By John Portch

Peter Horne described his early days at Rugby Australia as a “false start”.

Horne took the reins as Director of High-Performance in March 2024, alongside new Head Coach Joe Schmidt. Their arrival had been announced the previous year and came at a time of immense turnover.

“We had to rebuild in some areas,” Horne told the audience at February’s Leaders Meet: Australia. “We recruited 48 staff across the system.” That included all bar one of the Wallabies’ backroom team. Rugby Australia was at “level zero”.

They couldn’t stay there for long: the British & Irish Lions would tour Australia in 2025, the 2027 Rugby World Cup is coming to Australian shores in 2027, as is the Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2029.

Plans have long been afoot. In April 2025, Rugby Australia announced its intention for Les Kiss to succeed Schmidt as Wallabies Head Coach [Kiss took the reins earlier this year]. There have been promising results under both men’s tenures. As for the women’s team, the Wallaroos, there is a succession plan, with Sione Fukofuka set to take over in the new year.

Prior to Horne’s arrival, he believed there had been a “breach of trust” between Rugby Australia and the nationwide stakeholders of Australian rugby union born from misaligned priorities. “The first period had actually been trying to get people to communicate, talk and address some of the issues,” he said.

Peter Horne [right] speaks alongside Brett Robinson [centre] and moderator Laura McQueen [left] at Leaders Meet: Australia. (Photo: Leaders Performance Institute / Albert Perez)

This is the story of Horne and Rugby Australia approach.

From Green to Gold

“Ultimately how do we get rugby in Australia to be the best it can be?” asked Horne. “It only can be done if we actually pull together.”

Australian rugby union, while still a major force, has drifted from the standards that delivered two World Cups in the 1990s and another final on home soil in 2003. Despite some notable successes in the interim period, there is a sense that Australian rugby union has suffered in relation to other codes, such as rugby league and Australian rules football.

There are numerous factors to explain union’s decline and Horne suggested that poor communication had contributed to internal misalignment. “A lot of our problems come from a lack of understanding,” he said, adding that communication is a critical tool for generating alignment, acceptance and understanding across the nation.

“We’re all responsible for our own areas in Australia, we’ve got states and territories, we’ve got different boards and different responsibilities,” he said. “You might only have a small part of it, but they feel that they’re a part of it.”

In December 2024, Rugby Australia published its From Green to Gold: Australian Rugby Strategy 2025-2029. At the outset it claims: ‘This strategy has been developed in collaboration with Member Unions, Super Rugby Clubs, and RUPA [Rugby Union Players’ Association].’

Horne said: “The high-performance playbook outlines our overall strategy, alignment to strategy, what we’re trying to do, what our targets are, but creates a RACI model.” It enables them to ask “Who’s responsible for it? Who’s informed, who’s consulted, and who’s ultimately accountable.”

Alignment will be their competitive advantage. “There’s plenty of unions that have got more money than us, there’s probably other unions that have got better talent than us, but if we collectively pull together that becomes our superpower.”

Rugby Australia is careful not to impose a top-down approach. “You want your board to lean in, but never lean over,” said Horne, mindful that there is expertise throughout the system. “There needs to be a certain level of respectful tension in it, because you need to be held accountable at times, but you don’t want someone inside checking your homework on a nightly basis.”

Spine alignment

Horne also spoke of the importance of “spine alignment”, which is specifically between Rugby Australia Chair Daniel Herbert, CEO Phil Waugh, himself as Director of High-Performance, and the national team head coaches.

“When I talk about ‘spine alignment’, if we get true spine alignment of what we’re trying to achieve from a strategy business and the deliverables in terms of the targets that we want to do, then we’re more likely to be in a position to be able to execute.”

As Herbert and Waugh write in From Green to Gold, ‘Australian Rugby is united, aligned, and poised for success.’

There can be division, as Horne admitted, but they will display a united front. “Sometimes I don’t always agree with the decisions, but ultimately if we all agree on the outcome where we’re heading, then we’re more likely to do that,” said Horne before adding, “we can’t control the uncontrollables, but we can control what we’re setting out to do.”

That purpose is set out in Rugby Australia’s vision, which is: ‘Winning teams in Gold with the right behaviours on and off the field, with connections from club to country in an inclusive and welcoming environment, restoring pride in Australian Rugby.’

Align the purpose, not the process

Not that Rugby Australia’s approach is one-size-fits-all. This is particularly evident when it comes to talent development. “Some are more rifle shot approach – ‘I’m going to pick this talent and bring it to Canberra’ – others take a shotgun approach. Around New South Wales they’ll ask ‘how do we aggregate the whole amount of talent and then how do we actually build that over time? What Western Force does for us, to the Queensland Reds, to the Waratahs and the Brumbies, they’re all slightly different and they all have slightly different approaches to how they actually identify talent.”

It also means that resources will necessarily be distributed on the basis of need in pursuit of Rugby Australia’s vision. “We might invest more in one state, but that’s because they produce the largest number of players in the system,” said Horne, before adding. “Everyone’s got a part to play, and each of what I call ‘super equity’, the four corners of the house, is that everyone’s got a slight change or a different point of difference within our system that we need to invest in, and we need to foster and grow and continue to build.”

Australia will want to win both the 2027 and 2029 World Cups and may even have the teams to do so, but Rugby Australia’s ultimate goal is “about trying to get people to be a part of something that’s bigger than themselves”.

What to read next

Clarity and Alignment: Why your Plan Is Only as Good as the Decisions it Enables

By John Portch

“The real test for a leader is: how does your plan unfold when you’re not there?” said Darren Shand.

The performance specialist recently hosted a Leaders Virtual Roundtable on the topic of building clarity and alignment around a performance plan.

“I think as leaders we spend a lot of time and a lot of effort explaining where we’re going, but few spend enough time helping people understand why they matter and what their role is in the plan,” he continued.

Shand served as General Manager of the New Zealand All Blacks between 2004 and 2023. The team, he said, always had a plan, “but there was a real benefit in having something that everyone bought into in terms of getting that belief in what we were doing.”

Over the course of the session, he explained why the quality of the decisions people make depends more on their environment than any document that has been placed in their hands.

Clarity without belief is compliance

There is, as Shand explained, a difference between communicating a plan and creating belief in that plan.

He said: “If we’ve got clarity without belief, we’ve just got compliance. We’ve just got people doing what they think they need to do. But if we’ve got clarity with belief, we’ve got a much deeper commitment to whatever that plan is.”

The plan cannot belong solely to the coach or management. “The more we could create things together, the better we were,” he said of his time with the All Blacks. When the players were brought into the planning process, “it forced us as management to make the plan even simpler because we had to fit with their way of thinking and their way of being rather than ours.”

You need to see, hear and feel the plan

It helps that All Blacks know where they stand from day one. “We don’t own the jersey, we’re just guardians, and your job is to leave it in a better place,” said Shand of the team’s guiding principle.

Teammates hand debutants a personalised book detailing the history of the All Blacks’ jersey and previous teams. It also contains blank pages on which the player can write their own chapter in the team’s story.

The team’s five shared standards – driven, inspiring, grateful, fierce and courageous – “were lived in the language that was shared each week” and the plan emerged through the daily actions and behaviours of individuals.

On that point, Shand suggested a litmus test: “Can I watch your team for one day and know the plan? Without reading the plan, can I see it? Can I hear it? Can I feel it?”

