Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - UC Berkeley Rugby Coach Jack Clark on Team Building, Culture, Honesty

Episode Date: January 24, 2018

This conversation is with UC Berkeley rugby coach Jack Clark on team, culture, honesty.Jack is the iconic rugby coach at the University of California. His team-building abilities are considered legendary within university circles and throughout the corporate sector.Since becoming head coach of the Golden Bears in 1984, Clark has led the rugby program to 29 national collegiate championships.In 2000, Clark was chosen as one of Cal’s Ten Most Influential Sports Figures of the 20th Century.Not only has Jack sustained an improbable level of success for nearly 3 decades, but he’s not the slightest bit sick of what he does.In Jack’s words, “I really wouldn’t trade jobs with anyone. I mean anyone.”Jack has so much to share in this conversation.Everything from how he brings out the best in his players to how he scales culture to why his players are getting their unofficial PHD in team.This is a phenomenal conversation and you may have to listen to it multiple times to truly soak up all of Jack’s insights._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Remarkable. In a world that's full of distractions, focused thinking is becoming a rare skill and a massive competitive advantage. That's why I've been using the Remarkable Paper Pro, a digital notebook designed to help you think clearly and work deliberately. It's not another device filled with notifications or apps.

It's intentionally built for deep work. So there's no social media, no email, no noise. The writing experience, it feels just like pen on paper. I love it. And it has the intelligence of digital tools like converting your handwriting to text, organizing your notes, tagging files, and using productivity templates

to help you be more effective. It is sleek, minimal. It's incredibly lightweight. It feels really good. I take it with me anywhere from meetings to travel without missing a beat. What I love most is that it doesn't try to do everything. It just helps me do one very important thing really well,

stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. I'd like to believe that, you know, our players are, you know, are getting the unofficial PhD in team. They're, they're getting a really an acute understanding of team. You know, they know what a good teammate looks like and the effect that they can have. They know what a bad teammate is, unvariably, right? I mean, these young people, they're past, you know,

the 10,000 hours, 10-year moment. I mean, they're becoming an expert in team. And especially if we make that, that's what we're doing here and it's going to help us win some rugby games. But at the end of the day, that's the thing that is going to be, you know, the takeaway. All right. Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are switched on, people who are on the path of mastery, who have committed their life efforts to understand the nuances of their craft and in return, understand the nuances of what it means to be human.

We also want to explore the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft and their psychological framework as well. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center

of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time. And that's where LinkedIn Sales Navigator can come in. It's a tool designed specifically for thoughtful sales professionals, helping you find the right people that are ready to engage, track key account changes,

and connect with key decision makers more effectively. It surfaces real-time signals, like when someone changes jobs or when an account becomes high priority, so that you can reach out at exactly the right moment with context and thoroughness that builds trust. It also helps tap into your own network more strategically, showing you who you already know that can help you open doors or make a warm introduction. In other words, it's not about more outreach. It's about smarter,

more human outreach. And that's something here at Finding Mastery that our team lives and breathes by. If you're ready to start building stronger relationships that actually convert, try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for free for 60 days at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal for two full months for free. Terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals,

on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein,

just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity.

And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now, this conversation is with Jack Clark, and Jack is the iconic rugby coach of the

University of California, been around the game a long time. His team building abilities are considered legendary within university circles and throughout the corporate sector. Since becoming the head coach of the Golden Bears in 1984, Coach Clark has led the rugby program to 29 national collegiate championships. Yeah, that's so cool. I mean, that's not easy to do, right? Of course, that's not easy to do, but 29 national collegiate championships. And in 2000, Clark was chosen as the Cal's 10 most influential sport figures of the 20th century. Okay. So he's not only been around the game a long time,

he's influenced the game a long time. He understands team. He understands culture. And he understands how to also share those and impart those wisdoms in the corporate world as well. And not only has he sustained a probable level of success for a long period of time, nearly three decades, but he's not sick of it at all. He loves it. He's still in it. He's so in that it just jumps out in this conversation. It's beautiful. It really is. And in Jack's words, what he says is, I wouldn't trade jobs with anyone. And I mean anyone. Isn't that cool? You know he's thinking about anyone in the world and he loves his job that much. So we get to feel from this conversation, we get to feel what it's like to really be in love with the challenge that comes with helping other people become great inside of

the ecosystem of a university sport team. So just like with all the conversations that I have with people, I just hope this conversation shines a light on his brilliance and everything from how he brings out the best in players and how he scales culture and how his players are getting their unofficial PhD and team. That's one of the insights that's really cool from Coach Clark. So with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Coach Jack Clark. Jack, how you doing? I'm well. So I just, this is, we're starting over on the introduction because the last one I did, I forgot to press record.

