Jared Pickett

🏉 7 Leadership Lessons From The Coach Of One Of The Most Dominant Teams In History, Steve Hansen 107 games. 93 wins. A winning percentage of 87%. This is the record of All Blacks coach Steve Hansen, one of the greatest coaches of all time. When Hanen was head coach of the rugby team the All Blacks, he led a period of unbelievable success: Steve won World Rugby Coach of the Year 4 times. The All Blacks won 87% of games with Steve in charge, the highest winning percentage of any All Blacks coach. They became the first rugby team to win back to back world cups 7 Leadership Lessons From The Coach Of One Of The Most Dominant Teams In History, Steve Hansen 1 Here are 7 lessons from Steve Hansen On Decision Making, Handling Pressure and More: 1. One Question To Make 100 Decisions: The Team Comes First The All blacks had a single question to help make all decisions: Is this good for the team? In 2012, Ali Williams, a veteran and much loved player, refused an interview from the TV channel, TV3. Ali was annoyed because the previous year they ran a story about Ali and another All Black who had hosted their own press conference and tried to be funny. The channel made it clear they were not. When Hansen found out Ali refused to be interviewed he called him into the team room and sat him in front of a whiteboard. The whiteboard had a list commandments about how the All Blacks were determined to live and work. “Read the first line of our rules to me please, Ali,” said Hansen. Williams replied: ‘The team comes first.’ ‘How does not talking to TV3 put the team first,’ asked Hansen. Williams said nothing. Hansen told him to mend things with the reporter he rejected. Here is what Hansen had to say about the team coming first. ‘What was right for the team may not have been right for you as an individual because it may have meant you were not going to get what you wanted.’ Team first was the first question that was asked in relation to every decision made. Hansen had to ask himself, maybe 100 times a day, was something best for the team? That was the overriding mantra – the master key that opened all parts of the All Blacks. Everything that happened had to be because it was deemed the best thing for the team. 7 Leadership Lessons From The Coach Of One Of The Most Dominant Teams In History, Steve Hansen 2 That’s how selection decisions were justified. That’s how tactics and game-plans were justified. That’s how everything in Hansen’s realm was justified’ Steve Hansen: The Legacy by Gregor Paul Question For You: What is your 100 times question? The question you need to keep asking yourself to help make a decision. For examples: Would my child agree with this? Is this the person I want to be? Will I regret this choice 5 years from now? 2. Three Steps To Deal With Intense And Relentless Pressure The All Blacks are not only expected to win every game, but to dominate. And so the pressure on the All Black coach is enormous and relentless. Rugby is New Zealands national sport, they have been at the top for years and so expectations breed success. Here is Steve on pressure: “My wife would say I handled pressure poorly. I started coping a lot better once I acknowledged to myself that there was pressure there… “You have to admit to yourself that it’s there and once I decided that I do feel pressure, I then asked what makes me feel it. That was an important question and once I established what that was, then the next part was what was my plan was going to 7 Leadership Lessons From The Coach Of One Of The Most Dominant Teams In History, Steve Hansen 3 be to deal with it, knowing it was going to happen? The worst thing you can do is panic. If you have got a plan, it takes away the panic and you can say here we go, this is happening and this is what I said I was going to do, and you get on with doing it. That awareness of knowing what causes you to feel pressure is massive and once you have that it basically makes it easy to function under that pressure.” Steve Hansen: The Legacy by Gregor Paul In that quote, Steve gave 3 steps for handing pressure 1. Acknowledge: Admit you feel pressure 2. Understand: Ask yourself: What makes me feel pressure? 3. Plan: Make a plan for dealing with it Two Question For You: 1. What makes you feel pressure? Is it seeing a certain person? is it when you need to do a behaviour like public speaking? Is it when you’re behind on the scoreboard with 10min to go? 2. The next time one of those things leads to you feeling pressure how are you going to deal with it? Here are some examples: Go for a 15 minute walk Take a breath and ask “What’s the most important thing I can focus on right now” Ask: What’s the smallest next step I can take (e.g. pass that ball) Fill out this template 7 Leadership Lessons From The Coach Of One Of The Most Dominant Teams In History, Steve Hansen 4 When ______ happens, I will ______ 3. How You Handle Losing Reveals Your Character Hansen hated losing. But he knew the All Blacks would lose and when they did he wanted to be gracious. Hansen believed how someone delt with losing said a lot about their character. Plan How You Want To Respond How do you handle the pressure of always been epected to win? How do you handle the pressure of losing? The time to decide how you react is not in the moment. It’s before it’s happened. Hansen wasn’t born to handle defeat with class. He prepared for it. Mental skills coach of the All Blacks, Enoka, explains: ‘We had moments with just him and I and we would talk about what I was perceiving, about how he would react to certain situations – to the media, to the management team, to the players,’. ‘We would talk about high-risk situations where it was important that he conducted himself in such a way that the players could see he was leading. We came up with little strategies and techniques that could help him stabilise his emotions because that is what it is all about – when the emotions don’t stay level, that is when you get out of kilter. The great thing about him is his honesty in those moments and he always wanted to consider what did the team need to hear and what did the players need to hear and they needed honesty.’ After the All Blacks were knocked out of the 2019 Rugby World Cup they were devastated. But they reacted with dignity 7 Leadership Lessons From The Coach Of One Of The Most Dominant Teams In History, Steve Hansen 5 After the game Hansen and the whole All Blacks team, players, other coaches and managment, joined England in their dressing room to congratulate them and wish them luck in the final. ‘It was always important to me how we reacted in the biggest moments of disappointment. It’s easy to win because you get all the accolades and the pats on the back because you have achieved what you want to achieve. But when you don’t achieve what you need to achieve, and you still exhibit the right behaviour that the game demands of us and we demand of ourselves and you can do that . . . you send a tremendous amount of messages to old people and younger people for that matter about how you conduct to yourselves when life is not giving you what you want. Those were big highlights – not the losing, but being able to still live the right values after the biggest disappointment.’ Question For You: Think about a negative experience or negative emotion you know you will experience. An argument with your partner Someone cutting you off in traffic Your father in law taking a dig at your job When this happens, how do you want to react? 4. Preparation Is Everything: Bone Deep Preparation Hansen often said: “You have got to build day by day, and the business part and fun part of the week is Saturday” It’s how well you prepare during the week that gives you the best chance of playing well. And so, Hansen put huge focus on how the All Blacks prepared: 7 Leadership Lessons From The Coach Of One Of The Most Dominant Teams In History, Steve Hansen 6 “He saw the high-performance world as being that simple, a quest for athletes to forever challenge themselves by examining in microscopic detail their physical, mental, technical and tactical preparation for every game. He coined the phrase ‘bone deep’ early in his reign to capture just how thorough he expected his players to be.” - Steve Hansen: The Legacy by Gregor Paul “He wanted for them to know how much sleep they would need, what to eat and when, who to talk to and not talk to. He expected them to tick off every box they needed to, be it their conditioning, analysis or mental application. He demanded that once they were on the field, they knew in intimate detail precisely what was expected of them in their specific role. Preparation was everything and no one in Hansen’s All Blacks was ever able to forget that, because if they got it right and played at or close to their potential, they were likely to win. It wasn’t arrogance that led Hansen to believe that. He saw it as the reality of having so much talent at his disposal.” - Steve Hansen: The Legacy by Gregor Paul Question For You: What habits do you need to have in place to perform at your best? Here is a short video of Steve using questions to let the All Blacks know they need to prepare well 5. Why Worry Is A Waste Of Emotion 7 Leadership Lessons From The Coach Of One Of The Most Dominant Teams In History, Steve Hansen 7 People asked Hansen over and over if he was worried about a game. He always said the same thing: ‘Worry is a wasted emotion because if the thing you are worrying about happens, you need to fix it. So there is no point in worrying about it. And if it has hasn’t happened, you plan so you don’t have to worry about it.’ 6. Don’t Ignore Inconvenient Facts One of the pillars of Hansen’s coaching was don’t avoid inconvenient facts. Inconvenient facts are facts you don’t want to look at or admit because it’s embarasing or uncomfterable. Inconvenient facts allow people to shift the blame or hide the responsibility An inconvenient fact might be: Glossing over the mistakes in a game just because you won Refusing to admit you’re getting over confident about a presentation and so you don’t prepare as well as you need to. Not addressing conflict because you want to avoid confrontation "When you get over-confident you think you're doing things right but you're not. When you look at it with honest eyes there are a few inconvenient facts that you're missing. It's those inconvenient facts you've got to find - and you've got to look for them. For example: One player was celebrating a successful move over an opponent. Steve challenged this and said it was only because the opponent lacked the skill. Direct? yes. Steve wanted to keep the player grounded and give him motivation to improve Two Questions For You: 1. What are the inconvenient facts that are stopping you from getting better? 7 Leadership Lessons From The Coach Of One Of The Most Dominant Teams In History, Steve Hansen 8 2. If you were talking to a more direct and completly honest version of yourself what feedback would they give you on your preparation? 7. Dad’s Advice Des, Hansen’s Dad, was one of Steve’s best friends. A great coach in his own right, Hansen would often ask Des for advice Unfortunately he passed when Steve was the All Blacks coach. But Steve would still go to his Dad for advice “He was in my life and I missed that. The rugby side was a bonus. That was something that we shared, but I would often sit down [after he died] if I was a little bit lost about where to go to find the answer and I would say, “Okay what would he say?” And I would find the answer. It wasn’t the fact he wasn’t there to give me the answer, he’d already given me the answers, I just needed to go back in time to find them.” Question For You: When you need advice, from a loved one, someone whose passed or a mentor you’ve never met. Imagine having a conversation with them, what would they say? 7 Leadership Lessons From The Coach Of One Of The Most Dominant Teams In History, Steve Hansen 9