In response, a participant who works at academy level in the Premier League described a common misconception: the idea that common terminology denotes alignment. “I think in our environment, because people say the same phrases and use the same terms, people think they’re aligned, yet their behaviours and actions are actually different,” he said.

Individual commitment is not enough either. “You would see pockets of people working really hard in their certain areas but avoiding contact,” said another attendee who works in the British Olympic system. “It’s something that we’re working through and trying to improve on.”

You cannot just assume understanding

Returning to his time at the All Blacks, Shand spoke of the importance of repetition as a means of both reducing “noise” around their plans and checking for understanding.

He said: “Every single meeting that the team had during a week, and we would only have two or three, the language that finished every meeting was, ‘Okay, players, you tell me what are the critical few things from this meeting? Not the important many, but what are the one or two critical few things that you’ve learned that you’re now going to take out into training or into that next meeting with that other group of players?’”

Rather than assuming the plan had landed, the coaches repeatedly checked what the players had understood. That process also helped to build trust. “Before you can demand accountability, you’ve got to have that closeness, that understanding of each other and how each other works,” Shand continued.

Accountability works both ways too. When All Blacks Head Coach Steve Hansen was late for a team meeting at the 2015 Rugby World Cup, a senior player challenged him in front of the group.

Pressure will reveal your true system

Too often, collaboration disappears in the face of pressure. As one attendee put it, “It’s ‘do something quickly, do it on your own’ versus ‘do something better and do it together’.”

The All Blacks’ system did not buckle under pressure in November 2013 when they trailed 22-17 to Ireland in Dublin in their final Test of the year with the 80 minutes expired. A victory would mean New Zealand ended the calendar year unbeaten. Crucially, the All Blacks retained possession and play continued. They would advance 63 metres through 12 phases and 21 passes before Ryan Crotty scored a match-levelling try, which was converted by Aaron Cruden to deliver his team to a 24-22 victory.

It was a dramatic finish, for sure, but not a miracle in Shand’s eyes. That team, he explained, had “no heroes, no superstars, no X-factor individual moments”. Instead, they were “just taking what we’d trained onto the field of play.”

They could not rehearse every possible match scenario, but they could practise how they would convene, communicate and reconnect with their playing principles under pressure.

As Shand wrapped up the session, he reiterated that a successful plan is one people can recognise in each other’s behaviour and execute without waiting for the leader. A plan must define not only what the group needs to achieve, but also what it needs to become.

What to read next

‘The Best Teams Don’t Choose Between Outcomes and Growth – they Create Systems Where Growth Drives Outcomes’

By John Portch

Ian Costello, the General Manager of Munster Rugby, has loved being back on the grass this summer with the province’s women’s team.

“Matt Brown, the Head Coach, enjoyed putting me through a rigorous interview process,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute with a smile.

Costello’s appointment to his current post in 2025 came after more than two decades working as a coach in various capacities, including academy coach, defence coach and head coach. “This is the least I’ve been on the grass in the last 20 years,” he continues.

“I love many elements of this role. I love the complexity and how challenging it is, how all the different parts of the performance system are interconnected. It’s like having multiple plates spinning and making decisions on which plates to leave alone to keep spinning and which ones to take down and put under the microscope. Then deciding on any necessary interventions, putting the plate back on and keep it spinning.”

We would say that’s easier said than done, but it actually sounds pretty hard. Costello agrees. “There’s this quote: every time you say ‘yes’ to something, you’re saying ‘no’ to something else. You’ve just got to make sure you’ve got the energy and the headspace to provide the appropriate level of support that your performance team need.”

Here, with Costello’s help, we pose five questions that all leaders should be able to answer.

1. Are you the lead expert or creating the conditions in which expertise flourishes?

“I don’t see my job as leading on the expertise,” says Costello. “I see it around leading on the system and trying to create the conditions where that expertise can flourish; where it’s aligned, where it’s connected, where it’s integrated.”

As a collective, Munster are working towards what he calls their ‘North Star’ (the shared objective of producing winning performances). It’s a phrase Costello enjoys using. “My role is to get the best people in the building, support and challenge appropriately, and create the best conditions for them and the team to succeed.”

He is not there to delve heavily into the coaching, sports science or medical decisions but to build and oversee a system that enables domain experts to succeed together. “How can we be greater than the sum of our interconnected parts?”

2. Do you keep the most important thing the most important thing?

That North Star is essential for Costello when ensuring that the domain experts on the team are all pulling in the same direction, even if they advocate for different courses of action.

“My job is to ensure that we have a shared understanding on what our purpose is and what our direction of travel is,” he says. “We’ve identified what’s the most important elements for performance. We align our energy, our resources, our focus towards that and protect that.”

The key questions are: “Do we provide a clear direction on what it takes to win? And do we keep the most important things the most important?”

3. Have you built enough trust that people will challenge you and each other?

Costello must “understand the demands and pressures of a person’s role, understand their personality and character, how they cope and the support they need” if he is to establish deep, meaningful connections and relationships with his colleagues.

“You want to reach the point where you’re comfortable having difficult conversations where tension is normal,” he says. He refers to it as “task conflict, not relationship conflict.”

“You know it’s all about what makes a team or individuals better, which gives you that necessary and healthy tension in a high-performance environment.”

Costello wants to be “visible and connected” to his team. He ensures he’s “asking good questions and trying to demonstrate a real interest in their role and how it contributes to the team’s performance.” He likens it to providing a soundboard. “They have to bounce things off you or, depending on the area, maybe I’ll provide some suggestions”.

It is, he says, “an iterative process that takes place over time and is based on developing relationships and trust”. To be fully accountable to that process, Costello needs to be “close enough to understand the detail, the context and the situation, but far enough back to see the patterns and the trends” so that he can “understand the important signals versus if they’re just noise”.

4. Do your decision-making processes reduce bias and improve judgement, or simply amplify the loudest voice?

“Everyone’s opinion and input is valued and none of us are smarter than all of us,” says Costello, who emphasises robust processes and strong frameworks when it comes to decision making.

Yet a decision-making framework can only be as good as the information provided, which is why psychological safety is critical.

“You want to build a culture or environment where people have the safety to speak up, offer their opinion, and it’s genuinely welcomed,” he continues.

Again, everyone has to be “really sure on what that North Star is so that if people have certain biases they’re brought to the surface with really good conversations”.

That is not to say that there isn’t a decision-making hierarchy. “You have to have real clarity over who owns a decision because if there’s six or seven people involved, not everyone’s input carries the same weight; it depends on what decision needs to be made and the risk-reward associated with that decision, which will depend on a range of factors.”

5. Are your people connected, aligned and integrated?

Costello wants to avoid silos at all costs. “My role isn’t around specific expertise. It’s around how we connect, align and integrate that expertise.”

He sees this idea reflected in the work of Richard Young, whose writing on performance systems has influenced his thinking.

“Richard Young talks about robust and resilient systems,” says Costello, taking up the theme, “and a robust system is where all the parts are strong independently; and while that’s good, if they’re robust and resilient, it means they’re strong independently and their interconnectedness is strong too.”

At Munster, Costello emphasises the importance of integrated working practice. “We encourage individual departments to be excellent, but stress that the quality of integrated work between departments can potentially have the biggest impact on elements of team performance,” he says.