Oh, you're a pro. Here we go. Okay. So we're here at University of California and we're at the field house, the rugby field house. Right. And this is a place that you've built. And as I'm looking around, there's tons of memorabilia, there's

jerseys hanging, there's signs and pictures, and there's all types of important artifacts that you've built here or included in the building. So can you talk about how you shape this culture of your office here? Well, we've been playing rugby since 1882. And, you know, this space is, you know, meant to represent the whole of that, of that history, you know, not, not just the most recent parts that maybe I've been involved with. So, you know, you walk in here and you, you can find something from the very early days of, uh, of Cal rugby all the way to, to current. And, uh, um, I, I think it's like that cheer song, you know, that, you know, place where everyone knows your name. That's what we want. We want those that have been in the program before to be able to return here and, you know, find something from their era, find

something, maybe even a picture of themselves to be remembered, you know, that, you know, their names in the book, so to say. And this is one of the reasons I wanted to connect with you. So in advance, thank you for your time, because I'm fascinated with rugby. It's one of our sports that are extremely rugged. There's moments of hostility, there's real danger involved. Uh, the risk is high, but the connection to team is phenomenal. And as from a coach, it's one of the sports that you have to prepare people to think in a rugged environment and to respond and react without the coach coaching them. The players are responsible for figuring it out on their own. That's one of the things I want to learn from you, as well as you've won nearly 90% of the

games that you've coached. And is it 27 national titles? Um, I think so. I'm not, I'm not really sure to be honest. I am. I'm not really sure. We, we, lately we play in two championships, so 15s and a seven. So it's become harder to kind of keep track of things.

And you've been coaching for over 30 years here. Right. I began in 1982 as an assistant coach and became the head coach in 1984. How did that work? Because there was a story that you were an assistant coach and then was it before the end of the year you became the head coach or was it in a year's time you became head coach? You traded jobs with the head coach or was it in a year's time you became head coach? You traded jobs with the head coach? I convinced him to hang around a while is what I did. I kind of felt like I'd been thrown off the top of a building with all the parts to an airplane.

I mean, I knew a lot about the game, but I didn't feel – I felt like an apprentice, to be honest. And so the previous coach was named Ned Anderson. And I just asked him to hang around a while and, you know, and be my assistant or if you will, head coach emeritus, you know, just to be on the scene. And it was very valuable for me that period of time. And, and we also, I would also look to bring in other coaches, um, to that were more experienced than me at the time to, to help. Um, you know, you just, you don't know what you don't know. Right. And, uh, so, you know, there, there aren't, you know, we're not great about, um, developing coaches. Um, you know, we, we quite often give someone a job before they're ready for the job.

And that's not helpful to the team and its ambitions or to the players. It happens. What you hope is over time, you catch up and you develop your own competencies. Okay. Because the things that I want to dive in, I want to understand your path, like how you've become to be a super successful coach. I do want to definitely understand how you develop coaches. And I know you've got a real particular model that you work from, not necessarily for developing coaches, but to get the best out of others. And so I want to walk through that, but I want to understand your framework and then dive a little bit deeper to understand the mental skills that you value as well. So if we could start at the

beginning and take us as far back as you can want to go or remember, but can you remember a point in time in your childhood that was significant in shaping how you think or the man that you've become now? Well, I can remember that I always had a really keen interest in sports, in sport. I can remember being a young kid and wanting to know more about coaches and players. You know, there wasn't an internet, obviously. There was no really even look behind the curtain. I can remember being influenced by George Plimpton, who, you know, wrote books.

He would embed himself with, you know, with a football team and as a writer and then share those experiences both via a movie and by way of a book. And I can remember being captivated by the look behind the curtain, what those players did while they were having a breakfast in the meal room, what they did at practice, at training. I can remember being so motivated to want to learn more. And I began very early in my life to, you know, find my own, you know, self-worth almost through sport. You know, my own, you know, my self-confidence came from sport and, uh, it was the place in my life very early on that I, I was most willing to kind of measure myself. Okay. So you played all the traditional stick and ball sports, right? Yeah.

Like back to back to back seasons. Yeah. One, one season would end and the next day, the other one began every once in a while while there was a little bit of overlap. And then how did you find rugby? I started hearing about rugby, but it was really when I came to the University of California. Scholarship football player and rugby had always been an important sport on our campus. And a lot of football players would go play rugby. I'm still in great contact with my head coach at the time. His name was Mike White. And Mike had a very storied football career, both at the collegiate level and also in the NFL.

