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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 coaches at every level to foster authentic connections, inspire their teams, and elevate their own coaching craft. If you believe that the real gold in rugby lies beyond the scoreboard, Coaching Culture is the podcast for you.
Coaching Culture with Ben Herring
REFLECTIONS: Why words matter!
Ever wondered why certain coaches' words stick with you for decades? That's not coincidence – it's the powerful alchemy of language and leadership.
Words shape our reality as coaches and leaders. When we speak, we're not merely giving instructions or feedback – we're literally creating the internal dialogue that plays in our athletes' minds long after practice ends. This episode explores the profound neurochemical impact of coaching language: positive reinforcement triggers dopamine, enhancing motivation and learning, while negative criticism spikes cortisol, shutting down the very cognitive functions athletes need most.
Through personal stories from my rugby career and coaching journey, I unpack why technical expertise sometimes matters less than emotional intelligence in coaching relationships. Remember those C-team teachers who coached because they had to? Their encouraging words created safety and confidence that technical coaches often miss. I contrast this with the traditional pre-game hatred-fueled diatribes that leave many players disengaged, sharing instead how All Blacks legend Jerry Collins approached rivalry through love of competition rather than animosity.
As leaders, we're the headwaters from which team culture flows. One precisely delivered phrase can shape a player's entire career trajectory. The question isn't whether your words matter – it's how intentionally you're wielding their power. Are you creating dopamine or cortisol in your players? Building resilience or reinforcing doubt? Ready to transform your coaching impact through the language of leadership? Listen now, then watch how your words reshape your team's reality.
What coaching phrase has stuck with you longest, either lifting you up or holding you back? Share your story and let's explore the lasting impact of words in leadership.
Welcome to Coaching Culture Reflections, the midweek spark for anyone who loves leading teams and growing through that journey. I'm Ben Herring and I've been loving this side of the game for bloody ages. Each week I'll break down key components of leadership, from culture building to communication, from mindset to motivation, all to help you lead with more impact, heart and clarity and level up. Let's get into it why words matter. Today, friends, we're going to talk about this concept in coaching, which is a massive one, is about why your words matter Really important because, as Kipling said, words are the most powerful drug in humanity. Isn't that a fantastic phrase.
Speaker 1:When I think back to my growth as a professional rugby player, I find it incredible the influence words had from my coaches. I go right back to my schooling days, where I was never actually selected for any age group teams in my school in terms of I always played the B's or C level normally the C level, big traditional rugby school and in those schools the teachers who teach the C grade team have to do it compulsory. You have to take a sport. So what you're getting when you're getting that level of coach is you're getting the ones that don't really want to be there. They're just doing it to fill their co-curricular requirements. But here's the thing I love the most when I look back and I think back to those times with those coaches, they were such great coaches in that, whilst they didn't know the technical and tactical things about rugby, they knew people. They knew how to talk to people and they talked and delivered their words so well. I look back and remember they never said one thing that disencouraged me to play the sport. Everything they said was uplifting. They could have quite easily thrown in the towel, but they didn't. They didn't need to say the technical stuff, they just chipped away at reaffirming the good, the positive. Their tone was always let's go. Well done, bravo, keep it up. Love your work. That's better. Keep going that type of thing.
Speaker 1:As a coach, your language becomes the internal dialogue for your players. That's what's going through their head over and over again. Have a think about that. Have a think about how that lands on a player. Phrase that is specific and effort-based bumps up a player's confidence. It bumps up self-esteem. It keeps them going. You don't have to always be super nicely, nicely, but when effort's done well and you say it, you just acknowledge an effort that was done well. You're creating this real aura about you as a coach and the motivation that creates in a player to try harder and go better is absolutely magnified. I'll put this really simply in a sort of bush man's terminology but when you have positive reinforcement, when you praise effort and things like that, you're getting a dopamine response from a player. That's an uplifting feeling. That release of dopamine it's wonderful. It actually then increases motivation.
