Legacy

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I – Character

Sweep the sheds – The All Blacks select on character over talent. The players are taught never to be too big to do the small things that need to be done. 

After a significant victory (42-7), the All Black’s team conducts a debrief after the media frenzy is over. Everyone is given an opportunity to speak to tell their story. The assistant coach’s assessment was direct and unsparing. It was good but not good enough. Plenty of work to do in the lineout. Other teams won’t go so easy on us. Let’s not get carried away. Graham Henry, the head coach, emphasized the importance of continuous improvement. “The challenge is always to improve, to always get better, even when you are the best. Especially when you are the best.” Muliana reminds the players to remember the sacrifices they have made to be in the room. After the debrief, even as fans celebrate, the country is rewatching replays, senior players pick a long-handled broom and take it upon themselves to clean up the sheds. 

This act symbolizes their commitment to self-reliance and personal discipline. It reinforces the idea that you shouldn’t expect others to do your job for you, and this discipline off the field translates to better teamwork and performance on the field. While it doesn’t guarantee victory every time, it contributes to building a stronger, more cohesive team. A collection of talented individuals without personal discipline will ultimately and inevitably fail. 

Character trumps over talent. 

Vince Lombardi – the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers, said, “Only by knowing yourself can you become an effective leader.” It all begins with the self-knowledge. From self-knowledge, we develop character and integrity. And from character and integrity comes leadership. The question that inspired Lombardi was, What is my job on the planet? What is it that needs doing that I know something about that won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it? This might mean taking responsibility for your team, a company, or the lives of thousands, or something as simple as sweeping the sheds. Either way, it begins with character. 

Winning takes talent. To repeat, it takes character. John Wooden.

Character – is essential to an individual. The cumulative character of the team is the backbone of the winning team. Create the highest possible operating standards, develop the character of your players, develop the culture of your team and the score takes care of itself. The challenge for any team is to foster a sense of unity and interdependence among its members. The key to success is not solely individual performance but how well team members work together. When the team culture is right, positive results will naturally follow.

Performance = Capability + Behaviour

Leaders play a crucial role in creating the right environment that promotes the high-performance behaviours required for success. Your business will grow when you invest time in developing people.

Behaviour exists in two domains.

1. Public Domain – It means the areas of a player’s life when he is under team protocol (training, during a game, travelling.). Professionalism, physical application and proficiency are demanded here. 

2. Private Domain – The one in which the player spends time with oneself and where mind game plays out. This is where we confront our habits, limitations, temptations and fears. 

Ethos is the Greek word for character. Ethos encompasses the beliefs, principles, values, codes, and culture of an organization, defining “the way we do things around here.” Our values decide our character, and our character in turn determines our value. 

A value-based, purpose-driven culture is a foundation for sustained success. Value-words like integrity, sacrifice, determination, imagination, innovation. collaboration, persistence, responsibility, and so on seem powerful in the abstract but can be flat and generic on the page. The challenge is to translate these powerful values into practical actions in the lives of the people we lead. Turning vision into simple everyday action, purpose into practice. Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is a nightmare.   

To become an All Black means becoming a steward of a cultural legacy. Your role is to leave the jersey in a better place. The humility, expectation and responsibility that this brings lifts their game. It makes them the best in the world. What this means for leaders in other fields is the story of this book.

Ask Questions – To seek improvement. 

How can we do this better? Ask your team – What do you think? ‘What might happen if…?’ or ‘In this situation what would you do…?’ No one person has all the answers, but asking questions challenges the status quo, helps connect with core values and beliefs, and is a catalyst for individual improvement. After all, the better the questions we ask, the better the answers we get.

II – Adapt

Go for the GAP. When you’re on top of your game, change your game.

After a significant loss to South Africa by a score of 40-26, Wayne Smith expressed deep concern to the team manager, stating that the team was dysfunctional and he wouldn’t return unless it was fixed. That night, some players drank excessively to the point where they feared for their safety. This incident prompted a realization that change was imperative. Gilbert Enoka, the Mental Skills Coach, emphasized that the team couldn’t continue working all week and then indulge in excessive drinking from Saturday night through to Monday. Consequently, the coaching team, consisting of Henry (head coach), Smith (assistant coach), Hansen, and Enoka, embarked on a challenging and painful journey of transforming the team’s culture. This transformation ultimately led to success in the Rugby World Cup. These valuable lessons extend well beyond the rugby field.