And, you know, Mike told me on my recruiting trip, hey, you'd make a good rugby player. And I always tease him because I thought, well, my God, I'm auditioning to be a football player here. What does that mean? You know, and but it's about to get cut. Yeah, exactly. You know, and but it meant that that he saw that I would be a good rugby player. I enjoyed basketball growing up and, you know, and enjoyed football, obviously. So rugby, if you will, is a bit of combination of those two sports in some ways. And, uh, um, you know, football season was over and, you know, somebody taps you on the back and says, come on out to play some rugby. And I didn't think twice. And, you know, I was in love with the sport from day one. Okay. So you got to it late.

Yeah, pretty late. I mean, I would have been 19, 20. Yeah. Okay. And were the folks that you were competing with or competing against, did they play earlier? Or was that normal at that time to get to the sport around college age? Yeah, I think that was more normal for the time. It's completely abnormal now, but I think that the great, you know, kind of renaissance of American college rugby happened

in the sixties and seventies. And if you think about, you know, a bit of a counterculture time where, you know, maybe there were football players that were tired of having, you know, a bit of a counterculture time where, you know, maybe there were football players that were tired of having, you know, 12 coaches with whistles up their six telling them what to do and when to do it. And that rugby was, was, was more of a free flowing sport with, you know, a lot more room for kind of individual authorship. And, uh, so it was very attractive. So there was a lot of football players. If we just West Coast, you mean, when SC had some great, great football teams. Of course, they almost always have great teams. But, you know, during the late 60s, they were the best rugby team with all football players.

And Stanford during their Rose Bowl years, the 70s, all football players. And Cal as well, you know, kind of the best team on the coast many years,ies, all football players and, and, and Cal as well, you know, what the, the, the kind of the best team on the coast many years really with football players. So it was normal for us. Mike White, you know, was a, was a graduate of Cal and he was also football rugby. So, you know, your coach might've played football rugby, all the guys around you played rugby. It just seemed like the natural thing to do, to be a crossover athlete and go play rugby as a second sport. Is the idea that to be a rugby player, that there's an intelligence required, is that an accurate statement?

I think to be a good rugby player, yes. You've got to be able to make decisions in the moment with the ball in your hand. So, you know, there's a lot of sports where there's only a few guys on the team that have the ball in their hand. And so the decisions are, are more primary in, in, in their scope. In rugby, you know, everyone's going to have the ball in their hand and you're going to have to decide to run or to pass. And if, if you pass to whom and when, and, or if you're going to kick to where or to pass and if you pass to whom and when and or if you're going to kick to where and when and so there's a there there's a need to make decisions with the ball in your hand and therefore if you just you know you know kind of unpack that there's a there's a requirement

to know how to make a decision to to be able to look at events and boxcar those events together the same way a quarterback makes a read in football and to be able to look at events and boxcard those events together the same way a quarterback makes a read in football, and to be able to boxcard those events together so that you can make an informed decision, not just a quick decision. Okay, with that thought in mind, how does rugby prepare people for life after sport? So quarterbacking, to use your analogy, helps if we pulled on that string, it would help people be able to read a situation narrow their focus to see if a particular point of attack works widen their their focus again go back to narrow like to scan the world and continually reiterate and refine choices

of or directions of action so same for rugby. What are those corollaries? Well, I think that decision piece would be part of it. But rugby also has some other characteristics in the fact that there aren't positional play. You don't play on offense or defense. You play both. And there aren't significant substitutions. So most times if you play, you play the entire game. What that really means is that everyone's got to make their own tackles. Everyone's difficult, nastiest parts of the game. Even if you're, you know, even if you're really a skilled player and you're really there to kind of direct traffic and pass the ball well and kick the ball well, the fact is you're going to have to do some of that dirty work as well.

I think that's interesting. You know, there's a saying, all skills, all players. And I think there's some correlation to life there. You don't get to say at some point, I don't really do that. I don't necessarily have skills there. I think your family and the community and the workplace doesn't accept that as an answer. You really have to have a lash at all those things that are, that are kind of in your portfolio. And so I think rugby, you know, creates an atmosphere and a, um, uh, a learning scenario where,

you know, you can go forward with all skills, all players. And then the idea you, you talked about family and I've, I've read that you don't see sport as family and that that's a misguided, uh, misguided attempt to try to create bonding. And I'm going to nod my head and say, yeah, I completely agree. Cause it feels like it's a, it's a cheap way to tell people that they matter where in family there's, it's supposed to be unconditional. That's right. Right. And it's not always the case, but can you talk about that piece of team bonding and cohesion relationships?

