Steve Hansen: Building The Greatest Team In History

**Steve Hansen** (0:02)
For a long time, the All Blacks didn't want to admit to ourselves that we were chokers at World Cup.
Then I came up with the idea of, okay, well, let's be the greatest sports team in the history of the game. What I wanted to do was be able to say what that looked like and would feel like. We had a whole group of people collectively owning that idea, trying to achieve it. We were going to be scrutinized. When you start feeling that, what are you going to do? If you don't have a plan and you're feeling it, you're gone.

**Jake Humphrey** (0:32)
What is it actually about the All Blacks? It's a question that comes around every time they play. With New Zealand and South Africa going at each other again right now, it's being asked more than usual. People reach for the hacker or the jersey or a cliched line. Yet legendary head coach Steve Hansen will tell you it's none of that. It's a set of decisions somebody made and then held onto.
Steve was the head coach for 8 years, 107 tests, 93 wins, a World Cup final. Almost nobody in professional sport has run anything that long at that level. What struck Jake and I when we sat with him was that he doesn't talk like a man protecting a record. Steve told us that culture is the most overused word on the planet and I'll hand you the question he uses instead. He'll tell you why he hates rules, he'll tell you about the two times he wanted to win so badly that he stopped caring about his own players and he had to go back and apologize to a whole squad. Almost nothing is really about Rugby. Near the end, when we ask him why he walks away, he can't quite finish the answer.
Here's the All Blacks legendary head coach, Sir Steve Hansen.

**Damian Penaud** (1:48)
Steve, thanks for joining us.

**Steve Hansen** (1:50)
It's a pleasure. I'm looking forward to it.

**Damian Penaud** (1:52)
Let's start then with the question that I guess defines the name of this podcast. What is your version of high performance?

**Steve Hansen** (2:00)
It's a number of things really, but if you're looking at skill, it's been able to perform the skill at the highest level under the most pressure and keep your mental fortitude in the now as opposed to in the past or being distracted by what's going on around you.
Off-field, it's about making sure that you're doing the little things that make you better. We often, I think, understand the on-field stuff, but we struggle a little bit with the off-field, particularly young athletes when they start, and that's where we have to educate them a bit.

**Damian Penaud** (2:33)
Where did your own personal desire to find high performance to improve yourself and those around you begin?

**Steve Hansen** (2:41)
I'm not sure really. I think my father was a coach well before his time.
We talked a lot about rugby and sports, and I'm reasonably competitive human being, so.

**Damian Penaud** (2:56)
How competitive?

**Steve Hansen** (2:57)
Not very. Probably too competitive, because my pride gets in the way, or used to, probably still does a bit.
However, I think when you start doing things and you don't do them as well as you'd like to do, then you find ways to get better. And if you want to win things and you don't win them, you find ways to get better, and it grows within you. And it's like something's just tapping away in the back of your head all the time, demanding that you got a front up. And I was lucky in my early coaching career, I came straight out of playing and went straight to coaching. And I had a coach, had been a teacher, a coach all his life. And he taught me something that stayed with me forever. You know, after the game, and you haven't won or you haven't played as well, it's not about what the guys haven't done. It's what could you do better during the week to help them be better? And he said, that's the question we've got to ask ourselves. So that stuck with me. And I think that's been wonderful help.

**Jake Humphrey** (4:03)
So I'm the son of a coach as well. My dad was a boxing coach, Steve. And I think sometimes in this modern day and age, we often overcomplicate a lot of the messages. And I think common sense is common practice, and it goes right the way back.

**Steve Hansen** (4:16)
Don't get me going on common sense.

**Jake Humphrey** (4:18)
Go on.

**Steve Hansen** (4:19)