The Key to Great Culture with Owen Eastwood

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life, nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. In every episode, I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

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Over the past decade, Owen Eastwood has worked with some of the most elite teams and groups in the world, including Gareth Southgate's England football team, the command group of NATO, the South African cricket team, corporate leadership teams, elite ballet and the British Olympic team. He's an incredible performance coach, an amazing author of Belonging, a book that you're going to want to get after you listen to today's show. Sit back and enjoy the show.

Owen, a massive welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast.

Thank you, appreciate it and very honored to be here.

So great to connect and just to get the ball rolling and get started, I'd love to ask you, what is your definition of leadership?

Well, that's a good question. Out of the blocks. I think it's got two limbs to it for me. The first bit is take care of the people and the second part of is feed the village. What I mean by that is what does the community need to achieve? And you take responsibility for driving them towards achieving those things. But never forget the fact that any leader in the whole history of humanity Whether it's in our tribe or in our family.

Or in the wider community, they always had a fundamental role of a leader, is to make sure the people are safe, and we should never forget that. And I think that's something that has a little bit less sharp in our focus than it used to be.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. And one thing, and I will talk about the book Belonging a lot throughout our conversation. It's made a big impression on me personally. It's made a big impression on the work that I do professionally. The one thing that really struck me was the word rangatira and the Maori word raranga, to weave and tira, a group, and essentially rangatira is a leader. So to weave a group of people together. And to me, that really struck a chord because I do think leadership can be seen as a destination, as a title, in a lot of corporate settings and sometimes in team settings as well. And so that whole idea of weaving a group of people together is far from that. Right.

Yeah. That's a beautiful way to think about leadership, weaving the people together. And that's from our traditional Polynesian cultures, including Maori. And I can't think of a better way to put it. You know, you've got a group of people together, you've got a purpose, you've got some vision about what you want to achieve together. And the only way that's going to be possible is if the people are woven together to form a collective, which has impact. So, yeah, I mean, as you know, reading Belonging, I really do believe our ancestors had some really, really sharp ideas around how you get the most out of a group of people and also how you screw it up.

I actually.

I really do genuinely think they were clearer on leadership a thousand years ago than we are now. Why do you think that is?

What's the noise? What's the distraction? And the big shift that has happened that gets in the way of us thinking the way our ancestors did.

Well, you know, without getting too philosophical, I think.

Since the 1600s, societies in the west anyway have become much more individualistic than they used to be. So the narrative has shifted from we to me. If you look at the States, and I live in England, you know, and New Zealand's less so, but still going in that direction, it's all very much, what's your purpose in life? What's your values? What's your legacy? You know, it's all about the individual rather than what we need to do, what we need to achieve, and what happens when we sort of Shift in that way is the ego can go completely crazy, can't it? And we see so many demonstrations of that, particularly in politics. So I think, you know, you would expect that you'd look at politics and you would see some great role modeling of leadership. We don't get that generally we get great role modeling of more corporate power and ego. That's my opinion. So yes, but, but you know, for most of our history you would have good role modeling of leadership in your own community. You could see it. There's some really interesting studies done at Berkeley University which shows that actually historically we were not dictatorships whatsoever. And in fact people were only led by consent. And you know, I think about our shared ownership models and teams now and people think, wow, that's so enlightened and modern. It's not at all for our history of Homo sapiens, actually that has been the successful model for leadership is it's by consent. So that means that we need to know that the person who's leading is doing it for us and not for themselves.

Yeah, I really love that.

It's interesting when you look at that individualistic idea of what is my purpose? And there's so many books and programs and courses all around, what's your individual purpose? But actually when you look at, you go back in years, it's about the collective purpose and we all feed into that. I think in belonging you wrote about Jerome Kano and he had talked about the whole idea of like what he does is for his family, his tribe, his people, his team. That is not evident across, you know, other organizations, particularly political and corporate.

No, depressingly you're right. And yeah, it was awesome when I spoke with Jerome because I did ask him that question and it was a bit of a. I was really hoping he was going to answer the way that he did because that's how I feel. But I gave it straight up and I just said, you know, what's your purpose? And he like just looked at me and like, that doesn't even make sense to me. That's what my family, my team, my community need from me. That's my purpose. And I think that for most of human history that is the way we've thought. And I think it's a much healthier way to think than, you know, this is all about me. I need to maximize.

What value I can generate out of society and out of other people. I don't like that. And the high performing environments that I enjoy are the ones where that sort gets ditched. And actually you have some like the England football team, a good example. You have some extremely big celebrities, if you like, and well paid people, but it's all ditched at the door. They just actually a bunch of guys who really, really want to achieve something together and there's no ego in there.

That's amazing. And if we just step back in time a little bit, where did your passion for helping others and helping teams succeed? Where did that all begin?

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

I've had a very unorthodox career. Well, I've had two careers really, as a lawyer and then becoming a performance coach.

I think the thing that connects both of them is I wasn't a great lawyer at all.

Technically.

And every other way, I wasn't a great lawyer. But what I was reasonably good at, which I had been as a kid as well, is coaching, like organizing groups of people. I would be the guy on a Sunday who would ring everyone up and say, do you want to go down to the Odatara School for a game of cricket? I'd take it upon myself to get everyone there. And then when we were there, I'd take it upon myself to organize this into two teams. And if people weren't playing very well and weren't enjoying it, I did take it upon myself to try and help them enjoy it more. And maybe, you know, I wasn't really able to technically help them much, but. So I always had a bit of that, actually. My dad apparently called me Sarge for sergeant when I was a toddler. And that was because I was bossy. So. And then when I was, you know, became a lawyer, I was quite good at managing people through very difficult disputes. I was an employment lawyer. So they can get very, very emotional, you know, really, really emotional on both sides. And I was quite good at managing them through a very stressful part of their life. And then I had people around Me, who would make sure that we actually hit the deadlines and we, you know, pleaded our case properly.

But for some reason people, they would trust me and become a trusted advisor and then those clients would start asking me questions beyond legal questions. So I started to get drawn into the behind the scenes of some of the sports teams in particular, they'd trust me as a sounding board and then over time actually start asking, do you want to maybe get involved and help? You seem like, you know, you've got some ideas. So that's where it all came from. So I actually think I've been a coach right from the start, actually.