I mean, I don't want to overstate it because I do believe that if you care about one another, that's pretty important. You know, I think if, you know, we genuinely care about one another, it's going to help the team perform. It's going to, you know, really contribute to the culture of the team immeasurably. So I think it's the right thing to do to have empathy for each other and be kind to each other and care about one another. It might just be semantics, but I just, you know, I roll my eyes sometimes at the notion that, you know, we describe ourselves so frequently as a family when family is, as you point out, Mike, it's unconditional where high performance teams are highly, highly conditional. You know, there's a requirement to contribute to the middle,

to do your job, to perform, to put your guts into it. I mean, you can't really research a high performance organization of any type where you don't come to that conclusion that there's a lot of conditions here and it's not right for everyone but those conditions help this organization operate and succeed and I think that that's how high-performance teams are. I think they're highly conditional and that doesn't mean they don't care about one another. It just means that it's not like you've got to accept me for who I am. And if that means you can't trust me or if I'm not punctual or if I break rules or if I don't give full effort, you've got to accept that. That's not true. You don't accept that in high-performance athletics.

Meaning that people get fired. People get fired. People get cut. People separate from the team. Coaches and players, right? There's an expectation in a high-performance team that everyone is putting everything they have into it. Okay. So who early on, go back to the early years for you, who were the people or what were the events that helped shaped you?

Well, I, I mean, to, to our, you know, to the earlier thread, I, I, I mean, it was my coaches. I can, you know, I, I think I've lived a pretty blessed life. I do hear, and I do see coaches that, boy, I'm glad I, I'm not playing for that coach or I hear stories about coaches, um, that, that aren't flattering, but my experiences could not be any further from that. I mean, I've, I've, I've literally had the most wonderful coaches from being, you know, a boy, uh, through, through my last coaches in athletics, every one of them has been really good and, and, and somebody that I really admired and, um, I would emulate

them. And, and I, you know, I, I found them to be, you be – it's not a very contemporary word, but cool. I found them to be these individuals that I wanted to emulate. All right. So if you could take a minute to try to deconstruct what those threads were. So they were cool. You wanted to emulate them. They brought the best out of you. They, they taught you or shaped you, um, your worldview. What were some of those threads that they held in common? I think trying to get to know you as the individual, um,

you know, would, would, would be one of those, a willingness to coach you, a willingness to tell you, you know, when your best could be better, when you're underachieving. I never had a really tough time with coaching. I liked it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. It always seemed to me personally that was part of the process. And if you didn't get it, you were getting cheated. So I was happy to be coached, even if that meant, you know, it was rough sometimes, right? I mean, I played team sports. So a lot of times, you know, you don't get a quiet word. You get a word across the court, across the field, across a group of individuals. That's how it works. And so you, you know, you can't be timid to that coaching. And I never was. So they took a personal interest in me.

They wanted to coach me. And I think they understood my strengths. And I think that's been a real kind of important part of my coaching probably in the last 20 years has been to do a better job of emulating that from my coaches. And that's to pay attention to people's strengths and to build a plan around what they do really well. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family,

pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday. What you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life. And to do that, they developed what they call the Momentus Standard.

Every product is formulated with top experts and every batch is third-party tested. NSF certified for sport or informed sport. So you know exactly what you're getting. Personally, I'm anchored by what they call the Momentus 3, protein, creatine, and omega-3. And together, these foundational nutrients support, protein, creatine, and omega-3. And together, these foundational nutrients support muscle recovery, brain function, and long-term energy. They're part of my daily routine.

And if you're ready to fuel your brain and body with the best, Momentus has a great new offer just for our community right here. Use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 35% off your first subscription order at livemomentous.com. Again, that's L-I-V-E momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, livemomentous.com and use the code finding mastery for 35% off your first subscription order. Finding mastery is brought to you by Felix Gray. I spent a lot

of time thinking about how we can create the conditions for high performance. How do we protect our ability to focus, to recover, to be present? And one of the biggest challenges we face today is our sheer amount of screen time. It messes with our sleep, our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've been using Felix Grey glasses. What I appreciate most about Felix Gray is that they're just not another wellness product. They're rooted in real science. Developed alongside leading researchers and ophthalmologists, they've demonstrated these types of glasses boost melatonin, help you fall asleep faster, and hit deeper stages of rest.

