23 Jun 2022
ArticlesHumility and curiosity underpinned the approach of a coach more concerned with developing his craft and helping his players than collecting any individual accolades.
The team claimed a record ninth Gallagher Premiership title, defeating Saracens 15-12 at Twickenham Stadium in last weekend’s final, just two seasons after finishing eleventh.
Borthwick, who took the Tigers’ reins in 2020, led them to sixth in his first campaign and is a champion at the end of his second. It is an outcome he would have dreamed of when he spoke at Virtual Leaders Meet: Coach Development in April 2020, just weeks after confirming his new post.
“This is a great club that has lost its way and this is a fantastic challenge – and I love a challenge,” he told an audience of Leaders Performance Institute members drawn from across the globe. “I need to go in with a real, clear plan, what are we going to do? How are we going to go about it? But I’m also really clear that whilst I have my ideas – I’m going to give a clear direction of what we’re going to try and do, then you’re going to harness the skills of every one of the coaches, every one of the players – to make sure we find the best way of doing it.”
Those sentiments ring true two summers later. Borthwick’s humility has been a mainstay at Leicester and was evident during his appearance on the virtual Leaders stage, where he spoke of developing his craft as a coach, as well as creating experiential environments to support the development of his players through feedback and communication.
Here, we outline some of his reflections from that session supplemented by some insights from Leaders Performance Advisor Edd Vahid, who serves as Assistant Academy Director at English Premier League club Southampton FC.
Find ways to challenge and support players
“The title of this session is ‘mastering the craft’ but I’m a million miles away from that.” Borthwick, who retired from playing in 2014 while already working as an assistant coach to Eddie Jones with the Japan men’s national team, learnt quickly that simply coaching from his experience as a player would leave him redundant. He said: “My coaching developed into one of trying to always understand the game; and the best coaches are the best players. I want to learn from them, observe them, see how they go about things; posing challenges to them and then observing how they deal with those challenges. How can I make some suggestions that help? How can I get players to learn from other players and what other coaches are around that I can learn from? The more you coach, the more you learn, the more you realise what you don’t know.”
Devise game-relevant practice sessions
A practice session has limited value if you haven’t made clear the principle that you’re working on or the context in which you’re trying to do it. “With England, in practice, we work off a checklist of things that ensure the context is clear,” said Borthwick, who coached England’s men’s forwards under Eddie Jones between 2015 and 2020. “Am I making that clear to the players? Am I putting them in situations that are game-relevant and am I asking them to adapt to situations that develop their skill and enables them to coach each other? Be very clear about the endpoint that you’re working towards.”
Be more interested in what you don’t know
A coach must be able to spot the gaps in their knowledge and skillsets and work to bridge those gaps. “I think there’s a big gap in my coaching background around teaching. When you’re a teacher trying to engage people who don’t want to be engaged, by comparison, I’ve got it easy, working with elite rugby players; I see that gap and I’m trying to educate myself,” said Borthwick.
How do you get the best out of your players in any given moment?
“How do you get a message to a player and get the best out of them? Everyone is different,” said Borthwick. “There is a time and place for absolutely everything; the skill of the coach is knowing when you recognise the right approach at any point in time. You’ve got to be absolutely clear what standards are expected, what your key objective is within any one session, and then understanding how you get the best out of each of the players.”
The power of self-reflection
Self-reflection is key. “How do you reflect at the end of each day or each session? Do you write it down? Do you have it on your computer? Do you have a journal or a diary?” asked Borthwick. “We all make mistakes but it’s how do we learn from them? You’ve got to continue to learn, understand the context of the day, that period in the season, that player and their life, and get the best out of them.”
The view from Leaders Performance Advisor Edd Vahid:
Steve offers a number of clues as to why he and his Leicester Tigers team have enjoyed their recent successes. He appears invested in developing strong processes that apply to both his personal development and the team’s progression. The term ‘clear’ features multiple times in the transcript and is perhaps evidence of a desire to provide coaching and playing staff with the clarity required to perform. Providing a clear direction and detailed expectations, whilst at the same time embracing uncertainty and responding to individual needs, requires significant skill.
The humility and curiosity that underpins a commitment to personal development is also evident. Phil Jackson famously championed the value of a ‘beginner’s mind’ and this appears evident in Steve’s approach. Jackson reportedly said ‘in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few’. We often talk about learning representing a competitive advantage, and the article offers every indication that Steve role models this in an exemplary manner.
Whilst operating in a team environment, an emphasis on understanding and supporting individuals (players and staff) will remain a critical feature in the future of coaching. Reflecting on the opportunities to further understand individuals will likely present endless possibilities.
Quins’ Danny Care and Billy Millard deliver key insights around how they managed to turn their season around to secure the 2020-2021 Gallagher Premiership title.
Reconnect the playing group with the club’s history
Quins were languishing in sixth place in the Premiership in January 2021 and were without a head coaching figure. Six months later, their player-led squad were champions and this season reached the semi-finals again. The club’s Head of Rugby Performance Billy Millard took the reins and would hand control back to the playing group. Before that, he needed to restore confidence and re-establish a sense of purpose. He understood the need for the team to go back to their roots, to understand their history and culture. “Quins have always been entertainers, that’s why we’re ‘the Jesters’, and we had to tap back into that,” Millard told an audience at the 2021 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. The team created a clear vision which underpins everything they do, and means they are all aligned and striving for a greater purpose. They understand their history and what it means to play for Quins – it is more than just winning and the team is worth more than any individual. It is everyone’s responsibility to bring success to the club, everyone has their part to play, and therefore the sense of a team is embedded and felt even stronger.
Foster a sense of belonging
As soon as you understand and buy into the vision, values and culture, you are part of the Quins family and part of a legacy of Quins players who want to keep this culture alive, explained Danny Care, the Quins and England international scrum-half, who spoke onstage with Millard. Every player is there to bring Quins success, and to do that every individual must give 100% for the good of the team. “One of the key reasons we were successful, was having 45 players fighting for the same goal”, explained Care. It was a whole squad effort, not just the 23 playing at the weekend. Each player also has the freedom to be themselves, and is not put in a box, they are accepted and allowed to express themselves as they are aligned to the higher purpose, and belong to the group. Enjoying the process and feeling part of something bigger is often more fulfilling than simply winning, and Care stated emphatically that winning at Quins, where he has played since he was 19, “was the proudest moment of my career”. It is the sense of winning with your team who have been pulling towards the same goal for a higher purpose that adds to the achievement and success.