He highlights the club’s cross-departmental collaborative projects, which bring together specialists around shared performance objectives. “An excellent example of this at Munster is how the medical team and the athletic performance team collaborated around changes to the systems around injury prevention. This had a significant impact on player availability for the season; a factor considered to have a strong correlation with success in high-performance sport.”

What to read next

The Three Literacies of Repeat Medal-Winning Systems

By Dr Benjamin Kelly

In the high-stakes environment of professional rugby union, where tactical nuance and brutal physicality collide, decisions made under immense pressure can define careers and determine championships.

My previous articles have explored behavioural biases in the individual contests of golf and tennis, and in the team dynamics of football and the Ryder Cup. Rugby presents a unique synthesis of these challenges, where individual decisions occur within a complex team strategy.

The same fear that causes an investor to sell at the bottom of the market can cause a team to abandon a winning strategy. By examining rugby through the lens of behavioural finance, we can decode these irrational decisions and develop frameworks to mitigate their impact. This article dissects four core biases—loss aversion, overconfidence, confirmation bias, and anchoring—using high-profile case studies to provide actionable insights for coaches, analysts, and business leaders.

1. Loss aversion: the fear of losing

Loss aversion has emerged as the most pervasive bias across every sport I have examined. Whether it is golfers playing conservatively for par rather than attacking for birdie, tennis players serving safer on break points, or football managers delaying tactical changes to avoid admitting their initial plan failed, the pattern is universal: the pain of a loss is twice as powerful as the pleasure of an equivalent gain. In rugby, this manifests as the dreaded shift from “playing to win” to “playing not to lose.”

Consider the 2011 Rugby World Cup Final. Burdened by a 24-year drought, the All Blacks entered as favourites but played a “grim, pragmatic and joyless” game to scrape an 8-7 victory over a spirited French side [1]. Paralyzed by the fear of losing the unlosable final, their attacking style was replaced by a turgid, risk-off approach. The same psychological mechanism that causes tennis players to reduce their ace rate by 15-20% on break points, and golfers to putt more successfully when avoiding bogey than when chasing birdie, caused the All Blacks to abandon the very style that had made them favourites.

• Correction strategy: Mitigating loss aversion requires a conscious shift from outcome to process. Coaches should develop and train “positive aggression” protocols for when the team is leading, pre-committing to maintain an attacking mindset regardless of the score. Scenario training focused on extending a lead, not just protecting it, builds the mental resilience to counteract loss-averse tendencies.
• Business parallel: Market-leading companies often fall into this trap, focusing on protecting market share rather than pursuing innovation. This opens the door for more agile competitors. A culture that rewards intelligent risk-taking is the corporate antidote.

2. Overconfidence: The hero play syndrome

Overconfidence often follows exceptional performance, leading to a dangerous underestimation of risk. This is the “hero play” syndrome: the ill-advised, low-percentage gamble born from an inflated sense of capability.

The 2019 Rugby World Cup Final provides a stark example. England arrived after demolishing the All Blacks 19-7. Yet, in the final against South Africa, that confidence curdled into overconfidence. They attempted a high-risk, expansive game plan ill-suited to the Springboks’ physicality, making crucial errors early on. South Africa absorbed the pressure and won 32-12. Springbok flanker Pieter-Steph Du Toit later remarked, “I just thought, ‘are you guys crazy? This a World Cup final, you don’t play like this’” [2]. England’s success against New Zealand created an illusion of control that proved disastrous against a different opponent.

• Correction strategy: Counteracting overconfidence requires grounding decisions in objective reality. As outlined in my article on managerial biases, a mandatory “devil’s advocate” review of game plans forces a re-evaluation of assumptions.
• Business parallel: Overconfidence after a major success can lead to reckless expansion or a failure to anticipate competitive responses. A structured “pre-mortem” analysis, where a team is forced to imagine a project has failed and identify the reasons why, is a powerful tool to inject realism.

3. Confirmation bias: seeing what we want to see

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek and interpret information that confirms pre-existing beliefs. In coaching, it leads to flawed tactical plans and an inability to adapt.

The All Blacks’ 2019 World Cup semi-final defeat to England is a textbook case. In the quarter-final, a brilliant tactical plan dismantled Ireland’s rush defence. The All Blacks’ coaches, convinced of the plan’s genius, used the exact same strategy against England. However, England had adapted their defensive structure, neutralizing the attack. As former coach Wayne Smith noted, the plan was “stuck in the brain,” and the team was unable to change course even when it was clearly failing [3]. The initial success created a powerful confirmation bias that blinded them to the new reality.

• Correction strategy: Leaders must actively seek out disconfirming evidence. Fostering a culture of psychological safety where assistants can challenge the head coach is crucial. Mandating “opposing viewpoint” sessions in preparations, where a team member argues against the proposed strategy, forces the group to identify potential weaknesses.
• Business parallel: Confirmation bias creates echo chambers in leadership teams. Actively seeking data that contradicts your strategy and hiring for cognitive diversity are essential mechanisms to combat this pervasive bias.

4. Anchoring: The tyranny of first impressions

Anchoring occurs when we rely too heavily on an initial piece of information when making subsequent decisions. This “anchor” can distort judgment, even when it is irrelevant.

Consider the substitution decisions made by All Blacks coach Ian Foster in a 2022 loss to Argentina. Hooker Samisoni Taukei’aho was one of the best players on the park, yet he was replaced early in the second half. Foster’s reasoning? When replacing his two props, he also replaced the hooker because “that combination was something that worked for us [against South Africa in Johannesburg]” [4]. He was anchored to a successful front-row combination from a previous match, causing him to ignore the compelling real-time data that Taukei’aho was his most effective forward.

• Correction strategy: To counteract anchoring, decision-makers must consciously “reset” their thinking. Coaches should use dynamic substitution checklists that assess current performance, fatigue, and tactical need, rather than relying on pre-planned timings or past combinations. Before a key choice, ask: “Am I making this decision based on what is happening now, or on a previous outcome?”
• Business parallel: Businesses are frequently anchored to historical pricing, outdated structures, or legacy technologies. Regularly conducting “zero-based” reviews of budgets, strategies, and teams forces a re-evaluation based on current needs, not historical anchors.

Conclusion: a framework for better decisions

My work has taught me that you cannot overcome biases by simply trying to be more rational. The optimal path is to create processes that prevent us from succumbing to them. In trading, a stop-loss order removes emotional discretion from a critical decision. This same principle of structured intervention can be applied to rugby and business.

By understanding how these biases manifest, leaders can design and implement structured processes to counteract them. The journey to mastering the mental game is one of discipline and a commitment to process over outcome. The critical insight is not to eliminate bias, but to build systems that account for it. For any leader, in any field, that is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Dr Benjamin Kelly advises investors and professional athletes on decision making strategies in high stakes environments. If you would like to speak to Benjamin about his work, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.

By John Portch

“Are we trying to win the next match or are we trying to build an environment that keeps winning for the next decade?”

Performance specialist Darren Shand, the former General Manager of the New Zealand All Blacks, posed this question at a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable.

He continued: “I know if you hold a leadership role, it’s probably a conflict that you fight pretty regularly as you go through a season or a campaign because they can sometimes pull against each other, these two competing priorities, and depending on the type of leaders you have within your organisation, it can create a tension.”

The Leaders Performance Institute members in attendance were invited to think about where they sit on the spectrum between performance outcomes and performance growth.

