Coaching Culture with Ben Herring
Coaching Culture with Ben Herring
Podcast Description
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.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast focuses on cultural innovation, leadership, empathy, communication, motivation, and stress management within coaching environments. Episodes include discussions on building team unity through personal stories, balancing professionalism while coaching friends or family, and navigating the challenges of cultural dynamics in different countries, like Kieran Crowley’s insights on coaching across borders.
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.
The best coaching stories aren’t about the whiteboard, they’re about what happens years later when an old player stops traffic just to give you a hug. That’s where this conversation with John Plumtree goes fast: past trophies and into the parts of rugby coaching and leadership that actually last. Plum has coached at the highest levels with the Sharks, the Hurricanes, Ireland, and the All Blacks, and he brings a grounded view of culture that cuts through the usual slogans.
We talk about the hidden cost of high performance sport, especially the way coaching can swallow your time and identity if you let it. Plum shares how he thinks about being the best version of himself for his wife, his kids, and his team, plus what changes when you start stepping back from full-time head coaching. From there we get into the real mechanics of pressure: aligning with owners, boards, and stakeholders, and why head coaches are constantly managing three very different relationship groups at once.
Then we go deep on building a winning team culture. Plum’s definition is refreshingly direct: culture is the quality of the people in the building. We unpack what that means for hiring, coaching staff cohesion, and the “triangle” between CEO, head coach, and high performance leadership. He also reflects on international coaching, where selection can matter as much as training, and he shares a rare hindsight lesson from his time with the All Blacks that every ambitious coach will recognize.
If you care about rugby leadership, coaching culture, and building teams that stay connected under stress, you’ll get plenty from this one. Subscribe, share it with a coach who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.
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