Trust, respect and empowerment
The staff value demonstrated that they valued the players’ opinions by asking them to take ownership of the programme and how they wanted to act within it. “I’ve never known an environment where we’ve felt more empowered because we were asked questions,” Care said. The players are empowered to think about what will get the best out of them, what they want, the most crucial piece being that their input is listened to and therefore they feel respected and trusted. This allows the players to feel valued but also in turn holds them accountable to their actions and decisions. The players must be able to understand what gets the best out of themselves as individuals and as a team. The support staff are also listened to and empowered to make decisions on the running of the programme. “Everyone was accountable and empowered and they really enjoyed it,” explained Millard. They are given autonomy and their expertise is listened to, therefore further increasing their feeling of being trusted and respected.
Have a family-first approach to people
Care emphasised the importance of making each individual feel seen as a human and not just an athlete or part of a machine. They took a family-first approach, knowing that whilst, yes, rugby and winning is important, people have lives outside of this and family is everything. Millard gave a brilliant example of one player’s mother being unwell during the week of the most important game of the season. The coaching staff and team’s response was “family comes first, just go,” says Millard. The player came back for the weekend and played exceptionally well – he had been understood and cared for as a human. Care highlighted from a players perspective, that decision from the coaching staff “filtered through the rest of the squad, and we feel empowered, trusted and listened to.”
Operating from a sense of belief not fear
The player-led approach to training and taking ownership breeds a sense of confidence that you have done everything in your power to prepare correctly. Confidence that the game plan is the best way for you to be successful, and trusting the processes in order to achieve your outcome goal. This is critical mid game when things might not be going your way, “by sticking to what we believe, what we’ve trained” explained Care. Having a unified approach is the best approach for success, and players not going off script trying to solve the problem individually. If you lose, which any team is bound to do, believing and trusting in the team’s process and not panicking. This is embedded from the owners and filters down the club giving everyone confidence that their position isn’t under threat from one or two negative results. Operating on a sense of belief and confidence rather than fear. Belief in the individual’s ability but also that of everyone around them.
The Irish side are due to travel to Cape Town to face the Stormers in the semi-finals of the United Rugby Championship this Saturday [11 June].
Whether the match, or indeed the competition, ends in a victory or a defeat, the Ulster Head Coach is ready to meet those two impostors just the same. He does, however, issue one caveat.
“I get more upset when we’re not as good as I think we can be than if we lose,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute.
How long does it take him to calm down when his team have lost a match they should have won?
“It takes however long it takes us to analyse, frame in my own head what the reasons and the adaptations are, and then being able to pull those together with the people that are doing the same process in whatever area of the organisation they’re in,” McFarland continues.
“Once I’ve done all of that and had those conversations I’m normally back on track. Sometimes it takes longer because the answers are not as easy, but once we’ve pulled everyone together and we’re all single-minded in what we’re going to do – ‘done’. Move on. That’s why ‘every inch’ is the foundation of what we do. You can’t start coaching until you’ve got that sorted. If someone doesn’t try then there’s no point in me doing any coaching because I don’t know how they normally do it or how they would do it in a game. It’s pointless. Give me full effort then I can coach. Until we’ve done that you can’t do that. We’ll deal with effort first.”
McFarland delves into the art behind his coaching and his approaches to cultural mapping in the first part of our interview. In the second, he explores his strengths as a leader and comes to some candid conclusions.
What do you regard as your biggest strength?
I think my determination to win. I’m going to say that. It’s not fancy but I hate losing. In terms of big picture stuff, that motivates me to do what I do. And I’m certainly not great at a few things as well. I think the competitive nature of who I am really helps in terms of being the best that we can be. As I said, I am more upset when we’re not as good as I think we can be than if we lose. That’s a big driver for me. When the processes or standards become more important to you than the result, you’re going to get good results. I want to be the best at everything we do. Maybe that sounds wishy-washy. Or maybe it doesn’t.
What I’m going to add to one of my biggest strengths is understanding context. I have a background in psychology so I think that goes along with relating to people, so I’m able to put myself in other people’s shoes. I think that’s a really big strength in terms of interpersonal skills, to be able to have empathy and understand what people are going through. But I also feel I’m pretty good at understanding the context of organisations and where they stand emotionally, in terms of outside influences, in terms of their history, in terms of where they want to go. I would think that’s critical in terms of decision making because if you don’t understand the context of where Ulster were when I arrived or where we are at the end of this season, how on earth are we going to make any decisions on what to do next? It’s the same in your interpersonal skills. If I’m sat in the office here and chatting with one of the players and I don’t understand the context of where they are, how can I give them any advice or help them to answer questions that they have personally? That would be a strength of mine: understanding context on an organisational level but also being able to take the perspective of other people.
What strength do you admire most in others?
I reckon relating to people. The people that have really good interpersonal skills. It’s very admirable. I’m not an impersonal person, but I wouldn’t necessarily say I would be in the top ranks of interpersonal skills. It’s certainly something that I place at the very top of what I’m trying to do, of what I’m doing on a day to day basis. The people that can relate, we know the ones, there are not many of them. There are not many people that are ready to do that.
What is the key to strong teamwork?
Communication and clarity. You’ve got to have the individuals within it who are competent but clarity on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, what you’re trying to achieve, and then being able to communicate within those teams. Stanley McChrystal’s team of teams is a brilliant book. That dispersed leadership model opened my eyes to how really important jobs can be done without somebody having to pass down a message from Washington via so-and-so.
How will you look to get stronger in your role?
I reckon relying on the feedback of the people that I work with. I’ve got really good people that I work with here and relying on them to provide me with the feedback from what they need from me, I think that’s pretty important.
“We’re telling data-supported stories but it’s also data-supported feel,” she tells the Leaders Performance Institute.
“In a presentation, how do you make sure that the data wanted by the coach stands out? We do a lot of work around making presentations look good. We ask ourselves how, if we’re giving a coach one slide of information, we can ensure their eyes are immediately drawn to it? It’s similar with players. There’s lots of tools now where you can draw people’s eyes to what they need to see. Especially when you do review meetings with players, you’ll show a 30-second video clip and I’ll say pretty much every player in that room will be looking at something different because it’s relative to how they see the game, what they’re doing for their position, how they’re trying to see it. So the use of drawing tools on video or arrows means that everyone’s eyes are drawn to the same place. Then everyone’s looking at the same thing.”
The relevant information needs to fly off the page. Burke adds: “If I’ve got a big presentation to do or some key information to put across, I’ll speak to my friends who know nothing about rugby and ask ‘does this make sense? This is the information I want to get across and does it get across?’ The important information will jump off the page and then, whilst we’ve got all the other information in the background, there’s a time and a place for that to come out.”
Burke, who oversees data analysis on the men’s and women’s rugby pathways, has almost 15 years’ experience working in the sport and is well-placed to discuss the role of the analyst in supporting coaches and multidisciplinary teams.