Teams, as Shand explained, tend to oscillate along the spectrum. “Traditionally, early season tends to be growth-focused and, as we get further into campaigns, outcomes tend to take over.”

This presents a series of risks. “If there’s too much focus on outcomes alone it often creates fear, short-term thinking, and sometimes even stagnation caused by that fear. But if you’ve got too much focus on growth only, you start to dilute standards.”

He is in no doubt that “championship environments require both” and, over the course of 30 minutes, delivered a presentation to provide the members in the virtual room with practical ideas to strengthen their approaches to building sustainable, high-performing teams.

Aspire or inspire? Prove or improve?

Shand illustrated what he sees as the distinction between outcomes and growth.

‘Outcomes’ is what one aspires to win or achieve, while ‘growth’ is based on the desire to improve and develop (or “inspiration”, as he put it).

Both are essential. “The best environments don’t choose one – they learn when to lean into each,” said Shand. “They ask what’s the appropriate time and moment in a campaign, a season or an event.”

He posed two questions: “Which philosophy dominates your environment when the pressure increases? As expectation, scrutiny and pressure rises, where do you go?”

Teams under pressure tend to focus more on outcomes and, as such, they risk falling into what Shand called the “outcome trap” i.e. the negative consequences that come with an excessive focus on outcomes.

It usually starts when success is defined by results, trophies and external expectations. He noted a series of signs of which to be cognisant:

• When people start trying not to fail rather than striving to improve.
• Increased conservatism and narrow thinking.
• An absence of learning and, therefore, innovation.
• When organisations lose sight of long-term development.
• When mental fatigue builds as the pressure rises.

At the All Blacks, Shand, his colleagues and the playing group sought to separate outcomes and growth.

Firstly, their ‘why’ (their vision) was a deliberately “uncontrollable aspiration”: to be the most dominant sports team in the world.

Their mission (‘to develop self-reliant athletes’) and purpose (‘to enhance the All Blacks’ legacy’), on the other hand, were determined by their behaviours and their ability to learn and develop. This combination enabled continuous improvement even when under pressure.

Shand then explained that his work is guided by four principles:

1. Winning is never enough

“I often hear the myth that you have to lose to learn, but I don’t agree with that,” he said, adding that the All Blacks would ask themselves: ‘are we still learning or just winning?’. Your environment should incentivise learning because “growth will actually protect your future performance”.

2. Clarity drives alignment

Shand posed a question: “What are you currently not saying clearly because it creates pressure or accountability?” In his experience, “most teams under-communicate ambition because they fear the discomfort, tension and challenge”. This cannot become an excuse. “If there’s ambiguity, it destroys execution in the end.”

3. The more pressure increases, the more simplicity matters

When the pressure mounts, complexity can harm performance. Learning and growth come from simple structures and consistent reflection. The key for the All Blacks was everyone to become what Shand called a “doer” – someone that can make decisions based on available information. “We took this notion of being ‘productively paranoid’ so that by meeting little and often we’d connect, we’d continue our growth, and we could help each other grow too,” he said.

4. Sustainable success requires both outcomes and growth

“We’ve got to have that outcome discipline,” said Shand, “but we’ve got to couple it with a growth mindset.” He added: “The best teams don’t choose between outcomes and growth – they create systems where growth drives outcomes.”

When Shand concluded, the table had the opportunity to share their reflections. The conversation brought several themes to light:

• There is no fixed process for measuring whether your focus needs to be on performance outcomes or performance growth. His work with the All Blacks was rooted in the cultural and behavioural rather than the structural. “It just became part of our DNA; we could see or we could hear it more than we wrote it down.”
• Recognise competing pressures rather than forcing a solution. “I’d come back to what’s the environment like.” One must identify what’s going wrong first.
• Performance is about continuous improvement (‘editing’). Shand suggested filtering out noise (both external and internal) by focusing on the “critical few” factors that truly impact success rather than the “important many”.
• Performance needs to be fun (but not too much). If there’s too little fun, the environment becomes heavy and draining; if there’s too much fun, learning is compromised. With this balance in mind, Shand’s All Blacks tried to build fun into their weekly sessions. He said: “Once it became part of the normal structure, people started to look forward to it, and they knew they had permission to be themselves.”
• Do not be seduced by quick fixes. When one attendee noted the negativity around their athletes, Shand spoke of New Zealand’s ignominious quarter-final exit from the 2007 Rugby World Cup. “We had a very strong programme with the community and the fans; and we knew as long as we kept that connection with them that was real and authentic then we could deal with people making opinions and noise about us,” he said, “because we knew they cared and they knew that we cared because we gave them our time. The consistency of that alignment really allowed us to work through those periods.”

What to read next

Darren Shand’s Three Key Principles for Building Effective Performance Strategies

By John Portch

In a coach-led environment, 20% of the job of the coach is actual coaching, while 80% is managing people, the environment and recruitment.

That is according to Mark Jarram, the Head of Coaching and Performance Development at Loughborough University.

“There’s such a huge chunk of the coach’s role that takes them away from the on-court or on-pitch coaching,” he told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2023.

However, as he explained, “most of their passion is in the 20%” because the majority “do the job because they like making a difference, they like having a lifetime impact; but, at the end of the day, they also do it because they enjoy competing and winning. Sometimes that creates a lot of friction. You have the element of winning today versus development for tomorrow.”

Where a leader sits on that spectrum between performance outcome and performance growth will depend on the individual. It is worth asking:

• Where does your organisation over-index today?
• What have you prioritised at the expense of something else?

There are four further elements where leaders can begin to strike a balance.

1. Clarity

Clarity is essential when addressing the tension between outcomes and growth.

When England Head Coach John Mitchell spoke at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London, he did so having just helped the Red Roses win the Women’s Rugby World Cup for the first time in 11 years.

For Mitchell, who took the coaching reins in 2023, it began with a “compelling vision”. “We were very visual about where we wanted to go,” he said. He also shared the three questions he continues to pose to his playing group. “What will earn the right [to retain the World Cup in 2029]? What will we keep and take forward with us? And then, thirdly, is what will we need to start again?”

Never before had their ambition and targets been so clearly articulated, as World Cup-winning centre Emily Scarratt explained onstage with Mitchell. She had lifted the World Cup with the Roses in 2014 but had experienced a series of near-misses in the subsequent decade.

“I think it has to come from the leadership and how important they perceive it to be,” said Scarratt, who has since joined Mitchell’s coaching ticket. “In previous campaigns that hasn’t been the case and therefore inevitably could get a little bit sidetracked or lost along the way.”

Ask yourselves:

• What are you currently not saying clearly because it might create pressure or accountability?
• If your ambition were made brutally explicit tomorrow, who in your organisation would feel uncomfortable and why?

2. Behaviours

When a leader has identified what’s missing, the collective must ensure their values and behaviours enable them to bridge that gap.

This is not easy, as Emma Keith, a Royal Air Force Group Captain and Commandant of the RAF’s Tedder Academy of Leadership, explained at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit.

She believes the RAF is good at training to execute tasks, but “less good at [managing] the tension between when we need discipline versus ‘I want your diversity of thought, I want you to challenge, and I want you to ask’. I don’t think we’re as good at helping people navigate the nuance of those spaces.”