It's in the genetics and it's interesting, the whole idea of belonging. I mean, the title of the book really drew me in. And I guess being an Irishman who lives 12,000 miles away here in Aotearoa, New Zealand, I always wonder where do I belong and where do I fit in? And I go back to my childhood and I think I didn't really belong in Northern Ireland either. There was something I just didn't feel, it didn't feel like I fit there. So there's always been that idea of what is belonging and how do I create it or how do I attach to it. So when you think of belonging, is it a nice to have or is it a deep seated desire and need?

Well, it absolutely is a deep seated human need.

And you know, there's some statistics bear that out. People who feel socially isolated and.

Suffer from chronic loneliness are four times more likely not only to have a mental health.

Condition, but also four times more likely to have cardiovascular problems. So you know, I talk about it in belonging. If you go right back, you know, when we came out of the forest into the grasslands, our ancestors you actually needed, all of a sudden everything was different. You couldn't just wander around the forest and pick up what you needed and be self sufficient. You actually really had to rely upon each other both in terms of hunting and gathering food. You had to work as a team in a way you didn't ever before because all the predators around you, but also actually just take care of each other again. It was, you had to do that together. The old people, the, the young ones had to really work together as a team in order to do that. So that started to became part of our biology. So if you were isolated, socially isolated, you would have an anxiety reaction. You know, we're going back millions of years here, but this is part of our biological story and that remains with us and that we experience it all the Time when we go into a new team, a new environment, if you have to go and do some public speaking, you're standing before an audience. All of these situations where you don't really feel a sense of belonging, you feel like a little bit like an outsider.

You will have an anxiety reaction to that. So bringing it into a performance environment, do we really want our people marinating in anxiety and all the burning off energy? And that's literally what happens. You're burning off energy when all this adrenaline and cortisol is coursing through you. But you're also distracted. You're not really focusing on the team, you're focusing on myself. I, I don't feel comfortable here. And then you start getting a bit paranoid about the way people look at you or the things they say to you and you're just distracted. You're in self preservation mode. You're not focused on your role and what the team's trying to do. You just want to be there and be safe so your head's not in the right space. So there's absolutely. From a performance point of view, this is a big deal. And I think it's been really, really underrated as the basic condition that our culture needs to tick the box on.

You made that really clear in the book. And for the listener that's listening right now, please go and grab the book. I'll put the links in the description below. But in the book you talked about Michael Owen, obviously a very well known English football player. And he had two very different experiences. One on mainland Europe with a club that he played at and one in England with his home club essentially. And there was a sense of deep belonging in one and a sense of being an outsider in another. And how did that play out for him in terms of how he played and how the teams performed?

Yeah, I mean, I'm lucky to know Michael. He's a wonderful person and his story actually is too good to be true for when I was writing Belonging, because there's such a contrast of the two worlds of belonging and not belonging. He was at Liverpool as a kid and he was in the first team, I think at 17.

And he knew everybody and they knew him. And the manager knew not only his parents, but in time, his wife's parents, girlfriend's parents, they all knew each other. It was just a system ecosystem that he felt a very deep sense of belonging to. And as he would say, even if I was in a bit of a bad mood or tired, everyone knew me so well when I came in, in the morning, they would just pick up those signals and they would adapt themselves, as you do with people in your family and, you know, people that you feel that deep connection with. And also, you could just be yourself the whole time. How good is that? He could be himself, even if it's a bit of a shitty version of himself, if he was grumpy or whatever, but he could just be himself every day. And that's what belonging should feel like. And he, you know, and he was won the Ballon d'. Or. So that's the world footballer of the Year couple. You know, I think two seasons later, the opportunity to transfer to Real Madrid, which he took, and it was the complete opposite. So he went from that place to another place where he wasn't introduced to the team. I think it's 50,000 people in the stadium, Bernabeu Stadium, to greet him when he put a shirt on and was announced. But when he went into the team room, he was just sort of seated like everyone else. There was no ritual or induction or even introduction. He just sat there. And in his mind, this narrative started to play out. Like, don't really feel I belong here with all these galacticos. He's like, literally the Brazilian Ronaldo and Beckham, Zir and Roberto Carlos and Figo and Zinedine Zidane, and it's an amazing team. And he started to go from this hyper confident, pretty relaxed guy, the joker of the dressing room at Liverpool, to this guy who was just full of anxiety and not only didn't feel he belonged, he felt every single training session he had to prove himself. So the mental exhaustion that goes with that, that's horrendous. And, yeah, I mean, he scored 17 goals that season, which for him was not a great return, but he only lasted one season, came back to England, and, you know, that was something that he openly says. Like, if that had been handled differently and I had felt a sense of belonging in that dressing room, I felt like I could have done some amazing things, but it just never happened for me. And I just never, ever got comfortable. And that was the World Player of the year two years before. So this applies to all of us, even the best.

Yeah. And that's what I love about what you're saying, is this is not just for someone who's starting off or is on the low on the ladder. It's like, this is for anyone. You can feel this way. So what's the leader that's listening? What's the lesson for them? If we look at the Michael Owen situation in terms of making people in your team or organization feel like they belong. What's the greatest lesson take away?

Just have really strong intent that when people come into your environment, but also the people have been there for a long time. This would be something that we will experience continually. But certainly when people come into the environment, have intention around connecting them to the story of who we are. Because you need to belong to something. You know, you could go work for a corporate bank, which basically is no different than the one next door and the one next door and the one next door. Okay, so there's nothing to belong to to attach your belonging to versus a team. Not that I've been in that environment intimately, but the All Blacks, for example, have such a powerful story of who they are, and they're whakapapa of the team. And my understanding is they have powerful rituals connecting people who are inducted into it. So anyone can do that. Just explain to me, this is who we are, this is where we come from, and this is where we're going. These are the things that make us different and make us a little bit special and even use your values as shorthand for that longer story so they're meaningful and you wrap them in stories. And then the second part of it is just shower people with belonging cues. And that goes from your first induction day, where you actually sit people down and you say, this is why you've been selected to come here, or this is why we've recruited you and appointed. You had amazing candidates. But this is what we love about you. So just tell them, because it makes people feel they belong.