Four Stages for Organizational Change

  1. Case for change – The All Backs performance was sub-par both on and off the field. They lost the appetite to play. 
  2. A compelling picture of the future – You need a clear strategy for change. Create an environment that would stimulate the players and make them want to take part in it. An active focus on personal development and leadership would create capacity, capability and loyalty. 
  3. Sustained capability to change – Eliminate players who were hindering the chance for change. Build the capability of those who remained. Responsibility was handed over to the players so that they had more skin in the game. A winning organization is an environment of personal and professional development where individuals take responsibility and share ownership.
  4. Credible plan to execute – All organizational cultures rot from the inside. Though it is tempting to see life, business, society, and success as part of a linear progression of constant and never-ending refinement and growth, the opposite is true. Like most things in nature, cultures are subject to a more cyclical process of ebb and flow, growth and decline. 

This cycle has three distinct phases

1. Learning Phase – We often experience dips in performance as we feel our way through the unfamiliar. Once the learning is embedded and momentum builds, growth accelerates.

2. Growth Phase. Rewards follow. Praise and blandishments too. Soon, we’re on top of the game and on top of the world. We’re invincible, our success assured. And so, begins the Fall.

3. Decline Phase – It starts as an anomaly and becomes the painful norm.

The key to sustaining success is recognizing that, when we’re at the pinnacle of our performance, we should be ready to adapt. This involves adjusting our strategies, exploring new relationships, recruiting fresh talent, and reevaluating our overall approach. These adaptations result in what we call ‘Sigmoid leaps’—a series of scalloped jumps along the sigmoid curve, effectively outsmarting the limitations of predictability.

So, the question is: What steps should you consider taking to prepare for the transition to the second curve without prematurely abandoning your current success on the first curve? This embodies the essence of ‘kaizen,’ the Japanese concept of continuous improvement. It’s worth noting that kaizen was originally meant to foster a culture of improvement, not just to enhance productivity. The idea is to stimulate the team/players and make them enthusiastic about being part of this journey.”

Organizational decline is inevitable unless leaders prepare for change – even when standing at the pinnacle of success.

How do we create the mental concepts to support decision-making activity?’

Decision cycle or OODA Loop is the answer. This is useful for everyday decision-making.

  • Observe – Collect data through senses, visual, auditory, tactile, taste…
  • Orient – Synthesize all available data into a single, coherent map of the territory.
  • Decide – Take the best course of action.
  • Act – Execute. Acting swiftly and decisively to take advantage of the moment. 

Assess your unfolding options quickly and clearly, attack with absolute and ruthless commitment – assess, adjust and repeat. The pilots who got inside the OODA loop first were those who survived. 

‘It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.’ Charles Darwin

Momentum swings faster than we think. One moment we’re on top of the world; the next, we’re falling off the other side. A leader must recognize when reinvention is necessary and how to execute it effectively. The concept of the Sigmoid Curve highlights that when we’re at the top of the game, it’s time to change our game. The key is not losing momentum. 

Leaders need to proactively deal with decisions that involve unpredictable changes, incomplete information, limited resources, and the complexities of human behavior. In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, the teams that thrive are those that swiftly and decisively seize and adapt to competitive advantages. This requires continuous adjustment and readjustment. 

Adapting isn’t merely a reaction; it’s an ongoing action. Sustainable competitive advantage is achieved by cultivating a culture of perpetual self-adjustment. 

III – Purpose

Play with Purpose – Ask ‘Why?’

The person with a narrow vision sees a narrow horizon; the person with a wide vision sees a wide horizon.

After the team’s humiliating loss to South Africa, eight men found a small meeting room and sat down to fix this thing.

Better People Make Better All Blacks – Improving individual players contributes to the overall success of the All Blacks. By developing the tools, skills, and character of players beyond the rugby field, they become more effective on it. The goal was to develop character, composure, people skills and leadership qualities both on and off the field.

How did they turn this vision into action? To achieve this vision, the All Blacks focused on creating their own culture through storytelling. They shared inspirational stories and involved the players in setting vision-driven and values-based goals. They drew inspiration from Shakespeare’s Henry V: ‘For he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.’ Leaders connect personal meaning to a higher purpose to create beliefs and sense of direction. They aligned the values and beliefs of individuals to that of the organization. This motivated the individuals (players) to work hard to create a sense of connection and collaboration. 

Purpose is described as a driving force, offering a reason to belong and make sacrifices. Human nature seeks purpose, often prioritizing it over material rewards, and purpose-driven motivation is becoming increasingly significant in various aspects of life and work. Abraham Maslow’s thought that, once basic needs (food, water, shelter, safety, warmth, comfort) are met, people seek belonging, self-esteem, and recognition, emphasizing the importance of intrinsic motivation and personal growth.

Progression of human needs and motivations. It starts with the importance of belonging and love, including relationships with a partner and family. As life advances, the focus shifts to self-esteem, encompassing self-respect, the respect of others, and recognition for one’s abilities and behaviors. What individuals truly need is not a life devoid of challenges but rather the pursuit of meaningful goals and freely chosen tasks.

Lasting success in business is often rooted in a higher purpose or mission, beyond monetary gain, and it’s about creating products or services that genuinely matter and contribute to the betterment of society. 

  • Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, inspired his team by emphasizing the profound impact their work could have on the world. He stressed that Apple’s primary goal wasn’t just to outdo the competition or make a lot of money, but to create something exceptional. For Jobs, it was about purpose, passion, and the products they crafted that made a real difference, with financial success naturally following. He discouraged the notion of starting a company solely for riches. Your goal should be making something you believe and building a lasting business.  
  • Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, established his company with the goal of providing standard health coverage for employees, showing that social responsibility can be a driving force in business.
  • Several other notable companies, like Saatchi & Saatchi (make the world a better place for everyone), Ford (democratize the automobile), Disney (bring smiles to the faces of children), Nike (empower the individual), P&G (relentless quest to be the best), and Toyota (there is always a better way), have defined their purpose beyond profit. 

If you want higher performance, begin with a higher purpose. Begin with asking, Why?

Why? The compelling force that motivates people to make sacrifices, pay premiums, or endure inconveniences. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the “why” behind people’s actions. The “why” is described as having a biological imperative, driving, and inspiring individuals. Inspired leaders and organizations, regardless of their size or industry, approach their work by focusing on inner values and beliefs. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech underlines the idea that when leaders hire individuals who share their beliefs, these individuals will wholeheartedly dedicate themselves to the cause. The key message is that the “why” and shared beliefs are powerful motivators and drivers of dedication and hard work.

As Nietzsche said: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’ It’s at the core of the vision and value-based mindset.

The All Blacks, consider their fundamental purpose to be a continuous legacy of excellence, motivating the current team to enhance the jersey and pass it on in better shape. 

Leaders who harness the power of purpose (drive from within) can galvanize a group. Leaders create a sense of inclusion, connectedness, and unity, using vivid storytelling techniques and bringing them to life with imagination and flair. Asking “Why” (Why are we doing this? Why am I sacrificing myself for this project) and defining a higher purpose can transform group dynamics, guide behaviours, and enhance personal connection.

IV – Responsibility

PASS THE BALL – Leaders create leaders. 

Be a leader, not a follower.

Teenage Kicks – A local resident in Hackney, London, faced problems with crime in his neighbourhood, specifically a gang that repeatedly broke into his car. The gang even used his car as a toilet. Frustrated by the lack of resources available to the local police to solve petty crime, he took matters into his own hands and created “Teenage Kicks.” This initiative aimed to transform gangs into teams by providing a sense of purpose, belonging, teamwork, and personal responsibility.

The approach used was termed ‘pass the ball,’ which involved entrusting individuals with responsibility for the team’s success. The initiative targeted existing gang members and those at risk of joining gangs, initially focusing on alpha males aged 19 to 25 who demonstrated leadership qualities, courage, respect, and the ability to motivate others. These natural leaders became managers and were responsible for selecting a team captain. The captain’s responsibility was to pick the team. The team’s primary responsibility was to arrive on time for every game, with disqualification as a consequence for tardiness. Surprisingly, 52 teams turned up promptly for the first night’s event, far surpassing the initial expectation of only a dozen teams.

Leaders create leaders by passing on responsibility, creating ownership, accountability and trust.

The leadership model employed under Henry’s command – This approach involves gradually shifting responsibility and decision-making from coaches to players over the course of the week, culminating in the players taking charge by the time of the match. Just before the match, the coaches don’t give a team talk. They let the time before the players run out on the field is their time. The culture transitioned from unilateral decision-making to dual management, with players actively involved in setting standards and behaviour that are acceptable.

In a business context, this model can be likened to a leader setting objectives and parameters, then empowering the team to handle implementation and details, essentially leading by cultivating other leaders. 

Mission Command Model – This framework provides a clearly defined goal, necessary resources, and a time frame, with the rest left to individual team members. This approach has proven to develop autonomous, critical thinkers, facilitate adaptability, build trust, clarify roles and responsibilities, and streamline decision-making.

Mission command has been proven to: 

  • Develop autonomous, critical thinkers able to Observe, Orient, Decide and Act, and adjust their actions on the run.
  • Facilitate an adaptive environment, enabling good decision-making under pressure. 
  • Create flexible leadership groups – developing individuals who can step in with clarity, certainty, and autonomy.
  • Create a sense of ‘ownership’ within the team, building trust and a common understanding. 
  • Create a decision framework, marking out roles, responsibilities and responses so decision-making is intuitive, instantaneous and delivers on intention.

This approach embodies the principles of Level 5 Leadership, characterized by personal humility and a focus on the greater organizational goal. Channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. 

V – Learn

CREATE A LEARNING ENVIRONMENT – Leaders are teachers.

Mastery is the subject of this chapter. The key questions are: 

  • How do leaders create an environment that delivers the opportunity for personal growth and professional development?
  • How do they enable mastery? 
  • How do they make it happen every day?