Keith is trying to address this imbalance; and it begins with setting standards. “They really matter, but what’s important is making sure it’s not the petty ones, the silly ones. If you’re doubling down on standards, it’s because they matter and if you let them go, it will erode performance. It will impact your environment,” she said, adding that “the standard you walk past is the standard that you accept.”

The RAF has a communal document, the prosaically titled Air Document One, which sets out the service’s values and behavioural standards. Crucially, at Keith’s behest, its contents have been shaped by the organisation as a whole. “I really wanted a document that was aspirational for them, that they could believe it, that it was the organisation they wanted to be a part of,” she continued. “We know from all of the different behavioural models of change that actually it only happens when people want to change, not because it’s been forced on them.”

Ask yourselves:

• Are you rewarding the behaviours you say matter or just the outcomes that look good?
• Where in your environment has ‘freedom’ become a lack of accountability or ‘discipline’ become a fear of speaking up?

3. People

Focus too heavily on the outcome and you risk burnout; focus too heavily on growth and you risk losing accountability or results.

“It seems really simple, but we’re judged by winning bike races ultimately,” Dr Scott Drawer, the Performance Director of the Netcompany-Ineos Cycling Team, told the 2024 Leaders Sport Performance Summit.

In March 2024, he rejoined a team who had enjoyed their greatest successes as Team Sky in the previous decade. The Ineos Grenadiers (as they were then called) were at a low ebb.

“It’s very much an ongoing sensemaking process of just understanding this environment, this sport, this team, the people within it,” said Drawer. “It’s also knowing that there’s this tremendous legacy behind us of what the team had done as a disruptor, but we were no longer there and it was always ‘how do you get back into that mix?’”

Everyone needs to step up, but Drawer recognised that psychological safety was crucial. “We’ll set ourselves up next year in some ways ideally with less constraints and a lot more freedom for our riders to feel like they can just go and race,” he continued. “This is more of an entrepreneurial time for us, the startup mentality. Let’s try stuff. If it doesn’t work, what’s the worst that can happen really?”

Ask yourselves:

• Who is being held back by your expectations or impatience?
• Are your people performers who occasionally learn or learners who are expected to perform?

4. Systems

Systems provide the structure for balancing outcomes and growth.

“Systemisation allows the opportunity to ask: how can I contribute? What are my deliverables? To therefore have some form of accountability,” Jarram told the Leaders Performance Institute. “I’ve seen it benefit in indicating what it actually takes to win. Systemising helps us to confront brutal facts.”

When something is tracked, it usually gets done. “Are we making a difference? Are we focusing on the right things?” he added “[The answers] can determine opportunities to create collaborative conversations.”

He echoes Keith in stating that a system “should be a living, breathing thing that gets reviewed rather than saying ‘we’re going to create this document, it’s going to be signed off, and then it’s going to sit on the shelf’. It should be co-created by all members of staff; ‘this is what we’re trying to achieve, this is how we’re going to do it, this is how you’re going to contribute to that’; so therefore it should dictate ‘what am I doing today?’ and what you’re doing today should impact winning and performance.”

Ask yourselves:

• Have your systems been designed deliberately or been born from habit and urgency?
• Where are you relying on heroics instead of process?

What to read next

How to Spot the Need for Change and to Respond Effectively

By John Portch

The complex nature of skill acquisition was nicely summed up by Mo Bobat, the Director of Cricket at both Royal Challengers Bengaluru and London Spirit.

“It’s about how skills are practised within context, how they’re practised in an environment of graded exposure to challenge and pressure,” he told the Leaders Performance Institute when we caught up with him for our Trend Report.

“[It’s about] pressure-testing the skill, rehearsing it, with enough repetition for it to become and feel a little bit more instinctive and automatic. It’s also the right decision-making and execution and relationship with risk.”

The importance of skill acquisition is obvious when you spell it out, but often it is misunderstood or underappreciated.

Last month, we hosted the first of two virtual roundtables focused on the topic. The Leaders Performance Institute members present identified four common tensions and challenges:

1. Skill acquisition is multidisciplinary in nature: a weakness in terms of where it sits and where it resonates.
2. It is less visible and less tangible: it’s harder for coaches to see progress.
3. Training can be unrepresentative of competition: fail to capture competition demands and you fail to prepare your athletes.
4. Head coaches can feel threatened: they feel skill acquisition specialists are treading on their toes.

Coaches and practitioners have encountered each of these tensions in some shape or form and the solutions sit with everyone, not just those tasked with skill development.

Below, we bring you examples from the worlds of Formula 1, rugby union and netball that address those tensions that can hinder skill acquisition through a combination of environmental, structural and personal approaches.

More than Equal: the search for Formula 1’s first female world champion

More than Equal, which was co-founded in 2022 by former F1 driver David Coulthard and philanthropist Karel Komárek, is a global talent identification and development organisation that has set itself the task of finding and developing Formula 1’s first female world champion.

You can read more about the challenges that face any young female driver here. Skill acquisition is certainly part of it. “The idea of identifying talent based on building a whole profile of a driver, physiologically, cognitively, psychologically, that hasn’t really existed to date,” said Fran Longstaff, the Head of Research at More than Equal, at Leaders Meet: the Talent Journey in 2025. That goes for all drivers. “We don’t know what a racing car driver should be doing and look like at 16 versus 18.”

Such profiles – for male and female drivers – would be multidisciplinary in their scope, help make the vague tangible, and enable coaches to design training scenarios more representative of a racing environment.

More than Equal also commissioned two PhDs; one to research the impact of hormones on performance, particularly cognitive function; another to build “physiological, psychological, cognitive training and anthropometric profiles from drivers all the way from karting to F1.”

More than Equal, as Longstaff explained, is “building the road as we walk”. As more and more useful datapoints emerge, those different threads will have to be woven together to help paint pictures of progress (or stagnation) for each athlete.

England Rugby: how progress is tracked from talent pathways to the senior team

England Rugby’s coaches and performance personnel can call upon a range of objective and subjective datapoints. It is partially the role of individuals such as Kate Burke, the Lead Player Development Scientist, to draw them all together in a meaningful way.

“Everyone has a different role to play, from our coaches and medics to strength & conditioning and the psychologist. Having those people in the room to talk around everyone’s IDP is key,” Burke told the Leaders Performance Institute.

Rugby is a world where the outliers – those destined for great things and those who aren’t perhaps good enough – stick out.

Burke was particularly keen to help those who occupied the middle ground; neither outstanding nor struggling. “Typically, pathway staff have tended to spend time talking about the players that are doing well or the players who are not doing as well. How do we ensure that we are talking about the players who are just staying constant? What do they need for their development?” she continued.

“We’ve got a lot of data in this space, but the pathway especially is hugely context-driven around where the player is in a lot of areas – technically, tactically, psychologically and physically.”

Again, it’s a multidisciplinary concern; and if Burke and her colleagues can find the metrics that matter, there will be implications for training design.

“We also need to look at where they are, where they’re playing, what their playing programme looks like in order to monitor and plan for the player effectively.”

Leinster Rugby and the Northern Mystics: self-reflection for athletes and coaches alike

Longstaff, a chartered psychologist, and Burke, a sports scientist, illustrate the importance of the athlete experience in skill acquisition, but it is not always something that coaches clock.

Too often with coaches, as Simon Broughton explained, “everything’s been delivered, the meeting’s happened and then we’re straight outside.”