And they get their peers to also introduce themselves. So there's all that tension and awkwardness goes away quickly, and it's like, okay, that's cool. I understand that Mary comes from, you know, Dunedin, and Joe, you know, went to the same school, and da, da, da, da, da. So that actually reduces the anxiety. And I feel like, okay, so, like, these are my teammates. Cool. Rather than just these faces or job titles. So it's those two things. It's the story of us and belonging cues. But that's something. I remember talking to Michael Gervais when he was working with the Seattle Seahawks, and he said that trust and belonging can take years to really, really strengthen and deepen, but seconds to destroy. And if you give feedback in a wrong way. Actually, someone called me today and was pulling their hair out because one of the athletes that they look after, they had a discussion with the coach today. And the coach. First question the coach said to them was, what's your thoughts on retirement. Now, that may have actually been coming from a good place. It may have been a sensible conversation, but just those words coming out in a clumsy way had. Even though this person had been in that team for a decade, they felt that sense of belonging had been destroyed by that one comment. So it's something you just need to be aware of that even if you're annoyed with people and even if in your mind you're thinking maybe they're not going to be here for a lot longer, you try and use your words carefully.

Yeah, great advice. I want to talk a little bit about belonging for you, and I was just really intrigued with your story around Hawaii and your family that came down and the whole connection with Ngi Tahoe. And then you've got the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland, that connection. So for the listener who hasn't read your book yet, I'd love to just take a moment, if you don't mind. Just could you share your family lineage, your story of who you are and where you belong?

Well, yeah, I'm happy to do it. That's not too boring for the listeners. But, you know, whakapapa is to me an idea of all New Zealanders and quite frankly, anyone in the world. I know people have come to me and told me that there are North American indigenous tribes, there's.

Parts of China as well, which have very similar ideas. So I think it's probably a universal idea.

And I don't even. I'm part Maori. I don't think it's an exclusive Maori idea. That's my own point of view. So I think anybody from any background can map out their own whakapapa in order to get a bit of clarity on their own identity. So for me, and the metaphor I use sometimes is that our Whakapapa is like all the different streams that flow into the river that makes us up. So for me, you're right. I mean, there's the Maori stream that flows into the river of who I am, but there's also the Irish and there's also the English. So this river who's become me has been fed. And they're all spiritual water from all of them, but actually they all come together to form something different.

So, you know, my father was half Maori, if you like, half English.

He was an only child when he passed away when I was five. You know, I did feel not only the loss of him, but a lost identity, I think. And when I became a teenager, that really frustrated me and probably made me quite angry at Times that I watched you all blacks do the haka and I knew that I was also connected to the Mori people, but I didn't have any tangible way of.

Experiencing it. So I wrote to Ngai Tahu when I was 12 and then they explained the idea of whakapapa plus gave me generations going a thousand years of my ancestors with some incredible stories. So that, that was like just. I'm grateful for that. But I've also done the same legwork, if you like, on my own in terms of my English ancestry.

Some pretty cool stories we've uncovered there. And then also the Irish. And a couple of years ago, my mum and myself, we knocked on a door in Dingle, you know, on the peninsula in Dingle, and knocked on the door because someone in the village told us that's where the dailies are from. And there was a guy who was in his mid-80s, answered the door and just introduced ourselves and he just said, aha, wonderful, come in. And we had an amazing afternoon with him. And he explained he knew immediately who we were. The three brothers in the 1860s, two of them left after the famine. One went to live in North America, one went to live down in New Zealand, our ancestor and one stayed and he was obviously related to the one who stayed. But they knew that, that the family had gone off around the world and it was very powerful moment. But so he was able to fill us in on some of that whakapapa that we'd lost in the interim. So I, I think it's really wonderful and I have spoken to some people in New Zealand actually said some schools are giving, you know, like year sevens or something like that, some experiences where they each get to trace their whakapapa and they, you know, there's a, a guidance around how you go about doing it and that includes the person who's just arrived a month ago from Ukraine. You know, it's not, again, it's not just something for exclusively for indigenous people. But the key thing is you get to present to your classmates this is my story. And then you get to distill all of that story to two or three values that you've learned which you think are really, really special because of the stories and they're going to anchor you into the rest of your life, you know, and belonging. I talk about Pakanui, my grandmother, you know, four generations ago, who was the epitome of resilience really because of her life story. So I've already spoken to my children, my 9 year old daughter and my 15 year old son. And we've talked about, you know, I think we are resilient people. And this is a story of Pakanui. And I hope that gives them confidence and belief that when adversity hits, which inevitably will, that one of the things from the Whakapapa that will anchor them through all that will be being resilient people.

Yeah, Paka Nui, four generations ago, your great, great grandmother. I mean, I just loved listening to the stories that you wrote about her, her sense of who she was, what she fought for, what she went through and struggled and survived through. What an inspiration. And to have that as part of your.

I think the thing about her as well is that she was charismatic and larger than life and optimistic, despite the harshness of having family massacred, being a refugee in her own land, being raped by European whalers at least twice, two children from that, being pushed off the land again when she was 19, having been baptized and told that all of the belief system that she had been taught was untrue. There was only one book and one God.

So you could be bitter. I mean, you could not get through that. You could be bitter. But she was known as this big, wonderful, warm, optimistic person. So that's resilience to me is to go through those things and also be positive for those who are around you. So that's why she continues. That's pretty cool, isn't it? She was born in the 1830s, and we still talk about her as though she was around yesterday. Yeah, I mean, that's. That's Legacy right there, 100%.

And she did not do that for her. That was all for her family, her tribe, her people.

Yeah. Great. You're right. Children. Wow.

That's incredible. And now that you know more about who you are and you know where you sit in the world through your own lineage, how does that impact your filter of the world and how you engage with the world around you?

Well, you know, let's be clear. There's absolutely nothing special about me. I suppose when I'm thinking about identity, what I'm thinking about is what is the best version of us? Okay, so when I'm talking about a team identity or even a national identity, what is the best version?