Success is achieved through a long-term commitment to continuous improvement. It involves small, consistent steps leading to significant progress, with a relentless focus on both overarching goals (winning & leaving a legacy) and the finer details of practice and preparation. Athletes, for example, practice more than they play, showcasing the importance of dedication to improvement.

Structure follows Strategy – The right structure is crucial for a successful strategy. Enlighted leadership combines structured development for both the team and a map tailored to the individual’s development, resulting in effective strategies that lead to success.

Continuous improvement is depicted as a multifaceted approach that operates on different levels: super-structural (season and World Cup cycle), team (selection and tactical preparation), and individual (daily self-improvement). A map of daily self-improvement acts as a powerful tool to develop teams and organizations; this ‘living document’ provides fresh goals and develops new skills so people push themselves harder, become more capable and achieve more for the team.

Races are won by a fraction of a second. Marginal gains play a significant role in achieving competitive advantages. A substantial cumulative advantage is gained by improving everything you could think of by just 1%. Marginal gain can be technical, physical, practical, operational, and even psychological. We are a product of our environment. The environment we choose to surround ourselves with, including people, substances, and influences, profoundly impacts our success. When the environment is dedicated to learning, the score takes care of itself. Are the things around you helping you towards success, or are they holding you back? After all, it’s not the mountains ahead that wear you out, said Muhammad Ali; it’s the pebble in your shoe.

Successful leaders continuously seek new approaches, learn from best practices, and share their knowledge. What truly matters is what individuals do with the talent they have, underlining the importance of dedication and personal development. The only thing I want you to be is the best that you can possibly be.”‘

True focus isn’t about saying “yes” to the primary objective; instead, it’s about saying “no” to numerous other good ideas. You’ve got to pick carefully. It means you need to control the psychological environment as it is the physical. Garbage In/Garbage Out analogy, means being mindful of: the verbal, visual and gestural language that we allow to take up residence in our heads; 

the toxins like alcohol, drugs or sugar that we allow to take up residence in our bodies (and minds); the people we allow to take up space in our lives.

What we leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. Your legacy is that which you teach.

VI – Whanau

NO DICKHEADS – Follow the spearhead

Teamwork & Unity  

  • Flying in (V) formation – Flying in V is 70% more efficient and effective for birds than flying solo. Should one fall behind, others stay back until it can fly again. It emphasizes the need for every team member to work together towards a common goal, ensuring that no one is left behind.
  • Spearhead has three tips – To work properly, all the force must move in one direction. A great player can only do so much on his own. No matter how breathtaking his one-on-one moves, if he is out of sync psychologically with everyone else, the team will never achieve the harmony needed to win a championship.

How to get members of the team who are driven by the quest for individual glory to give themselves over wholeheartedly to the group effort.

The strength of the wolf is the pack. Strong connections within the team are essential for everyone to move in the same direction. Weak links can cause individuals to diverge from the team’s goals. The connection between people is important. The more resilient and the stronger we are, the better we are. 

No Dickheads – It’s better to have a thousand enemies outside than one inside the tent. One disaffected or selfish individual infects the group. Remove them and the group will cohere and heal.        

Few philosophies of great coaches and how it overlaps with All Blacks

  • Vince Lombardi says, ‘As a leader, you’re being watched 24 hours each day’. The All Blacks say, ‘You’re an All Black, 24-7.’ 
  • Bill Walsh installed ‘an agenda of specific behavioural norms – actions and attitudes – that applied to every single person on our payroll’. The All Blacks say, ‘Better People Make Better All Blacks’.
  • John Wooden said that a player who makes the team great is better than a great player. The All Blacks say: ‘No one is bigger than the team.’

Good to great leaders began by first getting the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figure out where to drive it. If you insist on only the best, you very often get it. Great leaders ruthlessly protect their people, encouraging connection, collaboration and collective ownership, nurturing a safe environment of trust, respect and family.

VII – Expectations

EMBRACE EXPECTATIONS – Aim for the highest cloud

Remember, your losses are more than your wins. Make a mental note of the way you feel right now (during a loss) and make sure you never feel that way again. All successful teams who prepare properly are the ones that normally win. The fear of failure can serve as a strong motivator for thorough preparation, and a healthy dissatisfaction with one’s current level of performance is encouraged.

The All Blacks’ philosophy is to aim for greatness rather than settling for being merely good. Successful leaders are depicted as having high internal standards and exceeding their own expectations.

The story we tell about our life becomes our reality. The narrative we convey to our team, business, organization, or family influences how others perceive us. This internal narrative triggered by words, images, movement and memory creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

Kahneman posits two interrelated psychological observations that help explain this: 

Anchoring – This is a trick salespeople use. Normally $20 for you sir, I’ll give for $5. Bargain! The anchoring of perceptions – normally $20! Bargain!! – makes the lower number cheaper.