The Academy Manager at Leinster Rugby was speaking at Leaders Meet: Teaching & Coaching at Millfield School in 2024. “We don’t actually give the players the space to reflect.”

The implications for skill development can be significant. “Reflective practice helps with recall and then planning for what they want to get better at next.”

Reflective practice is vital for skill development; and it’s not just critical for athletes either.

Helene Wilson, during her time as Head Coach of the Northern Mystics netball team in New Zealand between 2017 and 2022, organised reflective sessions with her players and staff that enabled the group to reach a consensus (known as ‘wānanga’ in Māori).

“My orientation as head coach was always what do others know first rather than bringing my expertise to the table. I needed to be the last one talking in the room,” she told the audience at Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance in 2023.

“It could look similar to a team meeting but it can take many forms and wānanga happens in many ways,” she continued. “I put a concept on the table, a picture of performance that I may see as a head coach, or someone else may put it there depending on who’s taking a lead that day, and the wānanga takes the form of questions, from multiple perspectives, and we keep going until we get some sense of alignment. It doesn’t come with any level of expertise or experience, it comes with everybody’s level and everybody contributes.”

Wilson had cultivated an environment where neither she nor anyone else in the Mystics setup felt threatened. They would also go on to win the ANZ premiership in 2021.

“My learning was to sit at the back and know that my knowledge was not sufficient; that the knowledge was in the room and I was there to sense the problem and the wānanga would sort out what that problem was.”

What to read next

‘Ultimately, Skill Is Technique Performed Under Pressure’

By John Portch

In November 2024, Dr Brett Robinson became the first southern hemisphere Chair of World Rugby, the international governing body of rugby union.

Robinson, a former Wallabies international-turned-sports scientist and C-suite executive, beat France’s Abdelatif Benazzi by 27 votes to 25 in the second round of the election held by World Rugby’s Executive Council.

His narrow majority meant he succeeded Sir Bill Beaumont without a honeymoon period. Yet his achievements thus far, chiefly the implementation of World Rugby’s Impact Beyond 25 programme and building consensus around new laws of the game, have been commendable.

“I’m really proud of where we’ve got to as a game because, when I came into the role, we were fractured and divided,” he told an audience at Leaders Meet: Australia in Brisbane in February.

There were factions within the World Rugby Council that could be divided into England and the Celtic nations on one side with the French and Latin nations on the other. Robinson, as an Australian, said he was “coming into a gunfight between the Celts, the English and the French.”

For all that, in September 2025, the 17th World Rugby General Assembly had endorsed Impact Beyond 25, its five-to-seven-year strategy for developing and promoting the world game heading into the men’s Rugby World Cup in 2027 and Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2029 (both to be hosted in Australia) with the 2028 Olympic Games in LA sandwiched in between.

So what changed? Below, we explore Robinson’s approach to calming rugby’s internal strife.

Brett Robinson (centre) onstage at Leaders Meet: Australia with Rugby Australia’s Director of High Performance Peter Horne and Leaders’ Managing Director Laura McQueen. (Photo: Albert Perez / The Leaders Performance Institute.)

Firstly, he didn’t shy away from the problem

As Robinson explained, “some countries were incredibly frustrated; they wanted to revolt and blow everything up.” Others were about “organisationally working with the change and not being too destructive”.

Almost half of the 52 members of the World Rugby Council voted for Benazzi as Chair. Robinson, who will serve a four-year term, did not shy away from that fact. “We’ve got differences of opinion, we’ve got some challenges, and there’ll be some people that were disappointed after the election,” he said in the aftermath.

In December 2025, he expanded on his thoughts as a guest on the Rugby Unity Podcast. “The system upon which World Rugby is built has been in place for 30 years,” he said. “We have systems that simply don’t work and prevent us from reacting with the necessary speed.” It is worth remembering that he made those observations after Impact Beyond 25 had been launched.

Onstage in Brisbane, he further outlined an enduring sticking point: that France and England account for approximately 70% of the revenue generated in rugby union. This had led to political as well as economic tensions across the different factions; and the question was how World Rugby could engage and incentivise the other unions to align in pursuit of a more equitable distribution.

He ensured World Rugby’s new strategy was a collective endeavour

The Impact Beyond 25 strategy was unanimously ratified just days before the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup final, which saw a crowd of 82,957 watch England beat Canada 33-13 at Twickenham.

The timing could not have been better. England 2025 was the most well-attended Women’s World Cup ever. World Rugby’s unions gave their blessing to a global impact plan that, in the international governing body’s own words, ‘is built around three core themes of profile and participation, careers and gender equity, and capability and expertise with the mission of inspiring more women and girls to get into rugby on and off the field of play.’

Most importantly, it bore the fingerprints of all those involved in its creation.

“It’s really important that, in my role, I bring the game together and we agree on what shared success looks like and we pursue it together,” Robinson told Rugby Unity.

He expanded on those comments in Brisbane. “We’ve built a collective plan where we’re all engaged, we’re all incentivised, and we’re all a part of that journey,” he said, adding that the plan includes taking All Blacks and Wallabies Test matches to the United States. Such moves “will help build the fandom that ultimately will drive the commercial outcomes and [increase rugby union’s] market share”.

He accounted for local complexity

“We are not going to do everything from Dublin,” he told the Brisbane audience, name-checking World Rugby’s base and then pointing to the man sat beside him onstage, his former World Rugby colleague Peter Horne, who now serves as Director of High Performance at Rugby Australia.

“What we do is only as good as what he [Horne] can deliver and vice versa.”

In some places, such as Australia and England, Robinson said, “we have an Anglo-Saxon way of governing; we’ve got strong boundaries around the role of the chair, the board, the CEO, the executive. In other parts of the world, they have very different ideas of the president or the chair being an executive authority.”

He cited the example of Argentine Gus Pichot, the former Vice-Chair of World Rugby. “He’s not the chair and he’s not on the board of the Argentine Rugby Union, but he is making every decision coming out of it; and so I have to work with that, acknowledging that I need to keep his chair informed and his CEO informed; but if Gus doesn’t agree with it, it doesn’t happen. And I could say, ‘well, that’s just a crazy way of governing’, but I can’t change it, so I have to work with it. The French are the same; Florian Grill is their president. He’s not the CEO, but he operates as an executive chair.”

On that last note, Robinson said: “I spent a lot of time before Christmas with the French in Paris. I’m going back there in a couple of weeks’ time.” These meetings have proven invaluable. “You have to work really hard to genuinely display that you’re listening and supporting, and they don’t necessarily say ‘yes, yes, yes’, but actually they can see the ‘why’.”

World Rugby is now reaping the rewards of his efforts. “Having the French and the Argentinians now with us, and rebuilding the relationship with the Celts and the English, was probably the biggest challenge that I faced; and now we’re there, we need to push on and deliver.”

He won’t rest on his laurels

“You’ve got to be systematic; from my experience, if you go randomly into anything like this, you are more likely to fail than not,” said Robinson. “You have to set up a proper process.”

He listed the necessary personal qualities of a chairperson: trustworthiness, empathy, and emotional intelligence. He balanced these against an ability to act and make tough decisions. All are essential in a world where alignment is predicated on retaining the trust of the individuals involved in the process.