Kate, how important is it for the analyst to work with coaches to establish what their priorities are and how data can support those?
KB: Unless we understand what coaches are trying to do, and have a clear picture, then our job is completely irrelevant. I’ll get all of my new starters to go and sit down with their coach to work out what their coaching philosophy is. There’s a lot of coaches who are top level but everyone’s philosophy around how they see the game is different. There’s no two coaches in the same way that there’s no two players who are the same. But the hard bit for the analyst then is trying to remain objective when you are integrated into a coaching and team philosophy.
In what sense is that hard?
KB: You can become invested in the coach and their philosophy. I did this at the start of my career. You buy into what the coaches are trying to do, what they’re trying to achieve, and you think ‘this is awesome’. However, to have a clear picture of what the coach is trying to do and how they are doing it, you have to remain objective. You need to be able to drop in information that answers questions such as ‘are we doing this right?’ or ‘are we actually achieving this and what are we doing to achieve it?’ Training is a good example. Historically, we as a discipline did not analyse effectively against what we were trying to achieve and what we were trying to do in the match at the weekend. How do you make that a seamless process from an analytical and feedback point of view? If you’re an analyst working with four or five different coaches, trying to understand what each is trying to do to achieve that overall objective is key. It is easier for an analyst to work with a coach that has clear ideas of how they see the game and what they’re trying to do.
Once you have that idea, what does the analyst need to ask themselves?
KB: They need to find the data that support what the coach wants and also the data that may not. For example, lineout win percentage. Your lineout win percentage is fine but it’s just a stat. There are six or seven working parts to it so how do you make sure you’re monitoring all of those as opposed to just the outcome, which will give you a number, but it needs detail and context to add value. It’s often the metrics underneath, those leading to that headline stat, that need our attention. There’s aspects that we have to monitor in the background because if we only monitor the datasets that the coaches want, you’re missing so much more of the game.
How will you approach a coach if you think they’re missing something?
KB: The majority of information we give coaches will be driven towards them, but there’s going to be times when there’s a broader piece around ‘we’re not doing this, we think we’re doing this, but we’re not. This is what we’re actually doing’. It isn’t our job to suggest how we can do things better but to show them what the data is telling us. Having good relationships with the coaching teams allows challenging conversations to take place. These conversations have to be backed up with what the data is telling us.
Pathway players have individual development plans [IDPs], but what about the aspects of their development that are not easily measured?
KB: In the pathway, there is always a mix of objective and subjective data and there is always going to be something you can’t measure but there will be roundtable discussions with everyone involved in the player’s development. They’ll discuss the relevant datapoints and 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.
What are some of the challenges that have emerged?
KB: 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? 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. 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. The rugby academies across England are brilliant in the ways in which they work and understand players. They have the most amount of time with them and there are some great pathway and development specialists working at that level.
“I quite like talking about these kind of things because it helps me to formulate my thinking and, at the end, I’ll have a clearer picture of how I think about things,” he says.
“What is ‘change’ in and of itself?” he continues. “Firstly, ‘change’ is someone who says ‘this isn’t working, things are terrible, and we need to change’. But change is also growth. If you’re an organisation that wants to grow, develop and learn – by definition that is ‘change’.
“How you conceptualise change and how you use it is interesting, because if you include the idea that ‘growth is change’ then there’s always a need for change, isn’t there? At least in anything that’s competitive. It is important not to box change as merely something that happens to a failing organisation or somebody who’s in trouble. Then it’s just a degree in change and, I suppose, recognising the degree of change is interesting.”
McFarland has been a coach since his retirement from playing in 2006. He took an assistant coaching role with his club, Connacht Rugby, upon hanging up his boots at the west of Ireland club. His first stint in Ireland came to a close when he joined Gregor Townsend’s coaching staff at the Glasgow Warriors in 2015 and he later joined Townsend’s coaching ticket when he took the reins of the Scotland men’s national team in 2017. Ulster came calling and McFarland took his first senior head coaching position with Ulster in April 2018.
He is a firm believer in the need to identify a “lodestone” – a foundation – when effecting change. In explanation he retells the story of his initial trek back across the Irish Sea from Connacht to Glasgow. “I was looking for change, but I needed something I was already strong in, something that was relevant to me, something that was going to hold the continuity from one place to the next; bridging that gap of change. For me, it was personal development and that needed to bridge the change of place, environment, and people I was working with. I needed that continuity and that was also part of the change.”
Continuity, as McFarland argues, is essential for players and staff. “The idea of flipping everything on its head, to me, is not great, unless you want something totally new, in which case it doesn’t come under the term ‘change’. When I arrived in Ulster, they were looking for change but I also recognised the things that were going well at the time. ‘What are the things that work here? What things are important? They might not be visible at the time, but that lodestone is generally always there; and if you can attach yourself to that and use that as a foundation, then it’s much easier to gain buy-in from the people who supply the continuity.
“People are trying hard; they’re working hard and doing good things. They just might not be going in the right direction, processes might not be efficient – but there is good stuff going on in places.”
Repurposing, systems, culture and people
McFarland explains that lodestones, as he describes them, at a rugby club can take numerous forms. He says: “It could be purpose, it could be systems, it could be individual people within that organisation. It could be lots of different things.”
He distils the focus when embarking upon change into four categories: repurposing, systems, culture and people. “Repurposing is a huge thing. People have got to have a purpose and, as I say, it may already be there,” he adds. “Creating clarity around that purpose can help. After you’ve done that, you can then look at the kinds of people that are there and how they fit within that purpose. You can look at the kinds of systems and whether they’re efficient and fit for purpose. Then, obviously, the big byword is the cultural stuff. Does that row in behind the people and fit with the systems and the purpose? That’s how I would look at it.”
At Ulster, how did he know where to look first and how does he know where to continue looking? “When I’m making assessments of things like that, I’ll do a stage of cultural mapping. That’s a huge part in the change. It’s understanding where people are. What do they understand about the organisation? From within but also without. Cultural mapping consists of conversations between people within the organisation, but it also consists of media sweeps. That was one of the big things coming into Ulster: doing a big media sweep and understanding what the perceptions of the organisation were at the time – because they weren’t good. People say ‘I don’t want to look at the outside, it doesn’t matter what they think’. You could pretend that the people within your organisation aren’t influenced by what people are saying on the outside, but that’s so naïve. They are influenced by external factors, they make a big impression. Our individual identities are built on not only what we think of ourselves but what other people project onto us. It’s just fact and how you deal with those things is really important.
“That’s why systems analysis and the functionality of the departments within the organisation, communication lines and the performance is important. You’ve got to look at the performance of the systems and what they’re actually putting out, in our case, on the pitch. And then, as I say, with the repurposing, you’ve got to look at organisational aims.”