So what's the best version of being a Kiwi? What does that look like? I think words that spring to mind for me are humility.

Being innovative.

Being selfless. I think. I don't think we're selfish people. I don't think that's their identity. So I think the best version of who we are, the teams I work with, England football team, the South African cricket team.

You know, others. We are very clear on what the best version of us looks like. We're really clear on it. It's not a mystery. We articulate it on the field in terms of their style of play and what that looks like, but also off the field type of people. We need to be in the type of environment that will bring the best out of everybody and the type of connection we want to have with the people who care about us. So I feel the same as an individual. I know in my mind there's a best version of who I am, and I aspire to be that, and I fail, you know, regularly. But I want to be kind, and there's times where I'm really kind, and I'm proud of that because that's me living out the best version of who I am. There's other times where I could be kind and I actually don't take the opportunity. I'm not necessarily unkind, but I'm not do the thing that would be a really kind action. I might be in a rush or whatever, preoccupied. So, you know, there's those type of things I really help. And I have these conversations with my kids as well. So whether it's an individual or a team of any sort, any community, I think what I'm interested in is what does the best version of you look like? And when people can articulate that, it's awesome. And if they can't, then as a coach, I'd like to help them.

Yeah, that's the identity aspect. And in terms of rituals, because I look at great teams, great tribes, great cultures. You know, you travel to the Pacific Islands. You know, I go back up home to Ireland or even across to Scotland. Like, we've all got these different rituals. People know the All Blacks for their famous ritual, the haka. So how can rituals help to embed a deep sense of belonging?

I suppose the thing about a ritual is that it becomes a habit, doesn't it? Yeah, that's the. If something isn't habitual, then it's probably not a ritual because it's just random and happens occasionally. And I think that does happen a lot, actually. And sometimes people really do things very well, but it's not ritualized, it's not habitual, it's not consistent. So I really like teams who are very clear on this is a ritual. So when someone new comes into our environment, this is virtually what we do. This is how we deal with that situation when we Finish a campaign or maybe it's a financial year for a corporate. But we ritually create a space and time to reflect back.

And celebrate.

So there's a lot of different rituals that you can do. And we want people to feel connected to the story of who we are, the story of us as we go through these rituals. I think that's important and then that is giving people a sense of belonging, particularly those people who may not have been there as long. So, yeah, so rituals are important, but sometimes, you know, it actually annoys me a little bit. I occasionally get asked by people, oh, you know, we've got a camp coming up. Have you got any good rituals that we could use? And it does annoy me a little bit that because there's no real commitment to do this regularly. I just want to have a bit of a.

Dramatic day as at the start of the camp.

Yeah, there's no connection. Yeah, it doesn't. It won't flow through the whole season or the whole team. It's just. It's a rah rah moment.

Yeah, exactly. And also I'm a performance coach. I'm interested in rituals that help our performance rather than just warm fuzzy feelings. I mean, a good ritual with England football team, actually we've done over the last six years is before we go into a tournament, we have a day where we just. We do visioning via creating four scenarios. So we, you know, and this has been incredibly helpful because we've had basically a 50% hit rate on the scenarios we create and actually coming to fruition. So, you know, we take a day of the management team, the coaches, etc. And we play out. These are the four, two on the field and two off the field. So this is what could happen. And we force them to deal with it as though it's happening right now. And then we create an agreed response and then we are able to automate it because we get into the detail of how we would deal with that. It plays out. Now that's become a ritual now. I like that one. It's not as sort of sexy as some of them, but it's actually a real performance enhancer. That one. Again, some corporates, they might do a deal takes years to get over the line, or a lawyer, they might have a litigation which. Which resolves itself after years. I like rituals where the next day they don't go on to the next case, they get out of the office and they create a circle and they actually just. There's an equality around that circle and they reflect on what the hell do we just go through together? What did we learn? What do we want to take forward with us? And what do we want to leave behind and really do some rich learning. I love rituals like that.

Again, it's not just making people feel warm in the moment that can be important, but it actually enhances our performance as a team.

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And self evaluation. To me, it's the seed of self mastery. Like when we're trying to improve and grow and learn to evaluate and reflect upon great moments or not so great moments. That's just essential.

Yeah, and it is. Like when I was a lawyer, we never actually did these things. We didn't you know, we would spend years and years, we'd make massive, massive decisions. You know, we would reject millions of dollars as an offer to, you know.

End of case, and we would go to court or the opposite. We'll do all these big things, but we never created a space at the end of it just to go back and reflect on, you know, if we had our time again, what have we learned? Would we do make those same decisions actually? What was the experience like for the client? We never asked that question. We never asked the client that question. Just build them, you know, so that's frustrating for me. I think there's a huge amount you could do in those areas of performance, which, with some really cool rituals, you're right.

There's missed opportunities. And often with teams or corporate organizations that I work with, I often talk about the exit interview. And some CEOs will go, what's that? Well, that's the moment when someone leaves your team or organization and you take the hour to sit down, share a meal, and ask them, from a very safe space, what did you like? What did you not like? What would you have liked more of?

What?

Where do you see things heading? What was inspiring to move somewhere else? What could we have done to keep you? I just think that there's opportunities there to be asking those questions of ourselves, but also of people who do leave. And inevitably, change is happening. People do leave. So do you have any thoughts around when someone departs an organization or a team, what can be learned in that departure?

I like the way you frame that, actually, because some of these things can feel like a part of a process, which who the hell gets excited about a part of a process. But when you actually explain, this is a ritual, this is who we are, and this is how we do things. When people leave, we create a space for them to share all of the things that they've learned and that can help us going forward. And we want it to be a completely safe space for them to be, you know, if need be, brutally honest about their experience with us. So. But, you know, if you say it's part of a process and, I mean, a lot of people would opt out. I noticed, you know, and I was blown away by this. I do work, you know, with corporate teams, and someone said they had an employee engagement survey recently, and there was something like 60% of staff responded, which they were delighted with, was a fantastic number. And I was like, are you for real? So 4 out of 10 people don't even reply on what the experience is of working here. And to me, that I think, for me, that's an invitation to create something emotive and ritualistic, rather than. This is a process where you get an email and you have to click on a link and do something, you know, so that's how I would think about it.

