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PODCAST

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring is your weekly deep-dive into the often-overlooked “softer skills” of coaching—cultural innovation, communication, empathy, leadership, dealing with stress, and motivation. Each episode features candid conversations with the world’s top international rugby coaches, who share the personal stories and intangible insights behind their winning cultures, and too their biggest failures and learnings from them. This is where X’s and O’s meet heart and soul, empowering

sports rugby

All Episodes

18:22

Why Treating Parenting Like Coaching Creates Stronger...

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/11/05

What if the best parenting lessons come from the locker room—and the sharpest coaching insights come from home? I share how a sudden end to a playing career and the birth of my first child collided, starting a sixteen-year stretch where coaching and parenting ran in parallel and taught me the same truths about growth, standards, and care. We unpack tough love the right way: not harshness, but honest care with clear expectations. I explain how to deliver hard feedback without breeding resentm...

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73:09

Building Team Culture Through People, Not Facilities....

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/11/02

What if the best culture you ever built came after a 90-point loss? That’s not a stunt—it’s the backbone of our Sunwolves story, where people, not facilities, carried an underdog through brutal travel, language barriers, and constant roster churn. We dig into a season that forced clarity. With 13 cultural backgrounds and minimal prep, we taught through images and objects, opened meetings with music, and played noughts-and-crosses to train communication and poise. We asked players to share th...

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14:30

Define Culture Or Drift: Why Writing It Down Raises...

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/10/29

Ever wonder why some teams lift their standards from the inside while others grind for results that never stick? We dig into a simple chain that explains it: vision shapes leadership, leadership shapes culture, culture shapes performance, and performance shapes legacy. The magic happens in the middle. Culture isn’t a side project or a mood; it’s the daily environment that leaders design on purpose. We start by contrasting two visions—a high-performance push to top the table versus a communit...

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78:18

You cant outcoach the numbers. Heres the data to...

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/10/26

Ever notice how the “genius coach” story never mentions the stacked deck? We dig into the Monopoly Effect—a coin-flip advantage that people later mistake for skill—and use it to decode why some teams look unstoppable while others keep rebuilding without getting better. With Ben Darwin of Gain Line Analytics, we map the hidden architecture of performance: feeder systems that quietly lower error rates, stable combinations that turn instincts into shared reflex, and board decisions that either p...

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11:00

How to reduce the anxiety your players feel

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/10/22

The fastest way to unlock performance isn’t a new drill or a sharper playbook—it’s lowering the mental noise your athletes carry in with them. We share a simple story from a doctor’s office that proves how precise care changes state without changing a single variable on the whiteboard. That shift in state turns scattered attention into readiness, and readiness into better outcomes. We walk through why care is not a soft extra but a performance lever. When players feel seen beyond the jersey,...

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53:06

Talent doesn't always win: Building culture in the...

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/10/19

Glenn Jackson's remarkable rugby journey defies conventional paths. After an impressive playing career with Bay of Plenty, the Chiefs, and Saracens (where he earned Premiership Players Player of the Year), he pivoted to become a professional referee, officiating 32 Test matches before transitioning to coaching. Now head coach of the Fijian Drua, Jackson occupies a rare position of having played, refereed, and coached at elite levels. What makes Jackson's perspective so valuable is his deep u...

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58:28

The World Is Your Classroom: How Rugby Tours Build...

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/10/15

What happens when young athletes step outside their comfort zones and experience the world through the lens of rugby? Ken Grover, the 79-year-old founder of Gulliver's Travel, has been answering this question for over four decades through more than 4,000 tours worldwide. From his early days touring with Norths Rugby Club in 1973 to organizing massive contingents for Rugby World Cups, Ken has witnessed firsthand how travel transforms young people. "The epitome of culture is going to Japan," h...

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61:39

Eddie Jones on culture, risk, and advice to all coaches.

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/10/12

Want a culture that actually lives on the field? We sat down with Eddie Jones to unpack the coaching choices that create real belonging, sharper decision-making, and braver rugby. From leaving a safe career to grinding through 100‑player university squads in Japan, Eddie shows how risk, clarity, and context build both teams and coaches who last. We dive into designing culture through the game itself—why a clear playing model unites diverse squads better than slogans, and how fundamentals mus...

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12:54

How to Grow Leadership in Players who Don't Talk

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/10/08

Send us a text Support the show

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65:03

What the Best Do Differently. Insights from Rugby’s...

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/10/05

526 professional games ! How do elite rugby teams cultivate environments where players willingly run through brick walls for their coaches? Jimmy Gopperth, with an unprecedented 526 professional games across 23 years at the highest levels, provides rare insights into what truly builds championship team cultures. Drawing from experiences at powerhouse clubs like the Hurricanes, Leinster, Wasps, and Leicester, Gopperth reveals that authentic team culture can't be manufactured or forced. The mo...