In his case, is there an actual map? “In a sense it does look like a map,” says McFarland. “My cultural map consists of maybe three or four slides of feedback, mainly from players and sports staff who have answered certain questions. Things like ‘stop’, ‘start’, ‘keep going’; those kind of questions. How you want to be perceived, how you think you’re perceived. It takes quite a lot of time to get that data in and it was quite a lot of effort for people.” Casting his mind back to 2018, he recalls that people did, however, put in that effort, even before he’d started as Ulster Head Coach.
“I spend a lot of time analysing that and taking themes from those answers. You have to look at the language and break out the important parts or the thematic pieces that go across a number of people and then I build those into little maps. I have those on my PowerPoint sheet; you start to get clusters of themes. Some things bridge the gap between those and I’m looking for the kinds of things that are important to the people within the organisation; what they think they’re doing well now and what they really want to do.
“That’s the big thing: what do they want to do? What do they want to be like? That basically built our cultural values. Once I’d put that together I was able to feed that back to them and say, ‘look guys’. A lot of it is bridging gaps, now that I’m thinking about it.”
Fighting for every inch
The process of environment evaluation is continual and McFarland describes an important lodestone from his early days at the Kingspan Stadium. “The first thing that we did here three years ago was culturally to implement the idea of ‘fighting for every inch’. What did it look like? What is important? How are we going to train that? How are we going to measure that? If we could have that as a foundation, we knew we could look at lots of other things and try and work on those over a period of time. But that needed to be in place because I didn’t want to be worrying about that in a year and a half’s time. I didn’t want to be coming back to that and saying ‘we need to concentrate on this, concentrate on that’. Not in any big detail – we’re always looking at it – but we didn’t want it to be the main thing, we didn’t want to have to adjust that; it is what it is. That helps, that ability to have something within your structure that you can rely on so there are other areas you can look at.”
Over the past three years or so, McFarland and Ulster have also placed an emphasis on learning and growth, given the increasingly youthful profile of the playing group, as well as promotion the collective sense of belonging and togetherness.
The men’s Six Nations international rugby tournament, which takes place annually between February and March, often represents an ideal time to think about making the longer-term changes that complement the need to win today, as McFarland explains. “It’s about this time of the year, maybe later, that I’ll start to think about next year,” he says. “Where do we need to go? Where do we need to evolve? Where do we need to change? Then it will start with little conversations with the guys that are interested in that kind of thing. We’ll start putting together ideas of where we want to go next year. There’s quite a lot of planning and preparation that will go into that big shift and changes.”
McFarland also warns against being distracted by superfluous detail. “There is a lot of fluff around the edge of the feedback that we receive and it is just noise,” he says. “Once you’ve got your key things in place, your decision-making has to be based around bridging those gaps. It might be a gap in the competitive nature of training or the competitive nature of selection. If that was a cultural gap, you’ll need to focus on that. So you can’t focus around ideas such as lunch should be half an hour earlier – that’s just noise. Focus on the things that are really going to make a difference and find ways to mechanise them.”
The head coach as salesperson
“Once you’ve got your cultural map, you’ve got to be able to sell the changes you are bringing in,” says McFarland. “I’m certainly not the author of that change – the author is the process. That’s part of my job: selling the idea of the repurposing, or at least giving clarity around the purpose. Understanding the cultural things that they’ve brought to the surface and making them clear; and helping people to mechanise those things is very important. Often spotting the kinds of behaviours that are important to that change, that are going to bridge that gap, and then highlighting them. Those are all parts of selling it and mechanising it.”
He also has become more adept at creating thinking space and allowing people to do their jobs. “Growth is much richer if we’re all part of it and it’s a networking process. The interactions of people across departments, between coaches and players, between players and players, is much richer. I could stand in front of the room and say: ‘this is exactly what we’re going to do in this area, you’re going to do this, you’re going to do that’. That’s probably more efficient, but your growth over time is not as rich, you don’t get the benefits from guys who are on the ground and their information and their ability to adapt in the moment. There are times when you need to stand in front of people and say ‘this is what it’s about, guys. This is where we’re going, this is what we’re doing.’ But there’s also the necessity to create the space where people can grow into that. Potentially my job is to just pull all of that together and to give clarity so that we’re all on the same page.”
As the facilitator, McFarland also feels he must role model change. “Let’s say you want to create a learning environment,” he says. “You’ve got to model that. If that’s me, I’ve got to be seen to be willing to be wrong and adapt, I’ve also got to be seen to be doing things that are helping my own individual growth, I’ve got to be seen to be celebrating things where people are developing. Then once you’ve modelled those you’ve got to be able to mechanise those. There’s got to be room in the actual programme for doing that kind of stuff. It could be individual development programmes that are up and running and actually have things that you do, there’s got to be time in the schedule for development of certain things or skills, but there’s also got to be time in the programme for sports staff to be able to have personal development. Then finally, you’ve got to be able to measure that; you’ve got to be able to look at your programme and say ‘have we actually created development? Have we developed as a staff, as a group? Have we developed as players? Have we developed as individuals?’ Modelling, mechanising and measurement are pretty key to that.
Some of his colleagues and players naturally fall into the role of cultural architects. “Not everybody is interested in innovation, the idea, certainly on a cultural level, of really getting invested, but some people are. A lot of people are. They want to and they’re motivated to do that. That’s a huge thing. Finding the people within your organisation who are interested in that side of things. I’ve got a chunk of people here who are really interested in that kind of thing, developing us as a group and who we are. The organisation leans on them heavily; and the conversations that happen between myself and them and within themselves as a group are instrumental in what we do and how we grow ourselves. Ultimately, an organisation is effectively a group of people. There are buildings here but the buildings are pretty static, the thing that evolves is us as a group of people and the network of our brains and our thoughts.”
“Rather than thinking it’s some support thing on the periphery, wellbeing is energy. It should be the centrepiece of our performance,” performance coach Owen Eastwood told an audience at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Twickenham Stadium last November.
“Wellbeing is an essential ingredient of performance. If you think of it from an individual level, am I really going to perform anywhere near my capacity if I’m not well? If I’m not physically well, if I’m not emotionally well, if I’m not spiritually well?
“I think this is happening, where our wellbeing is becoming more central to the question of if we’re able to perform at our best rather than just being a support peripheral piece over here where people think ‘if people are having physical or mental problems then someone is looking after them’. I think we’re moving to a place where everyone understands that.”
Eastwood’s words echo Kate Hays’ at last June’s Leaders Meet: Evolution of Leadership. “I think coaches are embracing it and I think the high performance system is embracing it, and I think athletes are embracing it,” said the former Head of Psychology at the English Institute of Sport. “The world has not been as we’ve known it, and we’ve seen real empathy and compassion towards people.”