Priming – It’s a reflexive response in which actions subconsciously follow thoughts. A group of participants were given single-word flashcards and were asked to construct simple sentences. Buried within, some of the group’s cards were single-word synonyms for age – Bald. Wrinkle. Grey, Arthritis. Florida. Forgetful. After completing their sentences, the groups that tackled the age-related flashcards were then asked to walk along the corridor and sign out. The real experiment began now. The group’s progress down the corridor was timed. Those groups who had been working with the words connoting age walked more slowly. Just the merest idea of age in the unconscious level led to a reflexive response that had them display the physical behaviour of the elderly.

Our words shape our story, and the stories we create become the framework for our behaviors. Our behaviours determine how we lead our lives and run our organizations. Essentially, stories shape our perceptions and actions. Stories are fundamental to human thinking, providing a means to make sense of life, explain how things work, make decisions, justify choices, persuade others, understand our roles in the world, and establish identities and social values. It underscores that we are most receptive to learning and change when we encounter stories that resonate with us. Stories can inspire and guide, making them a crucial tool for effective leadership and communication. Leaders are encouraged to recognize and harness the power of storytelling.

Aim for the highest cloud so that if you miss it, you will hit a lofty mountain. Set big, hairy, audacious goals.

VIII – Preparation

TRAIN TO WIN – Practise under pressure.

Preparation is essential for achieving success. Just as the way a sapling is shaped influences how a tree grows, the mindset developed through intense practice is crucial for winning. Training to win – conditions the brain and body to perform under pressure. To be truly effective, practice should be challenging and outside one’s comfort zone, as this is where real growth occurs.

In business, training is often regarded as a less rigorous activity, often limited to occasional off-site events. However, effective training should be characterized by regularity, intensity, and repetition. Such training accelerates personal growth and fosters a mindset that is conducive to success, making peak performance more automatic and likely under pressure.

If you’re not growing anywhere, you’re not going anywhere.

How does the brain perform under pressure?

The first step is to understand how the brain reacts to stress. What the players do, why they felt the way they felt. In pressure situations, he says, it is very easy for our consciousness to divert from a resourceful state to an unresourceful state, from a position of mental calm, clarity and inner strength into what he calls ‘Defensive Thinking’. We’ve all felt it – the sensation as our shutters come down, our horizons narrow and we find ourselves in an ever-tightening corridor from which we feel there is no escape. In this state, we’re thinking about survival, a negative content loop forms, and our perceptions create feelings of being overwhelmed, tightening and tension. This leads to overt aggression, shutting down and panic. We let the situation get to us. We make poor decisions. And we choke. 

HOT. The Red Head 

We are HOT 

  • Heated
  • Overwhelmed
  • Tense

ACT . The Blue Head

This is the ability to maintain clarity, situational awareness, accurate analysis, and good decision-making under pressure. It’s a resourceful state in which we can trust ourselves to deliver, to be flexible, adaptable and on top of our game. We can see the big picture as well as the important details, and our attention is where it should be.

  • Alternatives: to look at our options, adapt, adjust, and overcome 
  • Consequences: to understand the risk/reward ratio of each alternative and to make an accurate assessment of what is needed 
  • Task Behaviours: To stay on task and execute the tactics and strategy.

Allow yourself to win by focusing on the process rather than becoming overly preoccupied with outcomes. Pressure is a privilege. It indicates that you are competing at the highest level.

Physical and mental conditioning – just as one works on their physical strength, mental strength should be developed as well. You go to the gym, and you work three times a week on your core strength. If you want to develop your ability to concentrate and focus and be flexible in what you do from a mental perspective, wouldn’t you apply the same approach? Psychological strength is a crucial component alongside physical, technical, and tactical aspects. An everyday example might be in preparation for a speech: first we read through the text, practise in front of the mirror. Then we might invite a few people to watch us rehearse – upping the intensity and finally introducing real emotional pressure; a video camera is brought in. In this way, our brains acclimatize to the pressure. We develop clarity, more accurate, automatic execution and situational awareness. We focus on the technique, increase the intensity, and then add pressure. We reduce the intensity and focus again on the technique. Repeat. Keep repeating until it’s automatic. It becomes unconscious competence.

By training with intensity, we make our performance more automatic and better stay on task. If we can control our attention – avoid the Red and stay in the Blue – we can focus on controlling the things we can control, without worrying about the things we can’t. We can stay in the moment. We can lead with clarity.

Train to Win

Mastery in anything – a sport, a skill, a craft, business is achieved by practice. Practice is enhanced by intensity. Both our body and our brains respond positively to a diet of accelerated, intense learning, which leads to dramatic improvements and competitive advantage.

A person who is taught at home will stand with confidence in the community.