Speaker 1:On the other, negative or vague criticism increases cortisol, which is the flight-to-flight response, and shuts down your ability to think, be flexible and problem-solve in players. Massive difference between those two things and all it comes back to is the way you speak, the way you word different things Likewise. So it is, too. With words that's clear, calm and constructive really helps improve players. Feedbacks that is clear, calm and constructive actually helps players retain information, helps them learn better. If yours is frantic, hot-headed, red-blooded all the time and with a negative base, that's promoting everything that helps shut down an athlete's ability to take in the information, to learn and grow better. So have a real think about how you're interacting with your words.
Speaker 1:One of the most amazing stories I think I heard was a good while ago. I went into a first 15 school. I was mentoring a coach there and the language that was used inside that team huddle for a big traditional game was full of expletives, full of real negative connotations, things like let's go and kill these guys, let's go pummel these guys to the ground, and that sort of language is common throughout, throughout rugby it's. It's kind of the battle, the war zone, that aggression, and there's a time, an absolute place for that. That's part of the sport, that's part of the intensity of this thing.
Speaker 1:However, what I saw that day was a good number of these players actually head down not enjoying where this was going, this tone of like real hatred, like real venom in this language. This vernacular was just laced with this poison, and I thought about it afterwards. I thought about where does that go in? A player that doesn't enjoy that space, which is a good chunk of people, don't enjoy something so poisonous and horrible, full of hate. And I remember thinking about I was privileged enough to sit next to for four years the late great Jerry Collins, and about the way he approached big traditional games. This was at the Hurricanes and we were playing the Crusaders, and I remember when I asked him are you looking forward to the game today and he turned to me and goes I love playing these guys, absolutely love playing these guys. And I thought that was an amazing twist. Rather than go down the hatred side about how much I hate these guys, he actually said how much he loved playing these guys, getting to test himself, getting to enjoy playing this hard game against traditional rivals.
Speaker 1:And when I was trying to break down this language, I thought about this how much more do you enjoy doing things than doing things because you hate doing them? So, for example, people do their taxes because they have to. They hate it. They say I hate doing my taxes, but they have to, they hate it. They say I hate doing my taxes, but they have to do it, whereas when it comes to ice cream, you love eating ice cream. It's so much easier to do the things you love.
Speaker 1:So why not frame everything as a coach towards the positive, geared towards making things exciting, and that you love it? You've been traditional rivals at school, at club, at professional level. We love it. We're going to get better, we're going to grow, we're going to absolutely get out there and show them what we've got. When you're talking with a real venom and real fizz.
Speaker 1:The other aspect you want is to never waste your bullets just doing it all the time, because there's a time and a place, particularly in this sport, where you have to say do this, we need you to do this now. It's a battleground, sport is rugby, and sometimes, when there's a directive, sometimes you just got to do it, you got to go. But if you're always saying it as a coach, it becomes like white noise. It's like a parent. If you're a parent, you know that if you're constantly yelling at your kids when it's really important, they're not going to take it in as much. The times when you want your little toddler to stop and listen is when they're running towards a busy road and you want to say stop now and they actually listen and actually stop, because you don't put on that grumpy dad voice. Very often. If you do, if you're constantly speaking with aggression and venom, it loses its impact. It just becomes something that is like water off a duck's back white noise, a blur, and your athletes aren't taking them, just like that two-year-old child might not care that dad's yelling again, because he's always yelling and they keep running for that busy row.
Speaker 1:We want to make our words land every single time we say them. So we've got to judge our tone correctly and we've got to keep in a really good space. For the bulk of time, a single phrase, done right at the right time, can shape a player's career and it can shape it both ways, positively or negatively. So be really, really careful with your words, your tone, what you're saying and how you're saying it. If you use your words with precision, they unlock so much in players' belief, confidence, being able to be calm under pressure. I think it's absolutely massive that we value that side of things.
Speaker 1:You as the leader of your group, as the coach of your teams or your business groups, your tone of voice, not just what you say, is massively important. You are the top of the waterfall. The way you behave flows down as well. People catch it, catch your tone, catch your sentiment. I always remember a friend of mine who was my captain in one of my teams came running into a haro after he scored and he screamed don't effing panic. And I just remember chuckling at the time at the ironicness of that and how poorly it landed. So, too, with coaches. If we come in firing shots, firing bullets everywhere we go, the impact's lost, the players are lost and the change room's lost. The players are lost and the change room's lost as well. Your words matter.