When I'm on the road and bouncing around between time zones slipping on my Felix Grays in the evening it's a simple way to cue my body just to wind down and when I'm locked into deep work they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in plus they look great clean clear no funky color distortion just good design great science

and if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. So I've also read that you spent a lot of time thinking about and sharing people's strengths. It sounds like, right? So is this, can you pull

on that? I want to ask you to pull on each one of these a little bit further because the science and the art of coaching, it for me is really best practices and the relationships that pull the best out of people. And so you've got three things that you just touched on. And I know you've got a deeper model that you work from. But the idea of getting to know somebody, to be able to coach them, and then to find and amplify their strengths are three tenets that seem like it's been part of the staple for you. So can we work in reverse order? How do you, how do you technically or tactically, how do you pull out the best in people? Well, I think there's, there's, you know, there's probably various, you know, various methods. I I'm interested, to be honest, about trying to learn over time. And I don't think it's

something that you know during the recruiting process. And sometimes it might take a couple years, but to really know the mentality of an individual, their athletic makeup, their athletic strengths, and to be able to build an approach to playing the game based on their strengths. You know, that's pretty powerful. I mean, every conversation I've ever had with a superior, typically, you know, I'm on the other side of the desk and people are telling me, you know, what are the things that I need to do better? And, you know, I've never wanted to be that person necessarily. I mean, the fact is there's some requirements in any sport and you have to do the requirements well.

There's basic skills that you have to be able to execute. But beyond that, I think building the team, it's about building an approach to playing, a technical approach based on what the players can do anytime, anywhere. And therefore, you know, once you get down to the individual level, it's the same thing. It's build a blueprint to play in the game based on what they do well. And sometimes you've got to be able to really understand what somebody does well, maybe even better than they do. And the process is you sit across from one another and you have notebooks out, you know, no phones, no laptops, just notebooks and a writing instrument. You know, I have a friend that says, you know, you code the brain writing longhand. And I think you just make lists, you know, what are the things that you're

doing well? And a player might say, well, I'm, you know, my ball handling skills are good. And if you agree, you say, yeah, they're good. They're good off either hand. Your left hand pass is remarkably good. Your right hand pass is very accurate. You weight the ball. I mean, you need to be able to do more than just, you know, create a line item of handling. You know, you need to be able to touch it, taste it, smell it,

be able to really make that skill come alive. So where hopefully at the end of that process, that modeling session, if you will, where you really sit down and you model an approach to playing based on what a player does well, you come away with something that can be leveraged, a skill set that they know they have. They know they can do it anywhere, anytime. They have confidence in that skill set. And now it's time to leverage that for the good of myself and my team. Okay. So I'm imagining that you sit down across from an athlete and you've done the lonely work first to be able to think about what makes them special. And then what I'm just hearing now, it sounds like tactically you ask them, hey, what are you good at?

And then so then you hear them first. Is that how you do it? And then they say, I've got good handling skills. And then you, because of your frames of reference and your lonely work that how you thought about that person, you take it deeper and then you work to get the fabric of it in such a, so clear that both of you can nod your heads and say, I understand the fabric of what we're talking about. So it's not conceptual. That's right. Okay. And then you build a strategy around that person to position them in six in yeah to push position them for success that's right for their personal success personal success is that when you say personal

is that different than um sport success or personal inside of sport um it it means that you could have two players playing the exact same position and it's really a coin flip which one of them is better. But they have very different skills and it is really, let's say it's tackling and let's say one of those players has great range and they really get around the field and they make a lot of tackles. And maybe the player that they're competing with doesn't have the same range, but their tackles are more forceful. Their tackles have a higher quality to them in the fact that they might change the game. So maybe half the tackles, but those tackles are so forceful that they create turnovers potentially. I don't know

which one of these players is the best, but I want them to both play to their strengths. I want them to know what their strengths are and I want them to play to them I don't want I don't want the player that is has a lot of range to their game to try to be the other person I want them to be themselves so so I think the blueprint is personal to them and do you when you coach people do you try to shore up their weaknesses or how much time do you spend on that? If their, if their asset is, um, range of tackling, is that a proper way to say it? And then, uh, ball handling skills, however, their footwork is a bit of a mess and, um,

decision-making is challenged. Like how do you, how do you, yeah, it's, it's, it's, um, it's fluid, but 70, 30 or so, right. I'm always trying to keep, keep some kind of a ratio in the back of my head that, you know, what I don't want to do is build this long list of all the things you can't do. Now there might be a couple of things on that list that you're not going to get on the field until you do these things. So we're not going to be able to ignore them. We're going to need a lot of honesty in this kind of audit modeling session.

It's going to be important that we can be direct. But what we're not going to do is we're not going to talk about the ninth most important thing. You're not doing well. We're never going to go there. And I do think that people should improve over time. I mean, I shouldn't draw a paycheck unless I can develop athletes. So we should have a training curriculum, which is going to acquire new skills. And over time, we should get better.

We should move deficiencies, you know, into the asset column over time. Well, I just, what I don't want to do is always be chasing deficiencies and not putting enough time into strengths. And how do we leverage strengths? You know, what I've found is with the higher level of the sport or the more intense the person is to achieve or experience high level sport is that if they're paying attention to their deficits and the coach is amplifying their deficits, and it's not like they purposely want to create the scenario I'm going to create, but it's easy to find the things that are not working well. They scream at you, right?