IX Pressure

KEEP A BLUE HEAD – Control your attention.

The first stage of learning is silence, the second stage is listening.

Pressure is a combination of expectation, scrutiny, and consequence. Under pressure, your focus can either be diverted or on track. If it’s diverted, you experience negative emotions and engage in unhelpful behaviour, feeling stuck and overwhelmed. On the other hand, if your attention remains on track, you exhibit situational awareness and execute tasks accurately. This clarity enables adaptability and successful outcomes. In life-defining moments, individuals may suddenly find themselves unable to perform the skills they’ve honed over a lifetime. Poor decisions are not typically the result of inadequate skills or judgment but rather stem from the inability to handle pressure effectively at critical moments.

RED HEAD – Tight, inhibited, results-oriented, anxious, aggressive, over-compensating, desperate. 

BLUE HEAD – Loose, expressive, in the moment, calm, clear, accurate, on task.

An Olympic table tennis player, Syed, struggled to make basic shots during competition. Choking, as it’s referred to, occurs when individuals try to exert conscious control over tasks that are typically managed by the subconscious. This interference disrupts the fluidity of the task, a phenomenon known as the “centipede effect.” If a centipede had to consciously think about coordinating its many legs, it would become paralyzed. The same holds true for humans.

The key difference between the inhibited state represented by the “Red Head” and the freedom of the “Blue Head” lies in how we manage our attention. It works like this: where we direct our mind is where our thoughts will take us; our thoughts create our emotion; emotion defines our behaviour; our behaviour defines our performance.

Typical pressure zones are times of great ‘heat’;

  • Where something is at stake;
  • Where trauma of previous experience is triggered;
  • Where there is conflict, aggression, dispute, dissent;
  • Where there is a deadline, a ticking clock, urgency;
  • Where there is high stimulus and distraction.

To maintain effective decision-making and avoid the detrimental effects of the ‘fight, flight, freeze’ response, individuals must steer clear of negative past experiences or fear of future consequences. This involves identifying embedded auditory, visual, and kinaesthetic triggers in the brain and recognizing when they are firing and having a negative impact. The key is to be alerted to warning signals or “red flags” and then take control of one’s reactions.

The brain consists of three parts: instinct, thinking, and emotion. In high-pressure situations, rational thinking shuts down, leaving individuals to rely on emotional and instinctive responses. This shift impairs the ability to perceive cues and gather information needed for sound decision-making.

‘If you become disconnected, then you can focus on outcome and not task, and the ability to make good decisions is compromised.’

A two-step approach to handling pressure effectively. 

  1. Individuals establish a resourceful state characterized by calmness, positivity, and mental clarity. This state is then “anchored” through a specific and replicable physical action, such as scrunching toes, stomping a foot, gazing into the distance, or splashing water on the face. The anchoring process is repeated until it becomes automatic.
  2. When pressure symptoms arise, such as a narrowed focus, increased heart rate, elevated anxiety, or heightened self-consciousness, we can use the anchored physical action to reset and regain their resourceful state.

Gazing Performance System – Involves creating “maps” for clients. These maps are simplified diagrams that help clarify issues and serve as easily recalled reference points during high-pressure situations, aiding in decision-making.

Pilots have a mantra to help them deal with a deluge of flight data during crisis: 

  • Aviate – Focus on flying the plane.
  • Navigate – Fly the plane in the right direction.
  • Communicate – Tell people where you’re flying the plane.

Its simplicity enables pilots to orient themselves and take the right steps in the right order, providing a big-picture perspective and clearly defined steps.

Paramedics have a mantra for first-aid situations.

  • Assess. 
  • Adjust
  • Act

Mantras often follow the Rule of Three; they consist of three words or phrases that work together in a structured process for bringing about change. This three-part structure reflects how humans naturally tell stories, with a beginning, middle, and end. By adhering to the Rule of Three, mantras establish a strong linguistic sequence that guides you automatically from chaos to clarity and into action.

The use of anchoring, maps, and mantras is a means of regaining control over our attention and bringing ourselves back to the present moment. This allows us to shift our focus from uncertain “what-ifs” to addressing the current reality. Instead of worrying about “What if we run out of resources?” we can ask, “What is the best way to use our resources?” Similarly, rather than dwelling on “What if I don’t win the contract?” we can shift our attention to “What can I do to win the contract?” This shift in focus encourages proactive problem-solving and action in the present.

X Authenticity

KNOW THYSELF – Keep it real.

The analogy of a bridge – A bridge is secure because it is made of several different planks: personal skills, friends, family, and being an All Black. If the only plank you’ve got is the rugby one, then the bridge will collapse. To protect yourself from mental fragility, you marry the self, the environment, the culture, the rituals, the legacy, and you put these together, you weave a pretty powerful fabric that’ll get you through your journey. You may wobble a bit (when things go wrong), but you won’t fracture and crumble.

