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Wayne Smith

Develop mantras that enable better decision taking under pressure.

Optimism is a capability everyone needs to train.

Principles​

  • Ownership + identity gives you meaning.
  • Questions + game‑based design turn that meaning into adaptable skill under pressure.
  • Strengths focus + innovation + optimistic handling of failure keep energy high over long campaigns.
  • Mental wellbeing + data + “end in mind” keep the environment both humane and relentlessly performance‑oriented.

Ownership and Meaning​

Player-owned, game-like, data‑informed learning in service of identity and legacy.

  • Empowerment and ownership: “People will rise to a challenge if it’s their challenge,” so players co‑own standards, solutions, and behaviors rather than having them imposed. youtube
  • Legacy and stewardship: The jersey is held in trust; your job is to leave it in a better state than you found it, which anchors daily effort to something bigger than the individual or the season. coachingculturewithbenherring.buzzsprout
  • Uniqueness and identity: Each team should deliberately craft its own stories, language, and symbols (e.g. historical references, shared imagery) so the group feels distinctive and worth sacrificing for. youtube

Learning​

Questions, games, and errors

  • Question‑based learning: The coach asks rather than tells so players describe what they see, what it means, and what they’d do next; this builds game‑sense and decision‑making rather than compliance. youtube
  • Game‑based learning: Training should “look and feel like rugby,” using constrained games (field size, numbers, scoring rules, extra balls) to surface specific problems while preserving realism. thecoachinggig
  • Embracing errors: He normalises mistakes from stretching and experimenting, creating “controlled chaos” at training so players learn to stay clear and confident when the game becomes unpredictable. therugbysite

Development​

Focus on strengths, mindset, and wellbeing

  • 80/20 focus on strengths: Address role‑critical weaknesses but put the bulk of energy into amplifying each player’s signature strengths, which is what wins games and creates champions. therugbysite
  • Continuous learning and innovation: Coaches and players are expected to keep experimenting, borrowing from other codes and domains, and “thinking outside the square” even at the risk of failure. therugbysite
  • Managing failure with optimism: Post‑loss, emotions are contained in time (e.g. 24‑hour rule) and reframed through “learned optimism” so setbacks become temporary and specific, not permanent identities. youtube
  • Prioritising mental wellbeing: He explicitly talks about happiness, optimism, and psychological safety as performance factors, and sees grit/resilience programs and open talk about mental health as part of the coach’s job. youtube

Operating System​

Vision, planning, and data

  • Start with the end in mind: Borrowing from Covey, he asks people to define the kind of person/teammate/leader they want to be remembered as, then back‑plans behaviors and habits from that imagined “end.” podcasts.apple
  • Vision‑driven teams: Culture work starts with a clear, co‑created picture of what “winning” really means for that group (style, values, relationships), then everything else – drills, meetings, selection – is aligned to it. coachingculturewithbenherring.buzzsprout
  • Data‑driven coaching: He keeps detailed notes and uses video, opposition analysis, and stats to test intuition, simplify key messages, and choose what to work on each week instead of going by feel alone. therugbysite

Context​

Questions​

If optimism is a trainable capability rather than a personality trait, what is the minimum training dose — and what does regression look like when the environment stops reinforcing it?

  • Ownership and identity give meaning, but ownership requires accountability — how do you build an ownership culture with players who are paid employees in a professional system?
  • The 24-hour rule contains failure in time; learned optimism reframes it as temporary and specific — does this risk under-processing genuine systemic problems that deserve longer attention?
  • Wayne Smith's operating system borrows from Covey (start with the end in mind) and uses data to test intuition — when do these two impulses conflict, and which one wins?