Robinson then explained that the executive board of World Rugby had just undergone a review. He said: “I’ve been running a process over Christmas where we have a 360 on our behaviours; I’m getting a 360 on me. We’re having a discussion about board effectiveness; how that relates to the implementation of our strategy. We have some blind spots and weaknesses on our board, and we have succession plans that are coming. So those things are really important because it all rots from the head.”

What to read next

Why Change Only Sticks when you Lead your People Through the Transition

By John Portch

“Personally, I don’t believe in skills coaches.”

These are the words of Rory Teague, who notably spent a year and a half between 2016 and 2017 working as a skills coach under then England men’s rugby union Head Coach Eddie Jones.

A decade on, Teague serves as the Head Coach of French Pro D2 club AS Béziers Hérault and, as he tells the Leaders Performance Institute, would not copy Jones’ appointment in southern France.

“I wouldn’t myself employ a skills coach,” he says. “I think every coach who coaches an area of the game should be able to coach the skill of their area. ‘Skills coach’ as a term has become archaic as coaching has moved along.”

He feels that assigning skills coaches to coaching units risks diluting accountability. “When something breaks down, you’re not going to just look to the skills coach who’s sat in the room waiting for the moment to say ‘oh, that’s me’,” he continues.

“If the lineout doesn’t go well because of the throw, who’s responsible for that? Is it the lineout coach or the throwing coach that comes in once a week? I would prefer that my forward coach has understanding of the skill of throwing and takes responsibility for it.”

AS Béziers Hérault Head Coach Rory Teague. (Image: Rory Teague / LinkedIn)

Over the course of half an hour, Teague ponders the topic of skill acquisition from a coaching career spent as a skills coach, unit coach, and now a head coach.

Here are his six of his main considerations.

1. The difference between ‘skill’ and ‘technique’

“Ultimately, skill is technique performed under pressure,” says Teague, who has been influenced in his thinking by coaches including Rick Shuttleworth (a consultant at organisations including the Rugby Football Union and UK Sports Institute), Scott Wisemantel (Attack Coach at the NRL’s Paramatta Eels) and, of course, Jones (who is now in his second spell as Head Coach of the Japan men’s team).

“They were three incredible coaches who helped me along the way,” he adds. “They pushed me to go and find out what is ‘skill’; what is the difference between ‘technique’ and ‘skill’? Because there’s a big difference.” Skill, he suggests, is the ability to select, adapt and execute actions in a pressured context. There is little value in a player passing the ball ten metres to their teammate repeatedly at the end a training session. “They’re only working on their technique, because there’s no external cue for when they’re passing.”

It follows that skills in rugby develop as a consequence of an interaction between mechanics, cognition and match context. “If I stand in front of the player and they run towards me and I run towards them, they’re interacting with the environment i.e. me, them, and the distance – and then they’re performing the technique.”

There is also a psychological and emotional dynamic that goes beyond cognition and technical execution. All these elements can affect skill expression in a match situation.

“There’s no substitute for being in the saddle,” adds Teague. “Hot feedback in the moment can be so powerful because you’re living that moment with the player.” He will use the moment to talk them through a situation.

He will readily halt training sessions to allow kickers to practise too. “Get them to kick when their heartrate is up and their emotional state is variable rather than just doing 50 kicks at the end of the session – because that’s just technique.”

2. Implicit and explicit learning both matter

At the heart of discussions about skill acquisition is the dichotomy between information-processing approaches (skill acquisition as learning to plan and execute correct movements by processing information internally) and ecological approaches (skill acquisition as learning to perceive and act in context by interacting with the environment).

Teague is not a dogmatist, even if he leans towards the latter. “I like implicit coaching where the exercise and your questions give the player the feedback,” he says. “What exercises can you design whereby you don’t have to say anything, the player performs the act, and the exercise gives the player the feedback? If you look at, say, goal kicking or throwing, you want the player to self-regulate when they’re in the moment and feel the pressure.” He will look to ask a series of questions that “get the player to think about where they want the ball to end up, where they want the ball to go versus breaking it down too technically”. He will also be mindful of the timing too, both pre and post-match.

However, when it comes to explicit approaches, “it’s not that those guys you’re very direct with are not taking control of their own journey and development, they just need to be told.”

It comes down to knowing the individual athlete. “I’ve worked with some players where I’ve fluffed it up too much and asked too many questions and they just want you to go ‘tell me exactly what you want me to be doing, tell me exactly what I’m doing wrong, tell me exactly how I can get it better’. Whereas with others, you can ask ‘what do you think?’”

Skill acquisition requires the coach to understand what the best approach is and why. Additionally, while it may be ideal for the session design to act as the teacher, there will be times when the coach needs to check for understanding.

3. Ask yourself: what will help the player?

While it is important for players to be drawn towards training sessions, whether by coaches placing balls in their line of sight or by making sessions enjoyable, the guiding principle should be whatever will help the players in that moment.

“Do you want your players to think your coaching drills are really good or do you want players to think ‘you’ve taught me how to pass better’?” As ever, the answer “depends on where you are” with the players in question.

In any case, “sometimes you have to get through the reps and you can’t deviate away from repetition”. Teague says: “I’ve seen coaches try to do these fast exercises to appease players and sometimes they can be so complicated that the players don’t buy into it because of how complex it is.”

There will be times when a coaching intervention can harm a player’s development and Teague will consciously be less prescriptive as a game week develops. “As you get closer towards the game, you’re looking at confidence versus correction” because sometimes less is more.

4. The coach is only part of the player’s journey

Between 2022 and 2023, Teague worked as a forwards and backs coach with Racing 92 where he had the opportunity to coach Finn Russell, who is widely considered one of the best fly-halves in the world.

Teague reflects on that period and what he refers to as the “culture of extras”, which is the work that the world’s best players continue to do on their basic skillsets.

“Finn would ask to do some extras when he thought it was right for him,” says Teague, who explains that Russell’s experience guided their training interactions. “Sometimes he’d do them on his own, sometimes he’d ask a coach to be there to give him some feedback, sometimes he’d want a coach there just to keep him company.”

Teague has also worked at school and underage level where he employed a more directive approach but in an environment like England or Racing, “telling them what to do probably isn’t the most intelligent thing.”

Instead, “I think the more players take control of their own skill development, the more you as a coach just have to be part of that journey, not driving that journey for them.”

5. Be patient, it’s a journey

The Leaders Performance Institute asks Teague what he knows now that he wished he knew whilst working as a skills coach.

“Skill acquisition takes a lot more time than I thought,” he says, adding that it could take a season for a goal kicker to become 10% better. “I don’t know if patience is a skill, but I wish I understood more about the learning journey of the player in terms of skill; that each player can pick things up at different rates.”

It comes back to the player-coach relationship. “Players need to take responsibility around what they want to be working on; and that’s a shared process with the coach. Obviously, if there’s something the player has really not identified that they need to work on, and if the coach has to tell them, then so be it.”

Teague will decide when to intervene, when to step back, and when to change the task.

“If you’re clever in your design, you can keep pushing and changing the design incrementally as you see the player evolving and becoming better. Equally, you can take it backwards if the player isn’t getting it. So it’s that ability to move up and down the bandwidth of the learning journey where, ‘OK, I’ve set the start point here at three, I need to go back to one before I can move to four, five and six’.”

6. Data informs, it does not decide

When it comes to using data in skill development, Teague describes it as a question of “data versus feel”.