That empathy and compassion was on show at Harlequins prior to last season’s Gallagher Premiership final where the men’s team would claim their first national championship in 11 years. A player approached Billy Millard, Quins’ Director of Rugby, with news that his mum had taken ill. “We said ‘just go. Just be back for the game’,” said Millard, also speaking at last year’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at Twickenham. “He was like ‘what?’ ‘Just go’. So he came back and had an absolute stormer and it was very emotional and he was very thankful.
“It’s very easy to say that relationships are the most important, then you get a big call like that, ahead of the biggest game the club has had in a long time, and the coaches and the staff just went ‘that comes first. Just go, brother’. The players hear about that and there was a lot of things like that we did, it builds trust both ways.”
Millard’s point is underlined by Quins scrum-half Danny Care, who is sat beside him. He said: “To have the coaches go ‘that comes first, your family comes first’ even though we’ve got the biggest game the club’s ever had at the weekend. Then, as a player, you go ‘amazing’; we’re not robots, we’re people.”
Eastwood, who sits on the board at Harlequins, elaborated on this point backstage at Twickenham. He said: “We’ve had discussions with the players where we’ve said ‘success for us looks like us being competitive now, this team, and striving to win, but success for the club also means after you leave this club and retire from professional rugby that you have a happy life, that you’ve learnt traits about yourself and how to cope with adversity that happens in life. That you’ve got a strong group and network of people and players who become friends forever. That’s what we want.
“Our parameters of success include wellbeing and that’s very authentic – we’re not just saying that, we genuinely feel that. We don’t want them to be having a crisis in their 40s and 50s, being lost, not knowing who they are, not having good life skills, not having a good network. Again, it’s good in the short term, I suppose, to have a culture like that, but we genuinely want it to be something that extends well beyond their time playing.”
The staff around the athlete are a vital part of the wellbeing question, as Angus Mugford, the Vice President of High Performance at Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays told the Leaders Performance Institute. “That aspect of all our lives is really important for staff,” he says. “High performance is not often a balanced world, there’s a lot of time on the road and away from family, and the high stress; and I think acknowledging that human beings, in their physical and mental health are really important aspects that we need to focus on, provide resources for, and work on too.”
A similar point was made by Lauren Whitt, Google’s Head of Global Resilience, at Leaders Meet: Evolution of Leadership, in the context of building resilience. She said: “Resilience prioritises rest and recovery. You do it for your athletes. Oftentimes we forget as leaders, as managers, as other folks who are working with the high performers, we also need you at your best; we also need you able to make decisions on the fly and to be sharp and to be crisp.”
Attitudes are shifting across high performance sport but, as Mugford says, “actions speak louder than words.”
This article originally appeared in our Special Report Enhancing Your Environment: Nurturing positive high performance set-ups.
Six months earlier, the team were languishing sixth in the Premiership table and were without a lead coaching figure following the departure of Paul Gustard as Head of Rugby.
A series of swift and profound decisions transformed Quins’ campaign. Firstly, Gustard was not directly replaced. Instead, the reins were taken by Director of Rugby Billy Millard, with support from coaches Jerry Flannery, Nick Evans and Adam Jones.
Off the field, the club sought the counsel of performance coach Owen Eastwood, who has worked with organisations including Gareth Southgate’s England men’s team, the British Olympic team, NATO and the South African men’s cricket team, in an effort to revive their fortunes.
“Everybody was looking at them and saying ‘there’s no energy – are they not fit?’ Eastwood tells the 2021 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Twickenham Stadium. “The team was struggling, they weren’t playing well, and they were getting a hard time for that.”
Eastwood’s role was vital. “We were lost in our DNA and Owen Eastwood started spending time with the club,” says Millard, speaking on a different day at Twickenham, where Quins lifted the Premiership trophy. “We excavated the history of Harlequins.”
By June, both the men’s and women’s teams had taken their leagues by storm, playing fast and frenetic rugby on their way to being crowned champions. Both were aided in part by the cultural reset that laid the foundations of both triumphs.
Back to Quins’ roots
As the Leaders Performance Institute speaks to Millard, it is clear that part of him still cannot believe the turnaround that took place. “You don’t have seasons like that,” he says.
His mind goes back to Harlequins’ last Premiership triumph in 2012. “We played a certain style, we behaved a certain way. Quins have always been entertainers – that’s why we’re ‘the jesters’ – and we just had to tap back into that, which we did. Our owners [Duncan Saville and Charles Jillings] set a vision, we stripped it right back, and that vision was aligned right through the playing squad.”
Sitting beside Millard is Danny Care, Quins’ scrum-half who was a key part of that earlier success. He says that he and his teammates had ‘fun’ as the club raised its game. “I think the main thing we did is that we said we were going to do it our way, we’re going to do it the Quins way, we’re going to go back to our roots, back to what we feel is the way we like to play rugby, do it with a smile on our face,” he says. “And we went and did it.”
“In 21 years of professional sport I’ve never seen it so strong,” adds Millard. “If we lost a game, which we did on the run to winning it, there was no panic, as long as we were doing what we said we’d do and play a certain way, everyone stayed true to that.”
Back in January, Eastwood had spotted the lack of energy. He would conduct 52 interviews with players and staff as he sought to make his recommendations. He says: “Just through some changes in the environment, different philosophies, all of a sudden, this team had this unbelievable amount of energy, and they were the same conditioned group and they were the same people. Something shifted that created this unbelievable energy – and that was the environment, the culture.”
TRUE values
As Eastwood, who joined the Quins board in August, began his research into the club founded in 1866 – the fourth-oldest rugby club in the world – he quickly unearthed characteristics that lent themselves to a neat and powerful acronym: TRUE, which stands for ‘tempo, relationships, unconventional, enjoyment.’
“Owen said this acronym had been around forever,” says Millard. “’Tempo’ – Harlequins play with tempo. ‘Relationships’ – everyone says relationships are important, but we live and breathe that. Our relationships are the foundation of what we do.
“We’re ‘unconventional’. As [prop] Joe Marler says, that means we can do whatever we want. Pretty close. And enjoyment, so T-R-U-E. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s Quins for nearly 160 years.
“[Eastwood] spoke to us about all these amazing stories about relationships and unconventional and enjoyment; and we all tapped into that.”
Care takes up the theme. “I think it’s the main reason we were successful come the end of last season,” he says. “To revisit what the club is all about, I think, for players, sometimes you’re in a hard situation as a player. You feel that you can’t really speak out and say what the coach doesn’t want to hear. But when we did have this reset, I think it was a great opportunity for players, coaches, staff to sit in a room and each of them describe what we needed. I’ve never known an environment where we’ve felt more empowered because we were asked questions.”
