- The Great Coaches: Leadership & Life
- Posts
- Graham Henry
We believe sport provides a learning environment for leadership and life, and so we interview Great Sports Coaches from around the world to find ideas to help us all be better people.
Our newsletter provides the best ideas from those interviews.
We hope you find one or two ideas that you can share with your family, friends, and teams.
Latest Interview
Our Great Coach this week is Rugby Union coach Sir Graham Henry.
Graham started coaching in 1975 while working as a teacher at Auckland Grammar School; In 1993 he won the first of 4 consecutive Provincial Championships with Auckland. His time as a teacher continued until 1996, when he resigned from his post as Headmaster to take up coaching full-time with the Auckland Blues.
Having lead the Auckland Blues to back-to-back Super 12 titles in 1996 and 1997, Graham then took on the role of Head Coach of Wales; in 2000 he led Wales to both the 6 Nations Championship and the Grand Slam. During his time with Wales, Graham also led the British and Irish Lions on a tour of Australia.
In 2003, Graham Henry was appointed as coach of the All Blacks. He led the team to the World Cup in 2011, and a year later was awarded a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (KNZM) for services to rugby in 2012.
This was a terrific interview with Graham and I really enjoyed having the chance to delve deeper behind the headlines and legends of his career. Some personal highlights and key takeaways from the conversation were:
How the All Blacks’ purpose of being the best sporting team in the world shaped their culture, and the role that humility played in bringing it all to life.
How Graham learned the importance of empowerment and what brought about his shift from a coach-driven environment to a team-driven environment (a shift that would be the catalyst for the leadership groups he then put in place).
The benefits that have come from difficult decisions that he has made in his life and how “learning about yourself under pressure” has been a key part of his development as a leader.
Building on the legacy of one of the most well-known and iconic teams in the world of sports is no small feat, and I’m sure you’ll find this interview as inspiring and thought-provoking as I did.
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Leadership Insights
Gareth Taylor’s 18-season football career saw him work with multiple Premier League teams including the Bristol Rovers, Crystal Palace, Manchester City, Burnley and Nottingham Forest.
After his retirement in 2011 he started coaching youth teams at Manchester City; eight years later he once again re-entered the high-profile world of coaching as Head Coach of the Manchester City Women’s team, securing FA Cup and League Cup titles in 2020 and 2022.
In this clip, Gareth reflects upon the link between empowerment and ‘magic’, and how implementing a safe and empowering team culture has helped Manchester City Women’s team to thrive.
If you like this, you can find more than 1200 other insight videos on our website, covering a variety of leadership topics such as setting up new team cultures, establishing team values, or helping others with their inner voice.
All of the insights are indexed, searchable, and can be downloaded to share. Some may require a one-time purchase or subscription - check the individual insight’s description for more information.
Leadership Skills
Who doesn’t love a good ‘underdog’ story?
There’s something incredibly inspiring and motivating about seeing a team or athlete go from the bottom of the leaderboard to the very top, and I’m sure you can think of more than one hit movie that shares the story of an ‘impossible’ success.
For many of us, these stories can be relatable. If you’ve ever felt as though the world was against you, or that you’re giving your all yet seeing only minimal results, then the idea that you can turn it all around and be your very own underdog success story can really motivate you to keep going and pushing towards your goals.
For this special podcast on the topic of Underdogs we were joined by Sean Murray, author of “If Gold Is Our Destiny” which covers the story of the 1984 U.S. Men’s volleyball team and their quest for Olympic success.
Join us to learn more about the forces and passions that drove some of the sporting world’s most inspiring underdogs and hear from Great Coaches about their very own experiences building up from the bottom.
Want to find more content like this? You can find lessons on a wide range of leadership-related themes and topics on our website:
Ideas
There’s not long left to wait until the National Rugby League hits Las Vegas on March 2nd - will you be watching?
For those of you who aren’t particularly familiar with the game (or need a refresher!), you’ll want to watch this short video narrated by the actor Russel Crowe which covers the rules, explains how Rugby differs from American football, and gives a great idea of what to expect.
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