And when a coach says, hey, listen, I really want us to work on A, B, and C, and the majority of those conversations are about getting better at A, B, and C, that the athlete walks away saying, yeah, man, I'm not really that good at A, B, and C, that the athlete walks away saying, yeah, I, man, I'm not really that good at A, B, and C. Then when it's time to compete, that's the programming. I'm not sure if I have what it takes because the last 200 days of training, I haven't had what it took. And so that sets up this model. I don't, you're not in your head. Like that makes sense to me. I'm not in my head. Like you should come talk to my team. I'm from the McAfee clan. Right. And I have to force myself to be positive sometimes. Right. It doesn't come natural to me to, to not be the guy pointing out mistakes. And I think I probably spent a fair bit of my career being only that person on the way to winning championships, mind you. Um, so I completely

agree with you and, um, you know, I can, I can wear out my welcome pointing out all the things we can do to get better sometimes. And I, I've got to, um, I've got to find some balance in my coaching. I need to have you come in and talk about that confidence. It's really hard. It's really hard to do to find what's good. And especially when the adult mind, you know, the cognitive brain of ours that we're straddled with is always scanning the world to find what's wrong and broken and dangerous and hostile. That's how we survived. To override that, to find what's good, what could be good, what's amazing, what's an opportunity. Right. It does take a lot of discipline to do. And so that's the word discipline. Yeah, it does. Yeah. And so that's why we, um, spent a lot of time thinking about,

we, it's like the folks I work with coach Carol from the Seattle Seahawks and the team of folks that we work with about how to program and train optimism, because that requires us to find what could be amazing so that when we're in the trenches and it's not working, we've got that mental discipline to continue to find what could work in our advantage as opposed to saying, there it is again. See, we're not, we're down by 42 points. How are we going to get out of this hole? We should just call it in now. Right. Take my cleats off now. Right. Yeah. Okay. So do you have a way that you help people know who they are? That was one of your first thoughts about how to be a great coach? Well, I mean, my, my point I was trying to make is it takes a while to, to really understand it. I think, um, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to put people in boxes. I don't want to hurry up and, and, and suggest a person is something that they're really

not. And I, and I believe a lot in like a lot of, if you, if you looked at our glossary, you know, a lot of the definitions of things would, would say the ability to, I don't think you're born with a lot of stuff. I mean, I appreciate that it's probably true. And as a scientist, you're probably going to tell me you are born with it. But I got to believe in my job that, you know, I can influence people to, you know, to be their best self. And I think to do that, you know, I have to be optimistic that I can do it, that we together, we can create a culture around the team and some standards around the team that will help people get from where they are to where they want to be.

And not just, okay, here's who I am today. We don't have anybody on our team. That's not going to be better in a year from now and, and a completely different player in two or three years from now. So how do you create that tension between that healthy tension between this is who I want you to become? And I'm sure you get them to co-sign it. Like, you know, Hey, I think this is possible for you. And this, the person that they are today, how do you create that healthy tension between the two? You know, I think a lot of it is, is, um, was within the program, within the culture

of the program. Um, we're always chasing something. We're chasing this level of play that we can rightly aspire to, but it's going to be very difficult and nothing about that bothers us. I think it's hard on the newest players that enter the team, but we can win a game and we can win a game pretty substantially. And we're in the meeting room the next morning and it's my favorite session of the entire week. And I get to be at the board. And the question is, OK, guys, what do we do well?

And guys are going to be pretty stingy about putting up their hand. But eventually, they understand the process. We're eventually going to have to say we kicked the ball pretty well. And then somebody else might say, well, I don't know. I don't know that we – I think we kicked the ball pretty well until it really mattered and we didn't kick the ball well. And I want that collaborative discussion. I want the team to decide, does this go up on the wall or does it not, that we did something well? And at the conclusion of that, I'm going to say, okay, what do we got to work on? And the hands are going to fly up.

The hands are going to fly up. And I'm almost going to have to take another approach now, which is, well, I don't know that that belongs up there. I think we did it pretty well. Let's not, let's not go too far with that. But the culture of the team is, is going to be to identify the things that we can do well. And they're pretty good be to identify the things that we can do well. And they're pretty good at talking about the things that we are doing well. What are our strengths? What are we demonstrating that we can do well? But I love that process.