‘To know how to win, you first have to know how to lose’. For the All Blacks, knowing how to lose requires a deep understanding of who you are (identity and values).

In refusing to be distracted by the clamour of the crowds and the distractions of the day, you can become free to follow your path, be resilient, stand tall, keep faith, and stay strong within yourself. Maintaining authenticity in both public and private life is crucial for effective leadership. Leaders who remain true to their core values are better equipped to lead and inspire others. Authentic leadership is about being oneself, aligning with one’s true purpose, and remaining consistent in public or private situations.

Honesty – Strong peer-to-peer interaction relies on a foundation of trust, characterized by a safe sense of vulnerability. Leaders must cultivate an environment where team members can genuinely understand each other as individuals, including their personal stories and work styles. Leaders should set an example by openly acknowledging their own mistakes, weaknesses, and fears. A culture of honesty, authenticity, and constructive conflict is promoted in high-performing teams.

Integrity – Integrity means aligning our thoughts, words, and actions, ensuring that our core values, purpose, beliefs, and behaviours all harmonize. It leads to reliability and the ability to deliver on our promises. When we say something will happen, it will happen. Others can count on us to deliver. 

When integrity is intact, performance potential is maximized, like a complete set of spokes on a bicycle wheel. In contrast, a lack of integrity hinders efficiency. In essence, actions speak louder than words. If someone commits to something, they follow through, and punctuality is a sign of respect. If we speak with integrity, our word becomes our world, a commitment, a declaration of intent, a generative force. 

Authenticity – Authenticity in leadership is achieved when there is alignment between one’s thoughts (head), words (mouth), and actions (heart & feet). This consistency builds trust among followers, making leaders reliable.

Honesty – Integrity – Authenticity – Resilience – Performance.

XI Sacrifice

CHAMPIONS DO EXTRA – Find something you would die for and give your life to it.

Brad Thorn, an immensely successful rugby player, attributes his accomplishments to the motto “Champions do extra.” This motto inspires him to consistently go above and beyond in his training and on the field, whether it’s adding extra reps or staying longer in the gym. Thorn says that the path to success often lacks spectators. It’s a solitary journey with unending challenges. The real difference is made behind closed doors. Self-sacrifice (pushing beyond comfort zone and giving your all to a team or a cause) is essential. All pursuits require our time and resources, so pick worthwhile moments. Wisdom involves recognizing the value and limitations of our existence and not squandering our time. 

In whatever endeavour we invest our lives, whether it’s a business, a project, our family, a sport, or a cause, we are constantly making sacrifices. These sacrifices can range from giving up small amounts of time, entire days, or even dedicating our entire lifetime to it. Every moment counts, from our daily work routines to those monotonous meetings that may not inspire us. When we engage in activities solely for financial gain or due to obligation, we’re essentially spending our precious life. Therefore, these investments must be genuinely worthwhile and hold significant meaning for us.

“Wisdom consists of appreciating the preciousness and finiteness of our existence, and therefore not squandering it.”

The motto “Champions do extra” symbolizes the extra effort and sacrifice required to achieve something extraordinary. Our life’s endeavours should be worth the investment. Wasting time is counterproductive, and merely staying afloat is stifling. As leaders, our extraordinary journey starts by doing the extra work, the extra sprint, the extra set at the gym, exerting additional effort, and going the extra mile.

XII – Language

INVENT YOUR OWN LANGUAGE – Sing your world into existence.

Daniel Kahneman writes in Thinking, Fast and Slow about the power of our stories to change and shape our lives, often in ways we are unaware of. There is the story we tell ourselves as we buy a lottery ticket: we know we have almost no chance of winning, yet we still imagine what will happen when we do. The truth never gets in the way of a good story. True or not, stories are the way we understand life and our place in it. We are meaning-making machines interpreting and reinterpreting a sequence of events into a narrative form and reassembling at will. Leaders are storytellers. All great organizations are born from a compelling story. This central organizing thought helps people understand what they stand for and why.

Values – Values, writes Frankl, cannot be espoused and adopted by us at a conscious level – they are something that we are. 

Here are the three words that would become core to the All Blacks: 

Humility. Excellence. Respect.

United States Marine Corps values

  • Honour – Integrity, responsibility, accountability.
  • Courage – Do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reason.
  • Commitment – Devotion to the corps and my fellow marines. 

Apple’s company’s values

  • Empathy – We will truly understand [customer] needs better than any other company.
  • Focus – In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities.
  • Impute – People DO judge a book by its cover. We may have the best products, the highest quality, the most useful software, etc; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired properties.

First, we shape our values; then, our values shape us.

Vocabulary – The Florida effect 

The way that priming works and the effect that the language around us unconsciously affects our experience of the world. Advertising agencies know this – the word ‘new’ in a brochure can increase readership. The high-performing environments had an obsession with the formative power of language (Outstanding. Accuracy. Clarity. World Class.)