No, I agree. 100% agree. And in terms of an U.S. story. So in the book, you talk a lot about an us story. So how can a team create their own us story in terms of how that helps with past, present, and future?

Yeah, I think sometimes I get asked questions where people think that I'm obsessed with the past. And I'll be honest with you, James, I actually do love history, so I'm a bit obsessed with the past, but I don't think of an us story as the past.

The metaphor that I use, which is how I understood Whakapapa, was, you know, we're part of an unbreakable line of people going back to, you know, whatever origin story of this community is. And we're also. This line of people goes to the end of time. And that. We're just one part of it. We're just one link in this chain of people. And this. And the metaphor is the sun just first shone on our origin story, obviously, and just slowly move down this line of people, revealing everybody before us. And, you know, by the fact that we're having this conversation, the sun shining on you and I right now, and. But it's moving off us all the time, and that's okay. And it will come off us at some point, but we'll still be part of this unbreakable line of people. So we're still going to be immortal. So what's important is that, you know. Yeah. When the sun is shining on you, it's not just the past, it's not just the present, it's not just the future. It's all those things are wrapped into one because, you know, you need to understand what you inherit and, in fact, what you're a guardian of. Like, you need to understand that. So there should be rituals to help you understand that. Like, this is who we are. This is where we come from. This is our story. This is our identity. This is our purpose. These are our values. Our rituals and traditions like that should be ritualistically passed down. So you are anchored in us, not in me. And then the sun shining on us, that's forcing you to really contemplate, well, what needs to be done in this moment. Because none of these moments are ever identical. They never have been in the history of the world, and they never will be. They're all unique. So what is the moment asking of us? And certainly up here in England at the moment, like, the economy's gone mad and there's all we've got. Ukraine, which is not as far away as you might think, and everything that's going on with that. So this moment is asking something quite specific and special and unique for a lot of people, a lot of leaders over here and not just in politics. So, you know, so that's in the moment. What do we need to do? And that always includes what needs mending from what we've inherited. Okay. It's not like we've inherited anything perfect. That's often. It's far from that. So we need to identify what, as you know, what the sun's on us, what do we need to mean? And then we're thinking, where do we want to go? Where do we want to take our people? Where do our people need to go? So that is. That drives our visioning of what we need to achieve while we're together, which will put the tribe in a better place to be successful going forward. So there is no past, present, and future. In my mind, it's one story and they all working together all of the time. Because the way we want to go forward is very much shaped by the sense of identity which has been informed by the past, but it will be its own chapter of the story. We're not trying to repeat anything or mimic anything, and I think that's really empowering, actually. If you go to an organization or a team and they say, this is our story, it's not perfect, but this is what it is. This is what's written on the walls.

But, hey, we're going to write our own chapter together, and this is what we think it could look like. And we think you could be a big player in it. And what do you think? And then we color in that together. So that story of us is, yeah, everything.

Really powerful.

And we look at great teams and organizations and we can say the All Blacks, we can say the wallabies, we can go to the English football team. Doesn't matter who we're talking about here, but there's always going to be individuals who step outside of or cross the line or do something that's not right within the team's values. So what's the difference between rules and values within a team in terms of, like, setting standards and that this is who we are. What do you see the difference between having rules versus values?

Well, I You know, is this my approach? I'm not, don't want to come across as though I've got it right and everyone else is wrong, that's for sure. But my approach, I never ever, ever use the word rules. But a bit ironic coming from a former lawyer.

Maybe I'll be fed up with them, but I never ever use rules. I hate rules myself.

I get frustrated by them.

So what I think gets the better performance and better growth out of people is to say let's have a really clear sense of identity.

As a group and as an individual. So we do the work on both and let's be very clear on what the best version of us looks like. And I actually put something on LinkedIn the other day about this because I feel like belonging, it's a big word now, isn't it, in corporate culture and it's in the media and everything. So it's a big, big word. But what often gets forgotten is in some ways it's like my employer or my team or my community need to give me belonging, give it to me. But to me it's a two way street in that.

You also, if you want to be part of this type of culture of belonging, you need to buy into the shared identity that we have. You need to put that above their own personal gain. And I know in some environments people are only there for their personal gain. They'll talk about all sorts of things, but ultimately they're only there for their personal gain the moment their personal gain is compromised or out of there. So they don't ever really commit a sense of belonging the other way back. Okay, so that's just a truth. I think so. From my point of view.

What I love is when we create a team environment where we have got a beautiful story of who we are, AKA the best version of us, it's anchored in maybe three values. We create a space where every individual gets to articulate for themselves what that value means to them. And I've talked in the past about how the, with the Proteas South African cricket team, we used to do this and, and a Muslim would talk about what honesty or resilience would look like and then the next guy would talk about how it meant to him as an atheist or, you know, everybody had their own particular meaning. Some people had the grandparent, other people had the prophet a bit, even at different examples of what that value looked like and how it was lived. So we love that. But what we want everybody to do is to buy into these are the values that will navigate this journey we're on together and when people buy into that and they are really clear on living above that line, being the best version of themselves and us, then I just think you get incredibly cool behaviors and a great culture more than if you just send everybody a list of what the rules are and tell them that if you don't comply, you'll be punished.

Yeah, no, I agree. I had a leader that I worked with probably 10 years ago and we talked about roles because we're having some challenges within the group versus a way like this is the way we are, this is who we are. And that way prevailed and he was instrumental in putting this together. It was the way of the team and it really helped us to navigate difficult challenges. When people were stepping outside of what we thought culturally was right for the group. The group almost self monitored, self corrected. We didn't need to step in and enforce rules. It was very interesting just to see once people were clear on this is the way we are, this is who we are, this is how we speak, this is what we stand for, this is what we don't stand for. It was really quite powerful.

Yeah. A simple example in a sports team I've seen would be one of our values is humility. And then one of the players after a performance where they were, you know, the superstar.

Isn'T humble at all or is disrespectful to the opposition.