I love that over time, especially the upperclassmen, they're highly engaged in this process, highly engaged. And the honesty in that room is phenomenal. If you walked in the room, you wouldn't know whether we won by 40 or lost by 40, to be honest. What you'd have is a bunch of people talking about performance and in what areas can our performance improve and what areas can, you know, listen three weeks in a row, this has been up here as something we've done well. How do we leverage this in our next game? I mean, we're obviously good at this. And then maybe, hey, you know, three weeks in a row,

we've talked about this is something we can do better. You know, what do we have to do at training by way of volume and by way of exercises to, you know, to put this behind us, to show some improvement in this area? Now, I want them to be involved at that level. I'm not going to stop every practice and ask every player what they think of every situation. I know there's some coaches doing that, but we're going to be collaborative at the right time. We're going to, you know, they're going to know. I mean, you know, when that meeting's over on Sunday morning

from a Saturday game, you know, come the new week, they almost know what's going to happen in training because we, we sit and we, we, we made that made up in some way. And I know that anything I make up is influenced by so many great thinkers and science and doers that it's never really unique to me, or I think that that's true for most innovations. But after practice, for years, I've been asking athletes to write down, and now they text it to themselves and sometimes me, what went well, question one, question two, what do you want to work on? me. What went well? Question one. Question two. What do you want to work on? So I didn't make that up, apparently. Apparently, like, you've been doing this for a long time.

I've been doing it for a while. Where did that come from for you? You know, I mean, everything I've learned, I almost learned from our players. I mean, it's been an unbelievable laboratory over the years. You know, it used to be that, you know, you'd get players one-on-one and you'd hear what they had to say. And it really would influence me. I mean, their perspectives were so pointed and so accurate in many cases that I just started doing it together as a group. And now there's some people, to be honest, I mean, keeping it real here, there's some people in the room going, oh my God,

I mean, I don't even know what they're talking about really. You know, I mean, it's just too much for some people to be able to have that really, you know, this is sport is study is what this is. This isn't like I play a sport and the game's over and hey, I'm going to give it a lash next week as well. No, this is wanting to know, this is being curious. This is really creating that performance audit where you want to know. You want to know what you're doing well and how you can continue to do it well and use it better in more situations. And what are the things you got to work on? And again, I mean, I'm, I'm, it's my favorite, it's my favorite session of the week, bar none.

And, and I, I get to add my bits into that, which, which I appreciate. Sometimes if, if it's, if I think that we've understated something that has to be stated strong, more strongly, I do it. If I think that we're off on the wrong track because somebody put up their hand and took us down the wrong track, I'm going to move on to the next guy. It's important that there's a body of work in this session. Is it important that everyone is able to have a say? Yes, it's important that there's a body of work in this session. It's not, is it important that everyone is able to have a say? Yes, it is. But it's also important that we come to some real conclusions that can really help the team.

I mean, this is week to week to week. And, you know, I want to see the team improve. I mean, if we're not doing that, I mean, how, how do you justify the hours that you put into this? How do you justify, you know, being a coach? How do you justify, you know, the leadership within the ranks of the team if we're not getting better? It's really one of our, you know, constant performance improvement is one of our values. I mean, we say it as a value. I mean, if we're not going to get better at this, what are we doing? What I love about those two questions as well is that it forces people to think in positive frames. What did I do well is building the base to your point, your body of work of what you have the right to be confident about. And then the second question, what do I want to get better at? It's stitches right back to one of your core values. And then, so you've, I think you've got five core values. Is that right? Yeah. I wrote them down. Yeah. Let's see if there's five. How'd you do? Let's see. Selfish selflessness. Yeah, sure. That's a value. Yeah. Constant

performance and improvement. Right. Merit. Merit. What does that mean? Merit is about having a value around what people are doing as opposed to seniority. I mean, I have a lot of colleagues that decide which of their seniors are going to be their leaders. Wait a minute. Shouldn't we just be deciding which people are the best at being leaders that are going to be our key leaders, maybe our captains of the team? It seems to me that the currency that's exchanged in high performance teams is what are you doing right now? It's not what did you do last year? What did you do three weeks ago? And I think that's important.

I mean, I think that seniority and having experiences is important, but if you don't, you know, monetize those in the here and now, they're worthless. And the same way with potential. I mean, I think potential is good. I mean, it's good to have potential. If someone said you had no potential, that can't be positive. But, you know, you can't dine out on potential for very long. I mean, at some point you've got to perform. So it just seems to me that if you value merit and that's, if you want your voice to resonate on our team, it's because you're doing something right now by way of your performance. And I think it's strong. I mean, it's strong to think that we believe in this meritocracies and it's not about,

you know, for example, not about what color your skin is. It's not, you know, who you pray to and who your daddy was. Right. I mean, it's not, it's about what are you getting done on a team? And so I think that meritocracies is, um, is an important belief for us. And then you've got toughness and leadership as your final two. And then for the toughness piece, you, I've heard you define it. It's the ability to focus on the next most important thing. Yeah. The mental toughness part.