Think about the best corporate slogans:

° Just Do It ° Nothing is Impossible ° Impossible is Nothing ° The Power of Dreams ° Think ° 

Invent. They capture character in a sentence, change minds with a turn of phrase, and distil essence into a few words. The best teams harness the power of these words to reflect, remind, reinforce, and reinvigorate their ethos, every day. 

The key criteria for creating a change story are fourfold.

1. The story must be credible and relevant. It must have ethos (an authority and understanding of the subject) and logos (it must make rational sense).

2. It must be Visual and Visceral – appealing to the auditory, visual, and kinaesthetic receivers in our brains. It must seize our hearts as well as impress our heads. It must have pathos (it must be felt).

3. It must be flexible and scalable – as easily told around a campfire as across the boardroom table. Use simple everyday language and ideas.

4. It must be useful – able to turn vision into action; purpose into practice – acting as a transferor of meaning between one domain and another, between ‘your’ world and ‘mine’, between the ‘leader’ and the ‘led’.

XIII Ritual

RITUALIZE TO ACTUALIZE – Create a culture

Culture is like a living organism. It’s continually growing and changing. Building trust, developing people, and driving high-performance behaviours are never-ending tasks. Rituals are key for reinforcing the emotional glue. 

Rituals reflect, remind, reinforce, and reignite the central story. They make it real in a vital, visceral way. When the All Blacks travel across the halfway point to the Severn Bridge to play Wales, they stand up on the bus and shout, ‘We never lose to Wales!’ By doing so, they are connecting to something greater than themselves. They are making the metaphor their own, connecting their personal story to the team’s. These rituals, symbols and mottos are the welt and weave of elite teams and organizations – the fabric that binds people together. Though the individuals change, the rituals remain, and these rituals are the structure that maintains belief.

Examples

  • Wal-Mart’s Saturday Morning Meeting. It’s been going for fifty years – it’s as old as the company itself. Now attended by thousands of employees, online and in person, it ritualizes knowledge sharing and collective endeavour.
  • Casual Fridays, drinks on a Friday night, the annual Christmas party.

Large or small, formal or informal, corporate or creative, personal or professional – conscious or not – rituals continue to recreate meaning and have embedded within them the deep values and purpose of the person, the place or the project. Rituals tell your story, involve your people, create a legacy. Rituals make the intangible real.

Tell me, and I’ll forget; show me, and I may remember; involve me, and I’ll understand.

Wise leaders look for ways to ‘ritualize their enterprise’, to find vivid, visceral processes that bring their ethos to life.

XIV Whakapapa

BE A GOOD ANCESTOR – Plant trees you’ll never see.

You exist as a fleeting moment in time between the past and the future. Whakapapa is our genealogy – our place in the ascending order of all living things. It means to pile rocks in layers, one upon the other, so that they reach from the earth to the heavens. The saying “You don’t own the jersey; you’re just the body in the jersey at the time” underscores the idea that true leaders are stewards of the future, and their role is to enhance it during their time. Leaders leave a lasting impact on the lives of others.

The essence of good leadership, encompassing beliefs like pride, respect, humility, excellence, expectation, courage, purpose, and sacrifice, is handed down from the past through the present and into the future—a continuous, unbroken thread of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual heritage.

‘What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.’

  • Apple engineers wake up every morning to the legacy of Steve Jobs (iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad, and ask – what’s next?) And what’s next after that? “What more can we contribute to the world?”
  • All Blacks have a 75% winning record over 100 years to invoke the whakapapa.
  • George Bernard Shaw wrote, ‘Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.’ Don’t let the music die. Whakapapa is a primal human idea.

‘A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never see.’

The concept of whakapapa emphasizes a stewardship of the past, reflected and reinvigorated through rituals and responsibilities – and a stewardship of the future.

Your social footprint, the impact you have on other lives, begins with character, rooted in your deepest values and a dedicated exploration of your life’s purpose. What do we hold most sacred? What’s our purpose here? What can we pass on? Character arises out of our values, our purpose, the standards we set for ourselves, our sacrifice and commitment, and the decisions we make under pressure. It is primarily defined by the contribution we make, the responsibility we take, the leadership we show. Character is forged by the way we respond to the challenges of life and business, by the way we lead our life and teams. If we value life, life values us. If we devalue it, we dishonour ourselves and our one chance at living. The way we lead our own life is what makes us a leader. We are the stewards of our organizations, the caretakers of our own lineage. Our actions today will echo beyond our time. They are our legacy. John Wooden said, ‘Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. 

XV Legacy

THIS IS YOUR TIME

It’s time to make your mark. Your contribution. It’s time to leave a legacy. Your legacy. 

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