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21:01

Five Ways Great Coaches Anchor Teams in Tough Times

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/10/01

The hardest weeks test more than your game model—they test your culture. When results wobble and the temptation is to drown the room in clips, we take a different route: start with why, connect the people, and then coach the work. Drawing on stories from pro rugby and lessons from coaches who’ve been in the fire for decades, we map out five anchors that keep a team steady when the scoreboard isn’t your friend. We begin by reshaping the meeting everyone dreads. Instead of leading with 34 erro...

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47:46

Alando Soakai: Know your product, 'The game will take...

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/09/28

What transforms a drinking club with a rugby problem into championship winners? According to Alando Soakai, it begins with crystal-clear values that everyone truly lives by. In this captivating conversation, Alando takes us through his remarkable coaching journey from player-coach to his current roles with Moana Pacific and the Tonga national team. His perspective on culture development comes alive through concrete examples rather than coaching platitudes – from filming players embodying tea...

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13:09

The Gold You Didn’t Know You Were Mining

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/09/24

Have you ever had a moment when someone's casual comment completely transformed your thinking? In this deeply personal reflection, I share three unexpected insights from players that revolutionized my coaching philosophy over decades in professional rugby. The first revelation came in Japan, where after stubbornly trying to implement systems that worked at Leicester Tigers, a captain gently explained, "Just because it works there doesn't mean it works here." That simple observation fundament...

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54:16

Dan McKellar on Discipline, Culture & The Dressing Shed

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/09/21

Have you ever wondered what truly makes a championship team culture? Dan McKellar, current Waratahs head coach with a coaching resume spanning the Brumbies, Wallabies, and Leicester Tigers, cuts through the noise with refreshing honesty and clarity. "Culture is just the actions of the people in the building," McKellar explains, offering a deceptively simple yet profound definition that frames his entire leadership approach. "When the last person at night shuts the door and turns the lights o...

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27:16

Culture outlives coaches when you get these four...

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/09/17

Send us a text Buy Ben a coffee & Support the show Support the show

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60:15

Pat Lam on Culture: Why Love Defines High-Performing...

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/09/14

What if the secret to building championship teams isn't found in tactics or talent, but in a single, powerful word? Pat Lam, architect of the Bristol Bears' transformation from strugglers to European powerhouse, offers a refreshing perspective on leadership that challenges conventional wisdom. At the heart of his philosophy lies an unexpected foundation for team culture: love, defined as "sacrificing oneself for the benefit of others." This conversation reveals how Lam has masterfully...

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74:48

Jim McKay: From Grassroots to International Glory

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/09/10

What truly defines a coach's legacy? For Jim Mackay, it's not the championship trophies or international honors – it's the journey of becoming and the meaningful experiences along the way. In this enlightening conversation, Jim shares his remarkable path from coaching amateur clubs in England to leading the Queensland Reds to Super Rugby glory and eventually becoming Australia's attack coach. His story is a masterclass in resilience, culture-building, and authentic leadership. Jim reveals h...

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53:34

Ryan Schultz: The Path From Digging Holes to Elite...

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/09/07

Ever wonder how a guy who started his working life digging holes transformed into a rising star in rugby coaching? Ryan Schultz's journey from manual laborer to head coach at Canberra Vikings reveals the gritty reality behind professional coaching success. In this illuminating conversation with host Ben Herring, Ryan peels back the curtain on his coaching philosophy built around three core pillars: connection, development, and performance. He candidly shares how his early experiences – from ...

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21:42

REFLECTIONS: Off field equals on field

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/09/03

What makes championship teams truly exceptional? The answer might surprise you. It's not extraordinary talent, cutting-edge tactics, or even flawless execution during competition—it's what happens when nobody's keeping score. Drawing from Sam Vestey's remarkable success with Northampton Saints, this episode reveals how elite teams deliberately build three critical foundations off the field: communication, organization, and connection. These aren't soft skills or nice-to-haves—they're the bed...

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51:52

Greg Peters: The Shift Every Coach and Leader Must Make

Coaching Culture with Ben Herring ·

2025/08/31

What does it truly mean to build an authentic culture in high-performance sports? Greg Peters, whose remarkable 25-year career spans leadership roles at Bay of Plenty Rugby, New Zealand Rugby Union, the Hurricanes, Argentina Rugby, SANZAR, and now as CEO of New Zealand Rugby League, reveals the profound insights he's gathered from both sides of the rugby divide. Peters challenges conventional wisdom about leadership, arguing that culture isn't about "words on a wall" but something tangible y...

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83 results

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