means one group grows exponentially, one group feels connected and tight, the other one feels flat. You know, one when they're playing, take risks, the other, you know, plays not to make mistakes. And for me, this is a highlight of the differences in environments. And I know this because I've taken drills and game plans from one team to another and seem sometimes it goes sensationally well, and other times it just flops, and it's all the same stuff. And that is when the culture gets revealed. And you're like, oh, okay, I need to do things a little bit differently here. And what are those things culturally? Well, they're on the playbook. Most coaches don't ignore the culture on purpose, right? You don't set out to say, you know, I'm not gonna do it. You're just busy, right? You've got games, selections, injuries, parents, media, some sort of administration tasks, which is very common. So culture becomes something we talk about after something goes wrong. When we lose a game, when we lose connection, when we lose standards, then we say, we've got to fix the culture. But by then, you're kind of just putting out fires all over the show. Really, the best environments don't react to the cultural things. You build it deliberately. Yes, the way you start, you know, the way you start uh a campaign, a pre-season, a season, a practice, the way you start and and you're deliberately doing it, gee, it goes good. So I wrote this culture playbook because of the same questions. How do I actually start? What do I focus on first? What does good culture look like day to day? And how do I coach this without sounding airy fairy and all that stuff? Because that's, you know, a kickback you get, right? Oh, this is just, you know, all lovey dovey stuff. But it's powerful. And if you're calling it lovey dovey, you need to adjust that mindset because that's not going to help you get better at it. So these coaches weren't asking for inspiration or anything. They're just asking for a bit of structure, a place to begin. Um, so that that was the playbook. It's not an academic playbook. It's just the starting map, right? So let me really be really clear about what culture is not. And and just so we start off on the same track before you read this playbook, is it's not as I'll say the cliche. It's not a slogan on the wall. It's not big motivational speeches. Those things can help and support a culture, but they are not culture. Slapping down some words like honest honesty, respect, you know, on the wall and saying this is what our culture is, that's that's that's not right. That's not that's not your foundation, right? Culture is things like how mistakes get handled, how standards are enforced, who gets listened to, what get it gets ignored, that sort of stuff. Uh uh Eddie Jones said this to me culture is simply the behaviors you tolerate. And you kind of go, huh. Yeah. And you know, with a guy like Eddie, he doesn't tolerate a lot of things, right? So why do coaches struggle in this gray zone? Well, this is what I would speculate, is that most coaches are never coached this way themselves. Coaches these days are generally from an older generation, and they grew up in environments like I did where authority mattered more than connection. I certainly grew up playing in those environments. Silence meant respect. I remember as a kid at the table saying we don't want to hear you at the table. And fear driving compliance. Now, those kind of things were just how sport was taught, particularly rugby, a generation ago. So when uh coaches are trying to build something different, a lot a lot of us don't actually have that reference point. You know, they know what they don't want, but they don't always know what to do and what they do want. So that's why this playbook is done. It's an awareness piece. Because you can't build an environment if you don't know what you're currently standing on. So here are the points. 10 points. Bang, bang, bang. Right. So this matters more now than it ever has. And it's because there's a new generation. Players are different now. Like they're so different. I'm coaching the youngest age groups now. I'm coaching my children as well, their teams, and kids are different. Athletes, younger athletes are different. They want clarity, purpose, connection. They're not soft, but they're the way they approach the world, the way they're getting taught at school, the way societies are, it's so much different to a generation ago. And if you're stuck in an old generation's way of thinking around the cultural piece, if you poo-poo it and put your nose up around all this culture talk, then you're missing the connection that you're gonna need if you want to be coaching in this modern day. Yeah. So, and if you're not creating your environment that provides clarity purpose connection, you're gonna find that your players will shut down, they'll play small, or they will mentally check out. And no drill fixes those things. So, this cultural playbook is a framework, a way to think, a way to just notice your environment and a way to start being really intentional, particularly in some of the conversations you're having. And you don't need to overhaul everything, you just need to begin coaching that gray area, that culture piece, with a bit of purpose and a bit of intent. Now, if there's one thing I want you to take away from this, is this is you actually don't have a culture problem. You just have a focus problem. What you pay attention to grows. We know that. What you ignore, well it's going to become your culture anyway. And so that's why I wrote this. Not to give, just to give you a place to start. Just to give you a place to start, really being intentional about making your cultures absolutely awesome, or at least the best they can possibly be for your context and situation. If you haven't downloaded it, do it right now. The links at the top of the show notes, have a read, sit with it, and see what makes you notice your own environment. And we'll see you next week.