And, and, but okay, so, you know, you could have rules about that type of thing if you wanted. I don't know how you'd write them would be complex. But what is much more powerful is when they come back into the dressing room or into the team environment. And then this could be a senior player or one of the peers comes over and just says, hey, that's not who we are, mate. The way you spoke about the opposition, the way you spoke about yourself and not your teammates, that's not us. And then they quickly acknowledge that and then they'll quickly make peace with that with their teammates and they move on. I mean, to me, it's just a different world from, you know, having a rule that you breach and there's some sort of disciplinary consequence to it.

Agreed. Yeah. It's funny because Izzy Dagg, one of our former All Blacks, came out recently on camera and shared it with the world that there was a certain game he was playing and he scored an incredible try. And afterwards he just kind of over overdid the celebration a little bit and essentially he had helped win the game. And at the end he got into the changing rooms and Steve Hansen come over and said, don't you ever do that again. And in Izzy's mind, he's like, I.

Just won the game for us.

It should be a pat on the back. I did well. But it was the way in which he carried himself after he helped win the game that just didn't sit well with the way that Steve wanted. And it was quite cool to hear Izzy share that publicly and how that all went down and his lessons from that as well.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they strike me as a team has a very, very clear understanding of who they are and what the best version of themselves looks like. And they would have a very sharp.

You know, radar for picking anything up like that. But, you know, it's in corporate world as well. Like people talk about integrity, et cetera, can have a lot of rules about that, but people know when people have integrity or not. And it's much more powerful if it's clear that to be part of this team you're going to have lots of opportunities to probably compromise your values, you know, and not be as honest as you could be, all these things. So we all know that's part of the world of a lot of, you know, corporate environments. But we really value integrity here and it's really powerful in that environment. Again, not rules and stuff, but when someone calls it out.

That is powerful. But to me that really works well if there's a shared identity which is based around things like that, not some corporate policy somewhere. HR policy.

Yeah, agreed. I know. And when we think about heading towards a big outcome, I think of something in my mind where we focus on the root, not the fruit. And at times, in my own competitive world as a musician, sometimes I focus too much on the fruit, like winning the world championship, winning the prize, rather than focusing on the route, which was focusing on the process, focusing on the culture, focusing on the team. And so things often got out of whack. Not always, but at times for sure. So what's your thoughts around focusing on end goal versus micro milestones?

My approach is that when we. Well before the competition, we get together, we close the door so the media and fans, etcetera, can't hear the conversation.

And we get friggin excited about winning and we. And you know.

I've been lucky to work a bit with Harry Kane, England football. He's awesome like that, the England football captain, even when the team was lowly ranked in 2018, going to the Russian World cup, you know, close the door. And then he just asked some very Very basic questions of the team, like why can't we go all the way? I love that. So it's got to be authentic. It's not just a coach standing there and giving a speech about how he thinks or she thinks that we might win. It's got to be done properly and I think it's much more powerful if it actually comes from the players themselves. But I always, you know, so I'm never shy of talking about winning internally. So I think it's really important to anchor the whole thing now. Sometimes it's, you're not aiming to win. I mean some English football clubs are trying to avoid relegation. That success for them. So whatever your success is, that's fine. But I think it's really important to do that, to actually create a vision of what we really going after here and why we believe it's possible and then get friggin emotional about it. So talk about if we actually achieve that, what would it be like for the fans, for our families, for ourselves? Like really get deep in there, get excited and create some really powerful mental pictures of what that could be. So I definitely do that. But then a bit like strength and conditioning, I would start tapering off from that emotional.

High and focusing on the process so it doesn't have to be said every five minutes. We don't have to stick it on the walls every day. We know why we're here, we know what we were trying to achieve. We might not say it to the media and the public, that's fine. But we know what we're after, that's all that matters. We know what success would look like, we visualized it. But then we don't keep going on about it.

We really.

Okay, in order to do that, what are the things that have to be done? Well, so then we need to be really clear on a game plan. We need to clearing our roles, need to prepare in an amazing way, need to train with incredible intensity and clarity. All of those things need to happen. So I don't believe like you don't talk about outcome and just talk about process. To me that would lack emotional fuel. But I do believe you go there early, go hard and then you can have little implicit references to it. But basically then focus on the how from there on in and then just compete like hell.

Great advice. That's incredible. Yeah. Thinking back to some of those moments where we did really focus at the start of the season on what it would look like, what it would mean. We told stories around it, then we did taper off and focused on process or skill sets, mindset, they were the best seasons, they were the most consistent. So yeah, really interesting. Now, cultures, I guess first thing I'd like to ask is what do you believe culture means? What is culture?

Culture is the environment that you are in. And that includes a lot of conscious and unconscious signaling. So the words that people say, that's part of culture, the words that are on the wall is part of culture. But equally important is actually the non said things. People's body language, people's tone of voice, whether people actually like leaders, talk to you or not, all of these things are bombarding you with signals all the time. So culture to me is not like a nice pretty little thing that you wrap up. It is very complicated and it is constantly moving and you know, it's really like an organism in that respect. So if I'm looking at a culture and I go into an environment, I actually do do this. I spend months observing. Often I'm looking not just for what's in someone hands me in a document or what people say it is. I'm not just overly focusing on the words that are said in the room and in the environment. I'm looking very carefully at all those other signals that are sent. I think it's really powerful. And I think actually in the next 10 years we're going to have a much better read on how all of these things affect our hormonal states and our behaviors and our mindset. And the MIT have got a human dynamics lab, I think Dan Coyle and the culture code mentions it. And I think they're going to do some groundbreaking stuff around this. You can have someone in an environment who's looking at you and telling you something which sounds amazing and you are full of fear and anxiety because they're signaling actually something about the tone, their eye contact, the body language is not right. It's just not right. They're saying, you know, I believe in you and all these things and it's not right. So that's all part of the culture as well. And you know, the things like alphas, their behavior in an environment.

They can take a lot of energy and oxygen in an environment. So there's a lot of subtlety. I know it's not a great answer, it's probably an absolutely terrible answer if anyone wants to write anything down. But I think it's these things are all part of the actual real environment we are in, which has a massive effect on our hormonal state and our mindset. So to me, I'm interested in all of it? Absolutely all of it. And not just the obvious things.

