Coaching Culture with Ben Herring

A dusty bookshelf turned into a wake-up call. While sorting old favorites, we found a box of Tuesdays with Morrie—and that rediscovery became a fresh look at how culture, love, and emotion shape the way we coach and lead. What starts as a short memoir about weekly visits to a dying professor unfolds into a clear-eyed syllabus for living with purpose when the world keeps pushing speed, status, and more.We walk through the story’s simple structure—Tuesdays as classes—and pull out the lessons that stick. First, the culture you inherit is not the culture you must accept. When status and achievement drown out meaning, leaders have the right and responsibility to choose a different path. Then we get to the heart of it: love is the point. Not soft or vague, but the kind of connection that builds trust, fuels standards, and makes hard feedback land without breaking people. Love shows up in how a team trains, how a staff supports each other, and how we stay human on tough days.We close with the most uncomfortable and useful skill: feeling emotion fully and moving through it. Maurie refuses to harden, and that choice becomes a model for performance under pressure. Emotional honesty creates stronger rooms, better decisions, and real resilience. As the book’s final pages remind us, high standards and deep care can live together, and leadership is not only what you demand; it’s what you give. If you’ve ever questioned what you’re chasing—or how to build a culture that actually helps people thrive—this conversation will meet you right where you are.If this resonated, follow the show, share it with someone who needs a reset, and leave a quick review to help others find it. Then grab Tuesdays with Morrie and tell us the quote that moved you most.Send us a textIf you can SUBSCRIBE, RATE, and SHARE the show and series, you would be doing your bit to grow this show. Very appreciated. BenTo subscribe to the newsletter or to get a copy of the book, jump onto:www.coachingculture.com.au Support the showShare this show with your mates, rugby, coaches, leaders! Dont be shy.

What if the toughest conversations are actually acts of care? We sit down with Andrew Hore—veteran leader across the Crusaders, Ospreys, New Zealand Rugby, and the Blues—to unpack how culture really works when the stakes are high and the calendars are relentless. Andrew doesn’t sell slogans; he shares systems. From the iceberg of unwritten behaviors to the moments a leader must step back and let the team “color in” the framework, he shows why ownership beats oversight and why challenge, delivered well, strengthens trust.We trace turning points across teams and regions: the Crusaders’ academy foundations, Ospreys stabilizing finances while protecting identity, and the Blues aligning a multicultural city with the “many waka, one direction” idea. Andrew explains why building from the bottom up—competition structures, facilities, coaching development—creates sustainable high performance, and why over-centralizing at the top can hollow out the game beneath it. He’s blunt about tradeoffs: you can’t fund everything at once, so pick clear pillars, invest deeply, and accept that some will disagree.If you hire leaders, you’ll love his take: forget the “culture coach.” Look for character, a real technical specialty that earns credibility, and a context fit for the politics and pressures of your environment. Then support that head coach with a GM who shields, staffs, and thinks in horizons. Along the way, Andrew shares practical habits: set entry and exit rituals so work doesn’t invade home, build rooms where honest debate is safe, and start negotiations on the same side of the table by mapping shared problems first. Care is not softness—it’s precise feedback, consistent standards, and visible follow-through.Subscribe for more candid, practical conversations on culture, leadership, and performance. If this resonated, share it with a colleague and leave a review to help others find the show.Send us a textIf you can SUBSCRIBE, RATE, and SHARE the show and series, you would be doing your bit to grow this show. Very appreciated. BenTo subscribe to the newsletter or to get a copy of the book, jump onto:www.coachingculture.com.au Support the showShare this show with your mates, rugby, coaches, leaders! Dont be shy.