He says: “You can look at the number of passes per game, for example, but then I think you have to really sit down, watch the video, watch the technique, watch the context, look at the environment that they’re in at that moment in time in the game, conditions; there’s lots of different things.”

As ever data must inform judgement, not replace it; it must provide a meaningful talking point. “I think data can serve its purpose, but what we don’t want to do is go too much down the data route without looking at the individual data moments in the game.”

As a final question, the Leaders Performance Institute asks Teague what advice he has for coaches working in skill development.

“Go and find the theory behind skill acquisition. I think it will change you. It will change mindsets, definitely.”

What to read next

How Do you Develop the Most Expert Coaching Workforce in World Football?

By John Portch

“I knew it was a mountain,” said Johann van Graan, “but I didn’t know it was Everest.”

The South African, then with Munster, had agreed to become the Head Coach at struggling Bath in December 2021.

A few days later, he switched on the TV only to see Bath go 0-28 down after just 25 minutes of their Champions Cup tie with Leinster.

It prompted the Everest comment, as Van Graan told an audience at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

“My oldest boy was worried,” he said onstage. “He almost broke into tears and he said ‘no, we can’t go to Bath’.”

Van Graan took the reins at Bath’s Recreation Ground six months later on 11 July 2022 and, over the next three years, led one of the most remarkable transformations in English rugby history.

By the end of the 2024-25 season, Bath had lifted three trophies: the European Challenge Cup, Premiership and Premiership Rugby Cup.

Here, we explore their ascendancy under Van Graan through the lens of transformational leadership theory, which was made popular in the mid-1980s by American scholar Bernard M Bass, an expert in leadership and organisational behaviour.

Transformational leadership theory has gained traction in the world of high performance in the subsequent four decades and, here, we take the four core dimensions of Bass’ model of transformational leadership (‘the four I’s’) and ponder how they define Van Graan’s work at Bath.

The four I’s of Bernard M Bass

1. Idealised influence

The transformational leader is admired for ‘walking the walk’. They embody qualities their followers want in their team.

In several respects, Van Graan is the embodiment of Bass’ idealised influence. He strives to be a role model of authenticity, fairness and purpose. By the same token, he is not merely a charismatic leader and does not see himself as a hero, even if he told himself at the start of his coaching career in 2023 to “back yourself because no one else will”.

“There’s a quote by Pep Guardiola,” said Van Graan. “‘This beast called football will eat you alive if you’re not always, always, always yourself’.”

Onstage, Van Graan repeatedly returns to the idea of authenticity; his views are sincerely held and he hints at the vulnerability expressed by the Manchester City Manager.

“It took me many years to figure out who I am first and then to become comfortable with that,” he continued.

This attitude has served Van Graan well in his nine years as a head coach working abroad, whether it was getting to grips with St Stephen’s Day rugby in Munster (“in South Africa on 26 December it’s the summer and you go on holiday”) or bracing himself to deal with Bath’s dire situation (“firstly, I had to understand the club’s issues”).

2. Inspirational motivation

Transformational leaders have the ability to inspire and motivate followers through fashioning and presenting a vision.

On his first day at Bath, Van Graan pinned a picture of the Allianz Stadium on the dressing room wall and said, “There’s no date attached to this, but we will get there”.

“I’m in,” said Bath hooker Tom Dunn in response, “but I’m not sure how we’re going to get there.”

It set the expectations suitably high and represented a compelling vision into which any rugby player could buy, not least a group with such raw potential.

For his part, Van Graan knew that performances and, later, the trophies would come when his team was bound by “connection, clarity and commitment”.

“One of the things we underestimate is what alignment truly looks like,” he continued. “I think we as coaches are sometimes scared of that word. We can never communicate enough. Do we really let people know what the standards look like? What the boundaries actually are? What are we actually going to attack?”

He also posed a question to the team’s leadership. “I asked ‘what does the club stand for?’ and nobody would give me an answer. I picked three words: ‘tough to beat’.” They made sense for a team at a low ebb.

“In a rugby context, most of us coaches go after the sexy stuff, but I think you have to go after the important stuff first. That’s defence, set pieces and managing your kicking game; ultimately, it’s a game where you have to go backwards to go forwards.”

Fast-forward three years, following that successful 2024-25 season, Van Graan turned to Dunn and said “we did this together”.

3. Intellectual stimulation

Transformational leaders challenge followers to be innovative, creative and open to new ideas.

Van Graan invited his players to challenge his thinking from day one.

With one player in particular, he played a game of ‘20 questions’. “I didn’t quite know how that was going to go,” he said. It led to a critique of the style Van Graan employed at Munster.

“His first question was ‘why did you kick so much at Munster?’ and I said ‘because we had the best lineout in the world’.”

Additionally, Van Graan runs an open-door policy. “You can make an appointment or knock on my door, come in, close the door, and in that way you can tell me anything. I won’t always agree with you but I will tell you exactly what I think.”

He will also listen. “We’ve all got two ears and one mouth,” he said, underlining the point.

“It’s very easy as a leader, specifically in a successful time, that you think it’s you. It’s not you. It’s the sum of all the others around you.”

Van Graan told the audience he has six mentors, one of whom is Frans Ludeke, whose coaching staff he joined in the mid-2000s at the Pretoria-based Bulls. In 2017, Van Graan flew to Tokyo to meet Ludeke and show him the presentation with which he hoped to win over the management at Munster where he had just applied to be head coach.

“Frans just said ‘you’re not going to get this job’. I asked why and he said ‘because it’s not you. You wrote on here what you think they want to hear. You’re not being yourself’.” Van Graan took the next 24 hours to rework his presentation and was ultimately successful in his candidacy. “I’m not saying it’s because of my presentation but Frans is someone who’s spoken into my life.”

4.Individualised consideration

Transformational leaders demonstrate concern for the needs and feelings of followers and help them fulfil their potential. They establish strong relationships and act as a supportive resource.

Van Graan, who recited a series of quotes during his time onstage, delivers a line from German philosopher Albert Schopenhauer: “talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.”

“I’m in no way saying I’m a genius,” said Van Graan. “The point I want to make is people want to dream, people want to belong, so you’ve got to give people hope, whether it’s players or staff, you’ve got to be able to see something first and then bring people along with you.”

He hoped to pursue that dream by co-creating a “new culture” at Bath. “‘Culture’ is a word that gets used by so many people. For me, it’s embracing everybody in the group, setting clear boundaries as to what you want and who you are. I guess what I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter where you’re from, what language you speak, the colour of your skin: everybody’s welcome at our club.”

This is particularly important when delivering bad news, such as telling a player their contract will not be renewed. In the past, he would make small talk. “Now, I walk in, shake your hand and say: ‘unfortunately, this will be your final season at the club’. I’ve become comfortable with the silence; and people respect that a lot more than not telling them.”

As part of Bath’s collective sense of trust, belonging and psychological safety, Van Graan encourages his players to take perspective. They led Northampton 21-18 with five minutes to go in the 2024 Premiership final and went on to lose 25-21. “We were six minutes from tasting greatness.” They walked out of Twickenham with their heads held high and, 12 months later, defeated Leicester Tigers 23-21 to win the 2025 final.

“We actually played a lot better in the final we lost than the final we won,” said Van Graan. “We haven’t reviewed the previous final at all. We spoke about how close we were but just moved on. The next journey had started.”

What to read next

Four Building Blocks of a Great Performance Environment