One thing that really stuck out on was in the book you talked about strong cultures don't airbrush history. That was really fascinating for me. So what's your thoughts around that? What made you bring that to the fore? What is a strong culture that you've seen where you're like, you know what? They didn't try and airbrush that they owned their warts and all.

Well, I had a great experience into last year, actually. I was working with a big global corporate company and we had an offsite in New York and we actually. And amazingly, they wanted to look at their whakapapa. So we went back to the founding of the business in 1917, and we had an amazing. We've created six amazing films representing the different.

Eras in the past. So from the origin story and then the 1920s and then the Second World War was huge for this business. And then the 50s, and then there was the 60s and 70s, there's all these six films. So it was done like a museum. It was experiential. So, you know, a lot of preparation went into this. So every. This global. They all flew in together. First time since COVID is 24 of them. And everybody just went at one end of this big room and watched that first film, which is very evocative. And then they moved down to the next one and we used the sun just moving down the wall so it would then shine on the next screen. And it was pretty bloody cool. And then at the end of it, there were all the 24 seats were in a circle with a spotlight on it at the end of this massive room. And they sat there and we asked.

How do you feel? And some of them said.

Incredibly proud. This is one of the most awesome businesses in the world. And we've had an amazing impact on the globe, let alone America, which is true. So it was all cool, but then the space was great. The next person said, I feel shame. Said, wow, okay, talk us through that. Because everything there is true. And we have had an incredible impact on the world, but we've always. I've been here for 30 years, and as a woman, I can tell you this has been.

A horrendous culture for most of that time. If you're a woman.

The behaviors, the way we've been treated and discriminated against, the opportunities denied us. And so I do not want to mimic any of that. I want it to be, as you say, I don't want to be airbrushed that because A big motivator for her and others in that group, when she articulated it was that needs to be mended. And that's part of our work as leaders right now with the sun shining on us, is that we do not want people who come after us to go through those horrendous experiences and feel like that.

So that is a good example to me of understanding the story up to this point, not airbrushing it and then creating a real intention around, you know what, we're going to write our own chapter and it's going to be pretty cool. But actually, there's a few things that needs fixing here and that was one of them. So to me, that was a bit. That was powerful experience, such a great.

Example, and it takes such courage in the current, you know, if you're currently the guardian of the company or the team right now, to acknowledge, go back and acknowledge that and say, we are going to do something about that, that's huge. The other thing that was, I think, is really relevant. So we recently have had a team where they've had a few not so great performances and.

The governance body has essentially said, look, we need to get.

Rid of the coach.

Coach is the problem. Now, we've seen this across many different places and countries and through many years and centuries. But you wrote in the book, changing leaders is the last, not first measure to consider. And I so strongly agree with this. And I feel like coaches and managers can sometimes be given the chop really quickly with three or four mediocre performances. What would you suggest people do first? When you want to do the right thing as a leadership body to support the team, the culture, the organization, what would you do first rather than put the pressure on the coach to say, you're gone tomorrow unless you win today's game?

Well, the first thing I would do is before we even kick a ball or whatever sport it is we're talking about, or in fact any other pursuit is from top down, have real clarity on where we are right in this moment and what we're actually striving to achieve. So what that looks like is rather than us form this unhealthy relationship with a scoreboard before the campaign even starts, we want to have objective, rational conversations with the head of performance, the head coach, using as much data and analysis as we can. Where are we right now? So I'm on the board of Harlequin's Rugby Club, for example. We're one of 12 teams in a salary cap competition. There are a lot of different ways you can understand about how we might be comparative to the opposition at the moment. We've moved in the last 18 months from 35% homegrown players to 70%. Okay, so that's the strategic shift. But the younger players are less experienced. Okay. So they take. They are quite a long way away from reaching their potential. So what we. Our head coach is Tabi Matson, a wonderful head coach. And what we do as a board is we sit down with him and the performance director, Billy Millard, before the season is even anywhere close to starting. And we just review.

How last season went, what we learned from the various reviews that took place, and then we project forward, but anchored in a reality of what we're going for and what the challenges will be. So we have some key players unavailable at the start of the season for us, some of our 10 and 12 very important players. So Tabi has an opportunity to articulate that we can't play our normal attacking game in probably the first four to six weeks. Okay. So we're going to have to go to a plan B around the way we attack. That is very healthy for everyone to understand that. And, you know, one of the things I've done with the teams as well is actually as a board and as with the CEO, as we rehearse losing four games in a row before the emotion and all the external pressure arrives, we actually go through a scenario of that happening before in the summer, in the off season. And what we do is we talk about it and when the emotion isn't there, everyone agrees. Well, we stick together, don't we? And is there any. If we lose four games in a row, what would be the difference in terms of what we think about the coach and we do right now, like, is he the wrong would say so and then it comes out. No, we actually, yeah, we think he's wonderful. We believe in him and we keep calm, we keep composed. We stick to the game plan and whatever it is, we support them and see it out. So to me, that is critical is to create the best environment for your coaches to operate in. And that's realistic expectations, some real visioning of what adversity could come and how we will deal with it. And just reminding ourselves in the off season that we believe in these people and we believe in the plan of God. And at the end of the year, we can review both. Not in the middle of it, under pressure. That's what I've learned as I've had this career. I suppose I think they are the best conditions for people to thrive on. And I Wasn't very comfortable, to be perfectly honest, during this last rugby season, the way Ian Foster seemed to have to repeatedly justify himself to the people who employ him. Notwithstanding a review of the previous season and all the planning would have gone into this season, it seemed to be happening twice in the first few months of the season. I felt sorry for him, but I'm pleased that he's got through that.

Yeah, no, 100% agree with that. It's obviously being here in New Zealand. We've been in amongst that and the media has been all over it. And when you think of Ian, I was walking through the hills here about a month ago with a former All Black captain, and we're just chatting about the situation. We both agreed that as a governing body, you've got to also respect your managers, coaches and players as people. They're not pawns. And they've got family, they've got mums, they've got dads, aunties, uncles, kids. And how do they feel when the media is representing what's being said from the body itself and treating people with more compassion and respect? And I think that all bodies should be remembering that, particularly with the likes of Ian, who's incredible at what he does, who's under a lot of pressure, and who, when you look at it, is doing a very good job.