A year can teach more than a stack of textbooks when you commit to showing up every week. We look back on a season built on a simple promise: open a door to world-class coaching minds so any coach, in any town, can learn directly from people who are in the arena. Along the way, we learned new crafts—audio, video, messy garage setups, timezone chaos—and hit 100,000 downloads, a milestone that matters only because it means ideas landed when people needed them.Two conversations shaped our thinking the most. From Tony Brown came a line that won’t leave us: be a rugby person first, a coach second. That idea reframed how we run sessions and lead teams. People follow the person before they follow the plan, so character—listening, honesty, calm, presence—comes first. Once trust and connection exist, detail finally carries weight, and the tactics stick. We unpack how that looks on the grass: greet early, notice energy, invite ownership, then layer in drills, prompts, and reviews that fit the group in front of you.From Ben Darwin and Gain Line Analytics, we dig into the Monopoly Effect: how hidden advantages shape results while winners often misattribute success to pure skill. We explore structural edges like budget, legacy systems, cohesion, and travel that can tilt outcomes long before kickoff. The lesson is humility when advantaged and resilience when constrained. See your context clearly, avoid arrogance or bitterness, and optimize the hand you hold—measure cohesion, build availability, and prioritize repeatable standards over noise.We also share what’s next: sharper systems, higher production quality, broader reach, and a commitment to stay educational rather than entertainment. The goal is the same as day one—turn conversations with elite practitioners into practical tools for coaches, leaders, and teams. If this resonated, subscribe, share with a coach who’d benefit, and leave a review with one insight you’re taking into the new year. Your feedback shapes what we build next.Send us a textIf you can SUBSCRIBE, RATE, and SHARE the show and series, you would be doing your bit to grow this show. Very appreciated. BenTo subscribe to the newsletter or to get a copy of the book, jump onto:www.coachingculture.com.au Support the showShare this show with your mates, rugby, coaches, leaders! Dont be shy.

Pressure doesn’t invent behavior; it reveals it. That’s the heartbeat of our conversation with behavioral strategist Warren Kenor, who brings three decades of coaching across elite rugby, cricket, golf, and Olympic equestrian. We dig into why “snaps” are almost never sudden and how the minutes leading up to a mistake hold the clues coaches overlook. Warren shows how to decode patterns with robust profiling, translate data into action, and make leadership choices that are calm, strategic, and effective.We confront the emotional rollercoaster head-on. Cheering and yelling aren’t sins; they’re tools—if they’re used to create a specific effect. When emotion becomes personal relief, teams pay the price. Warren explains why leaders’ highs and lows are a character weakness when unrestrained, and how to plan for both scoring and conceding so your sideline isn’t surprised by either. That mindset shift unlocks better halftime talks, smarter substitutions, and steadier decision-making in the final twenty minutes.Culture and fit get real. We unpack the clash between a highly affiliative coach and an introverted captain, why recruitment too often relies on hope, and how transparency about your philosophy saves months of friction. Then we address a hard truth: everyone deserves respect, but not everyone is equally important to results. High-performance teams tilt the system to give their best players more meaningful touches. We share practical ways to identify your critical few, map their rewards and derailers, and keep them in the zone. You’ll hear a simple, brilliant intervention—“get bored, pass close”—that turned a serial late-game implosion into consistent performance.If you lead under pressure, this conversation is a field guide: diagnose patterns, align values, use emotion with intent, and make small, targeted changes that move the scoreboard. Subscribe for more grounded, high-performance insights, share this episode with a coach who rides the rollercoaster, and leave a review with the one rule you’ll test this week.Send us a textIf you can SUBSCRIBE, RATE, and SHARE the show and series, you would be doing your bit to grow this show. Very appreciated. BenTo subscribe to the newsletter or to get a copy of the book, jump onto:www.coachingculture.com.au Support the showShare this show with your mates, rugby, coaches, leaders! Dont be shy.

Want a team that shows up, leans in, and stays connected when it matters most? Start with one small tradition. Ben shares a simple holiday story—a family beep test before Christmas lunch—and turns it into a clear playbook for leaders who want stronger culture and steadier performance. From youth to grandparents, everyone takes a role, and that shared ritual becomes a model for belonging, clarity, and care that any sports team or workplace can borrow.We unpack why traditions work so well: they make people feel like they truly belong, they turn big words like work ethic and cohesion into tangible actions, and they lift engagement so effort becomes consistent rather than streaky. You’ll hear easy, repeatable ideas to try this week: short weekly shout-outs that reward effort and attitude, tight meeting openers that focus attention, and monthly rituals that celebrate values lived over time. We dig into how to adapt rituals to your group’s identity, how to rotate ownership so leadership grows across the team, and how to measure whether a tradition still serves its purpose.If you’re inheriting a team with strong rituals, you’ll learn how to maintain what works and retire what doesn’t. If you’re starting fresh, you’ll get two or three low-friction ways to build buy-in without heavy speeches or gimmicks. Along the way, Ben shares what’s next for Coaching Culture: new guests, live shows, fresh writing, and deeper work with teams ready to level up their culture. Subscribe, share this with a coach or manager who needs simple tools that actually stick, and tell us: what tradition will you start this week?Send us a textIf you can SUBSCRIBE, RATE, and SHARE the show and series, you would be doing your bit to grow this show. Very appreciated. BenTo subscribe to the newsletter or to get a copy of the book, jump onto:www.coachingculture.com.au Support the showShare this show with your mates, rugby, coaches, leaders! Dont be shy.