Belonging cues
As Care says, the Harlequins players were asked for their input to help shape training and preparation in the absence of a head coaching figure. Tabai Matson would be installed as Head Coach during the subsequent off-season but, there and then, the players led the way and, most importantly, felt heard by Millard and his support staff.
He says: “The coaches fully gave us that trust and listened to us. Then, as a player, you then feel empowered and trusted to go out on the weekend.”
As befitting Quins’ ‘unconventional’ label, changes were made behind the scenes, including the abolition of the ‘captain’s run’ [the traditional final captain-led training session on the eve of a match] and Quins consistently found a level of performance befitting their talent.
Eastwood believes that a fundamental factor was the ‘belonging cues’ the players increasingly received from the coaching staff. It stems from his research into the relationship between energy and hormonal states.
“Fundamentally, from a hormonal point of view, when we go an compete, we will be stressed,” he says. “The two biggest energisers in our hormones are adrenaline and cortisol. It’s not hard to find them when we’re competing, but if we’re only fuelled by them then a) is it sustainable? And b) that type of fuel will have consequences. People in those states can have tunnel vision, they can find it hard to talk. More widely, people who are marinating in cortisol and adrenaline can get into a self-preservation mode and find it hard to connect with other people. People who are fuelled by cortisol and adrenaline can find it hard to be vulnerable; if they don’t understand something they may not put their hand up and say it.
“So what we want to do is create this balance, from a hormonal point of view, when we are in a competitive environment. The cortisol and adrenaline will be there, we don’t need to ramp it up, actually we need to calm it a bit. And what hormones like oxytocin, around our connection with other people; dopamine, which is that motivator pushing us forwards towards the goal; serotonin, which has a regulatory effect on our mood. What we really need to do is, in our environment, promote those hormones. I think there’s a simple way of understanding it and it’s all related to energy.”
Therefore, belonging cues, as Eastwood argues, can have a positive impact on a person’s energy and hormonal balance. “When people receive belonging cues, it’s a massive energiser. So many experiences I’ve had of going into teams where people, they trust me and they’ll talk to me and they’ll say, ‘I don’t know if I belong here, I feel a little bit like an imposter, I don’t know if the coach respects me. I feel like every single thing I’m doing, even training, off the field, I’m being judged and people make decisions all the time about whether I should stick around here.’
“When that happens, again, people start marinating in cortisol, stress hormones and adrenaline. They go within themselves. If they don’t understand something or if they’ve got a weakness in their game that they want to develop, they’re not going to put their hands up and say that because they feel unbelievably vulnerable. We also know that our short-term memories are affected when we’re in that state as well.
“When we feel a sense of belonging, that we actually belong here, that people respect us, we’re in a completely different hormonal state. Our dopamine, oxytocin levels are raised, we’re able to focus on our job and our teammates, if we don’t understand something we feel comfortable in saying that.”
“It was definitely different to what I’ve been used to,” says Care. “I’ve never felt more trusted, empowered, respected, but also then there was a massive responsibility on us as senior players to lead it and the younger players to follow.”
Millard says that the approach is here to stay and, when it comes to recruitment, there is “a method to the madness,” adding, “you’ve got Danny and the leaders telling stories and Owen Eastwood saying ’70 years ago, this is what Quins used to do’ and these young kids are like ‘we’re bigger than this, the spotlight’s on us now but there’s so much that came before us and, in 20 years, we’re still going to be playing this way.’”
This article originally appeared in our Special Report Enhancing Your Environment: Nurturing positive high performance set-ups. It also features insights from English Premier League Brentford FC, Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays and Google.
The Leaders Performance Institute explores what Jones thinks it takes to get a team ‘humming’ and presents five points for consideration.
“You start at midnight, then you’ve got 12 hours to get to midday,” he told an audience at August’s Leaders Meet: High Performance Environments. “By that time your team has to have evolved into a winning team.” Jones, like numerous head coaches in team sports, can feel the clock ticking.
“In Premier League football, you’ve probably got eight games to get to the high performance, in international rugby you’ve probably got two years. Generally, I think it takes a team three years to be really humming when you’ve got all the bits and pieces in place.”
Here, the Leaders Performance Institute explores what Jones thinks it takes to get a team ‘humming’ and presents five points for consideration.
1. The coach as a chemist
For Jones it starts with the leader’s vision for the team. A high performance environment must support that vision and the leader must be ready to tweak things when necessary. “You’ve got to work backwards,” he says. “Get the structure to support the vision, then you’ve got to get the right people and the right behaviours. You’re like a chemist, you’re pouring little bits and things in there, taking away, and every day you’ve got to check the temperature because every day you get closer to where you are at your best and you’re also a day closer to where you’re not at your best. The cycle of life is more exacerbated in the cycle of sport.”
2. Sports science as a key accelerator
Sports science practitioners, led by the vision, must work to ensure the most efficient application. “I think when sports science came in, they wanted to be Godzilla and beat their chests and show everyone how clever they were; and now they’ve worked out that they’re just part of the package,” says Jones with a smile. “They’ve got that understanding, they’re part of the package, they’re a key accelerator of sport but not a driver; their role has become clearer.” He retells the story of an episode ahead of England’s 2019 Rugby World Cup campaign. “The first four weeks we didn’t let the players wear GPS and the coaches were sweating,” he continues. “The coaches didn’t like it, the players didn’t like it. I just said ‘work out what a good session is’. So we did that and it took away that fixation with GPS.” Keen observers will have noted that GPS technology remained a vital tool in for England throughout the tournament and beyond. Jones simply wanted underline his point. “You’ve got to make sure you manage all of that and make sure it’s in the right direction for the team.”
3. Sports psychology is the future
Jones’ tone is bellicose but he readily admits to his reliance on the high performance team, including those working in performance psychology. He says: “I think the sports psychology area is the biggest growth area of the game of any sport at the moment. If you look at any team now, do they go into the game with the right attitude and how do you get them to be at the right attitude more often than not? If you can get your team with the necessary talent and the right attitude at the start of the game, then you can beat the average, you’re winning in your competition.
“How do you get that? I think the one block that’s got the most area to investigate is performance psychology. When I say that, I mean it’s everything: that’s the relationship when you’re sitting at the table with your staff, the relationship you have between the staff and the players, the players with each other.”
Relationships are crucial given the growth of multidisciplinary teams in high performance. “If you go back 20 years ago in rugby, a player would have to have in a team environment maybe four key relationships: the head coach, maybe the strength & conditioning coach, maybe the manager – maybe three – and now they’re expected to have maybe 15 key relationships. The ability to develop that area and make that really hum and be at the level you want it to be is the key thing.”