Well, amazing, isn't it? I mean, we won the rugby Championship despite all the drama that preceded it. And to me, that was a good lesson, that once they committed to him, seemed to settle the team down a bit, and then they performed at a high level and that they were the best team in the competition. And I don't think there's a coincidence those things. Personally, I think you can see lots of patterns where they are correlated to each other.

That's great. Well, I know we're about to wrap up. Just want a few last questions before we do wrap up. But when people say an organization creates a strong culture, how can they maintain it? Because you walk into a strong culture. Let's say you walk into. We'll go back to the All Blacks again. They've just won the World cup, and you walk in the following year, and your new management, how can you maintain and strengthen that culture?

Well, I don't believe just mimicking what's been done in the past is the answer. I think what we have to ask is a really simple question, is what's the best environment for this group of people? And it's not the same thing as just copying what we've done before. But sometimes a team is very experienced. So actually the environment needs to be set up slightly differently to a team which is very inexperienced, where they might need more direction, et cetera. So I try and keep very clear eyes. I want to understand what the cultural framework is, of course, because we want it. That's part of the whakapapa. So we want to understand that. But we also might need to have the courage to adapt and change. So the question I keep coming back to is.

You know, for this group of people, so you need to know the people, you need to know their context, you need to know who've come in and out and what type of personalities. I'm sure you know, when Richie McCaw transitioned into Karen Reid, you can't just have exactly the same culture. It's impossible, because culture is ultimately about people. So it will change, just will. So the good thing is if we've got really good intention and really good understanding based on past experiences of the things that work for us. I think New Zealand cricket team are an interesting example. I think over the last few years I've created a really cool culture which would not work for probably any other team, but it actually works for a bunch of humble, hardworking Kiwi lads. But my fear would be the next coach they get is a foreign coach who arrives and says, okay, this is how I set a team up. This is what my culture looks like without any of that learnings and understanding the people. So I'm not a fan of people coming in and doing that. I think you should have some humility.

And actually just try and ask yourself a refreshed question of what would be the best environment for this particular group and what's worked for them in the past and take all that on board. So, you know, we're continually reinventing it. That's, I suppose, the point I'm trying to get across, not trying just to replicate things.

Absolutely. And with a high performing team, they need to maintain focus over a season, or sometimes multiple seasons, on the build up to a World Cup. How do they best maintain focus on the prize, on the outcome? What's one of the best ways for a high performance team just to sustain and maintain that focus?

I think periodically you want to revisit your vision of what that success would look like. So you keep motivated and it's got to be three dimensional and visualizable, not just like, we want to be number one team in the world. I mean, that would bore the hell out of me if someone just said, that's every year we just turn up. We want to be number one team. What does that mean? So I'd want to understand why that. I want that to be repositioned in a fresh, emotive way.

You know, like I live in England, my son plays rugby, you know, kids rugby and the rugby. Aviation has been devastated by Covid. I'm telling you, where we live in the Gloucestershire countryside, There were.

Probably 12 really competitive teams when we first arrived. Probably three or four of them have stopped playing since COVID And the ones that were kept playing, we were beaten by 30 points, 40 points when we used to have tight games. So rugby is, you know, I honestly don't think the administrators have got their heads around this at all. But it's been quite devastated. People, young boys and girls, got in the habit of stopping the routine of sport and they just have not gone back to it. They found that two or three friends actually would really love to play video games, PlayStation on a Saturday morning rather than go and do all that rugby training and all that stuff in the rain and then the cold.

So my point is, if I was like with England rugby team, for example, and I imagine this may be the case in other countries, is that I wouldn't just say want to be the number one team in the world, I'd make some friggin meaning to it. This country needs us to be successful, the sport needs us to be successful. You need a live true and emotive narrative as to why we want to be successful. Not just, I mean, you know, I think that's important, that's where I would focus. So within the football team, each campaign, we've always had a slightly different social context from Brexit, Covid, you know, and it's. And we've been able to tie doing well with what the country needs in this moment from us, whether it's a sense of togetherness, whether it's a distraction, whether whatever it is. So that's what I think keeps people motivated.

In the pursuit of greatness, not just a strap line of what a nice outcome might look like.

Thank you for sharing that. That's incredibly powerful. And Owen, just one last question, but before we wrap up, and before we do wrap up, I just want to say a heartfelt thank you for taking the time today to share your wisdom, your thoughts, your experience. A massive thank you for writing the book and sharing what you do and the teams that you do it with. I find the book enlightening. I think every leader should grab a copy. So as I say, I will pop the links to the book and if you're an organization. I know organizations like Air New Zealand are buying 5, 600 copies of this and getting out to all their staff. If you're an organization and you want to create better culture and a sense of belonging, I'm going to put a link to the publisher in the links as well. So if you want to go and get a bulk order, then you can do that. But on one last question, and that is if we fast forward many, many, many years, it's your last day on earth. The sun has almost about to set on your time here and someone very young that you love and care for, perhaps a grandchild, comes up to your bedside and asks Owen, and it may be granddad.

What do I need to do to lead my life on purpose? What would your advice be to them?

What a powerful question.

That's quite a timely question actually because I've lost my father in law a few weeks ago, my children's grandfather and we've been very reflective, amazing, beautiful person and we've been been very reflective about this.

I think I in some ways embrace the idea of becoming an ancestor. That might sound like a crazy thought, but you know, you become an ancestor after your time and the sun has passed and I'm highly motivated by being a good ancestor. I'd like my children and grandchildren and maybe even beyond them to feel that I did something useful and I put others before myself. So hopefully by that example, my children and my grandchildren would have a sense of purpose around what do we need rather than what do I want? And I don't think that would be because of any words that I would say. It would have to be by the type of life I lived, I think.

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that one and I look forward to connecting again. I don't think this is our last conversation, that's for sure.

Definitely not mate. Thanks so much and thank you for your kindness. Really appreciate it.

Well, thank you.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.