4. The forensic psychologist as a cultural architect
Jones continues with a joke: “I reckon now you almost need three psychologists on your team, if you’re a big team I reckon you need one for the players, who are working on their individual mindset, their own individual skills. You need one for the staff – then you probably need one for the sports psychologist!”
On a more serious note, he makes the case for teams hiring a forensic psychologist to help deliver an understanding of what makes people tick. “We’ve been working with this woman who’s a forensic psychologist. I’ve been lucky enough to coach for 30 years and, in the last three weeks, I’ve learnt more about how to be more engaged, more intentional in the way I speak to people.”
5. Guardiola and Klopp as model leaders
Jones has often stated his admiration for Manchester City Manager Coach Pep Guardiola and his Liverpool counterpart Jürgen Klopp, both of whom he thinks understand how to cajole players without letting standards slip and decline. He says: “They’re tough on standards, aren’t they? You see them during the game they’re yelling and screaming but when they come off the field they’re an engaged and loving father that’s embraced the players. Our ability to engage the players is one of the hard things.”
It stems from the high performance environment and the team’s original vision. “The ability to make people work hard and do the really difficult things is getting harder and you’ve got to explore every avenue of how you do that and that’s got to be through having the best psychology and having the best performance staff.”
Download the latest Performance Special Report – Winning With Nutrition
Long relegated to the side lines, nutrition is finally getting the attention it deserves when it comes to helping athletes achieve peak performance. Download our latest Special Report, produced in partnership with Science in Sport and featuring NBA champions the Milwaukee Bucks, the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, and English Premier League club Aston Aston Villa.
Day one set the bar high and we looked to carry that energy and momentum into day two. We began with a deep dive into the performing arts, looking at talent development at the Royal Ballet School and Royal College of Music before exploring the theme of diversity, equality and inclusion with Brentford FC and British department store Selfridges. We then checked in with performance coach Owen Eastwood before turning our attention to extreme adventurer Adrian Hayes in the afternoon. Aspetar then had the honour of bringing down the curtain with a fascinating look at rehabilitation and recovery.
A big thank you from the Leaders Performance Institute team and our main partners Keiser, Abu Dhabi Sports Council and Aspetar, for joining us for two days of total high performance.
For those of you who couldn’t make it – or those wishing you refresh your memories – here are the key takeaways from day two.
Full Day 2 programme:
Talent Factories: How the Performing Arts Develops & Nurtures World Class Talent
Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness
Diverse & Inclusive Leadership: Exploring How Diverse Workplaces Positively Influence Organisational Performance
Lessons from Extreme Adventuring: Adaptability & Resilience in Adversity
Rehabilitation & Recovery: The Latest Thinking to Support your Performance Strategy
A full 365 days elapsed between the All Blacks’ last appearance at the 2019 Rugby World Cup and their next test match, while the Black Ferns waited a little over 15 months to return to action.
What would have been almost unthinkable in 2019 came to pass at the start of the pandemic, when New Zealand introduced some of the world’s strictest border controls, which have largely served to keep the Pacific nation free of Covid-19. There has been much to champion in this approach, with fewer than 8,000 infections reported in a little over 18 months at the time of writing, but sport in New Zealand, much like everywhere else, has not been insulated against the impact.
In early 2020, New Zealand Rugby was forced to reduce staffing levels in an effort to cut costs, with some made redundant and others asked to take unpaid leave. “We reduced staffing levels by about a quarter,” says Mike Anthony, the Head of High Performance at New Zealand Rugby, when speaking to an audience at June’s Virtual Leaders Meet: Evolution of Leadership.
“We stood a number of programmes down, reduced the number of support staff they had. Competitions were impacted and the reduced number of games meant things like broadcasters and sponsors were impacted.” At the end of 2019, Ian Foster had succeeded Steve Hansen as Head Coach of the All Blacks but almost immediately found his plans in disarray.
Anthony says: “We had a new coaching group come in and they were just getting started in six test matches [across 2020], which is probably half of a normal year. So they didn’t get the opportunity to really set their mark.
“At one stage, the All Blacks were six weeks away from home in Australia playing in a competition [the 2020 Tri Nations Series], so you really wanted to make sure they felt supported.” The nation’s rugby male and female sevens players, who were preparing for the Tokyo Olympics, were encouraged to be involved in 15-a-side programmes while their programmes were temporarily mothballed.
The situation remains far from normal, with Covid outbreaks in Australia disrupting the trans-Tasman men’s Super Rugby Aotearoa competition, to cite one example. “I think what this has taught us is we’ve learned to be more agile and adapt to change. Like a lot of sports, we’re extremely well-planned, very routine-based, and what it’s taught us is there are other ways to look at things and do things, and we’ve had to be able to adapt on the move.”
Here, through Anthony’s words, the Leaders Performance Institute explores the role of the players and coaches in giving New Zealand Rugby a resilience and adaptability that has served them throughout the pandemic and stands them in good stead going forward.
Facilitative coaching
The All Blacks and Black Ferns went on an extended hiatus at the start of 2020, while New Zealand’s domestic rugby competitions were postponed, disrupted, and eventually returned in swiftly altered formats. It was a challenge for players across the game, with Anthony and his staff at New Zealand Rugby also challenged by the non-centralised nature of all but the national sevens teams.
“Our two sevens programmes are centralised, they’re together all the time, but with the All Blacks, we don’t see those players for six months of the year; they are with their Super Rugby clubs and then they come together. Our providers – S&C, medical, nutrition – are remote and come together virtually and then they spend time in the clubs working with their various departments in order to manage those athletes.
“I’ve seen better collaboration across the clubs, not silos. Now we’ve got our wellbeing group and our ‘med-fit’ group, which is S&C, medical, where the psychologist or the nutritionist links in if the player is injured. I think the process that we run around case management of our athletes has formed that collaborative crosspollination.”
The session moderator, Angus Mugford, the Vice President of High Performance at the Toronto Blue Jays, asks Anthony how the All Blacks and Black Ferns are empowered by their coaches and performance staff in this remote context. In many respects, his response pre-dates the pandemic and illustrates why both programmes were well-placed to manage the disruption.
“They have to own and drive the programme,” says Anthony. “The All Blacks have got a big season. As a competitive sport, we run from February to November, so they’ve got to get that off-season right and we give them time away to own and drive their programme and then come in refreshed mentally and physically. We want to make sure we get the best out of them that way. You use the word ‘empowering’ and our athletes have always been empowered within our programmes and our teams. I firmly believe that helps with the leadership development of our guys.
“It builds resilience as well. Richie McCaw [former New Zealand captain, record appearance holder, and two-time World Cup winner], one of our greatest All Blacks, talks about doing ‘the unseen things’ when no one’s watching. I think that’s a great way to capture what we do. It’s easy to work and sweat when you’re in and surrounded by others, but it’s doing those things at home, whether it be around your nutrition or your recovery, or your opposition analysis – they’re the things we need our athletes to do and not just be told to do.” It is important for All Blacks and Black Ferns players to have a “voice”, as Anthony puts it. “They need to own and drive the culture, the standards and the programme,” he says. “Everyone talks about how we’ve got a great culture, where it’s tied to ‘brotherhood’ or ‘sisterhood’, but a true performance culture is where they can hold each other to account; and I think if you can empower your athletes and you’re just having to sit back and lead and manage rather than always coming in on some of that stuff then that’s a true performance culture.”
The players have an element of psychological safety, where they feel able to take interpersonal risks in pursuit of their self-development without fear of any negative consequences. In that vein, Anthony describes player performance reviews at the end of a training week, which strike a balance between challenge and support. “The expectation is that the player will come in prepared for the review of their performance and they will lead the conversation. It’s a great opportunity then for the coach to see their level of self-awareness around their game and where they’re at relative to their views.”
Crucially, coaches attempt to be facilitative rather than directive. “If you came to a team review, it’s not the coach standing at the front delivering, they are essentially facilitating the conversation, with a significant contribution from those players.
“Likewise leadership development, a critical piece in there because, at the end of the day, they’re the ones that have got to perform under pressure out on the pitch and execute, make decisions. I know with technology, messages can be delivered on the field, but that’s probably in between, in the breaks. In those critical moments, they’ve got to get it right.
“In my role, I spend time with the clubs and sit in on a lot of these sessions and you do see that. I think a strength to our coaches and our game is an ability to facilitate rather than be directive. That’s certainly an approach that the majority of our coaches take.” This trend, however common it may be in rugby in New Zealand, is something that needs to be built gradually and cannot be imposed on a team.
Anthony recalls the time when, working as a strength & conditioning coach, he left his role at the Crusaders, the New Zealand-based club where he had been working for a decade, to build a programme at a club in England. “[At the Crusaders] they had a great senior group that I would use as a sounding board around training load, the structure of the week the expert – you should be telling us – why are you asking us?’ and you’re trying to get that collaboration and I didn’t quite get it right. Rather than just dumping it on them, I needed to grow their understanding. ‘Here’s the end point and what we expect in the middle’.
In rugby in New Zealand, however, the practice is embedded and, as a consequence, the game is organically producing leaders in the mould of McCaw. “We’ve seen a transition of a lot of our players into the coaching ranks pretty early now and often they will want to stand up. Teaching and delivery is a skill. A lot of our coaches have great tactical and technical knowledge. That ability to share that deep knowledge, deep learning, and deep understanding, it is a balancing act and sometimes you’ve got to tell and sometimes you have to grow or check for understanding as you go. For young coaches, there’s an art that they need to learn. I’m a firm believer that you’ll get a lot deeper understanding over time if you can get them involved and make it collaborative.
“Sometimes you’ve got to deliver a message. I think it depends on the structure of your week; if we’re going week to week and want to move on from a performance and get some things in place, you’ve got to find a time to do that. You want to get your athletes up to speed. If they are getting up and presenting in front of their peers, it is time consuming – a hell of a lot more time consuming than if you just do it as a coach or whatever your role is – but I think the long-term benefits are massive. It’s how you bring them with you and, with time, it’s pretty organic in terms of the conversations that happen in the room.”
Teams in black are always being chased
The All Blacks played their first true test match against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 15 August 1903 and the result was a 22-3 victory for the tourists in front of 30,000 spectators. As Mugford points out, since then, they – and the Black Ferns in the women’s game since 1990 – have dominated world rugby, developing a reputation for excelling at the basics of the game, while continually innovating around the edges. To what does Anthony attribute that quality? “That’s a tough one,” he says, before highlighting the strength of New Zealand Rugby’s campaign reviews. “You’ve got to be as robust with your review when you’re successful as when you’re not because I think it’s easy to find things when you’re not. When you are successful, you want to capture the learnings and say, ‘well, why are you successful?’ To me, they’re what I call our ‘big rocks’. You hope that they make up 80 to 90 percent of your programme and you retain those and take them through.”
Anthony also points out that in New Zealand, even at the highest level, the basics of rugby never become an afterthought. “If you go and watch an All Blacks’ 15 training session, you’ll see elements – ‘run, catch, pass, tackle technique, breakdown’ – those things are coached with regularity all the way through regardless of if you’re a world-class player or you’re a development player – at no stage are skillsets ticked off and then ignored. That is really key. “The art is how you retain the big rocks so that you know they’re critical to our success but make some adjustments to play around the fringes. You hope your programme is good and if there’s a few one percenters, that’s great, but you constantly want to look around the edges at what you can adjust.”
Anthony speaks of the creation of a ‘performance gap’. “The margins between teams are really small. Everyone wants to beat the All Blacks or our sevens programmes – teams in black are always getting chased – and you want to create a performance gap. It’s thinking about things; where we are now versus where we want to get to. We talk about ‘if you’ve got a performance gap, you create some discomfort in an environment and that drives the team and the individuals within it’.
“Competitive edge is something we look for in our athletes. If you’ve got that, doing the same old thing week to week, year to year, your athletes will be bored very quickly. So how do you create some of that discomfort and know that’s going to drive them to continue to get going?
“The other thing for us is how we road test that because, I talked before about how the All Blacks play 12 to 15 test matches a year; they assemble really late, they’ve got a small window, so how do we road test some of those initiatives and in our other competitions or environments to then go ‘we think that’s worth considering’? The strength of the collaboration within our teams helps with that and we really try to highlight ‘here’s something that was tried here and it worked really well’.”
Anthony raises an example away from the game itself, but it is possibly all the more important following periods of stress, anxiety and isolation. “Our sevens teams sing. The women started it, our men do it now, first thing around a training session. That is unbelievable for connection and now we’ve seen that happen, particularly around some of our age group teams, because certainly in my era, singing was something you’d frown upon and roll your eyes at, but our teams love it, our young athletes love it, and it creates great connection and then they’re switched on and into it before they go into things. You think about that and ask ‘how does that contribute to performance?’ but just little things like that around the edges are great.”
Download Performance 23
A full version of this interview appeared in our latest Performance journal, which also featured England men’s Head Coach Gareth Southgate, the Arizona Diamondbacks of Major League Baseball, and British Wheelchair Basketball, who runs some of the finest programmes in the sport. Edd Vahid of Premier League club Southampton FC also penned a column focusing on talent pathways.