The mental toughness part. Yeah. I mean, there's a, there's a point of just toughness too. I mean, you know, we, we play a game of, you know, physical wills. There's a battle of physical wills. There's, there's, there's a time for overwhelming force. You know, it happens in business, it happens in sport. I mean, there's a time for that. And, you know, we're not shying away from that. But I think that the toughness that, you know, we measure a lot, that we acknowledge a lot and we celebrate a bit is mental toughness. When somebody really exhibits mental toughness. And if you think about it, I mean, you only have to

access mental toughness if things are really going bad, right? So things are pear-shaped and it's all going bad. And then somebody, for some reason, you know, doesn't worry about what just happened, doesn't worry about what it's going to mean going forward, just finds a way to, you know, focus on the next most important thing and gets plugged in and gets it done. And I just think it's a really, you know, it's an attractive ability and we call it an ability. I'm shying away from, you know, you're born with it. I do think there's people that are predisposed to being mentally tough. There's other people that have more of a journey in that regard, but I'm believing we can all get there. And how do you help people in the ability?

What do you do to, obviously the only way to demonstrate mental toughness is to go through something shitty, like to go through and you can't demonstrate mental toughness as everything is good to your point earlier. So how do you develop some of the mental skills that would proceed people to be able to focus on the most important thing now, when it's easier to focus on something that's not going well? You know, to be fair, we're probably, we're probably underserving the players on the mental skills part. I mean, you know, you know, we need you, We need somebody like you, if not you, to help us in that regard. But what you can do is you can say you believe in it every day. And, you know, there's an old term in coaching called fence posting.

I've never really actually built a fence, to be honest. But apparently you dig a hole and you walk a few feet and dig another hole and you walk and you repeat that. So the point is you fence post it. You talk about it all the time. Um, you make clear that we believe in it and we value it and you, you find a way to measure it. You, you, you, you, anytime someone does that thing, um, you, you find a way to, um, to celebrate it, um, to make them feel special about it. And, and that, that goes a long way in that, in that room, in that locker room, the meeting room, and the field to say, okay, that's where the love is. When you do something mentally tough, people recognize it around here.

Now, there must be a lot of steps to individually help players get there. I'm not sure we probably do all that as well as we could. So just the idea of rewarding or reinforcing behaviors that you want to see more often is a, is a radical deal. Like, so you just having the target, like when you have in your mind, I'm assuming what toughness looks like when someone's displaying it. And then if you share that with your coaches and your athletes, then they reward it just by saying, by you saying, or them saying that's toughness. So that's one part of it. And in, inside of, uh, adventure based sports and extreme sports, and I put quotes on extreme because not all sports that are nonstick and baller extreme,

but skateboarders do something phenomenal in that same vein is that they, like you recognize the importance of going for it, of being dirty and gritty and doing the ugly things to be able to one day do the shiny trick that everyone gets to see you do the inverted 300, 360 or seven 80 or whatever it might be at this point, seven 20. Sorry. And so what they do though, is when they see somebody go for a trick, a skill and they fall and they're bleeding and there's blood oozing from them, all the other skateboarders that are around will flip open their flip over their skateboards and tap them on the side of the ramp or the curb. And they're basically making a clapping sound saying, we see you going

for it. We see you being gritty. We see you being, you know, getting bloody literally. And that begins to shape the culture of that group of skateboarders. It sounds like you're doing the same. Yeah. I love that analogy. Isn't that really good? Yeah, that's very good. And then the other things that's a clickety clack, you'd want to hear it right there. Because you're getting rewarded for not, not pulling off the skill, but when somebody pulls off a skill, the whole like little, not organization, the whole group of people like throw up their hands and they're screaming, they're hurting. And so there's a lot of fun when you nail it, but when you're going for it and you're really trying and you're bleeding, you get a lot of love for that. That's cool.

Yeah. So then the, just quickly, the two things that precede, um, mental toughness, certainly our optimism. And then the other is resiliency which is to be able to be flexible and fluid and challenging times and then inside of resiliency there's three C's this is according to research and so you want to help people love challenge and so if you can shape just the messaging that we love challenge that's where we define who we are and figure out who we are that challenge really it becomes an asset during difficult times. The other is to control on things that are in your control. And, you know, that's pretty simple to shape.

We can teach that. So it's a commitment. And then the last is commitment. And the commitment piece is stay the course. And there's a sailor phrase, not a sailor, but a maritime phrase that I've come to love, which is hold fast and stay true. Have you heard that before? No, I haven't. So hold fast is like grab something that you trust. It's wood usually on a ship and then stay true to the mission. And so the sailors will scream that back up to the captain during turbulent seas saying, hold fast and stay true. Ah, that's really good.

Yeah. Okay. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly

soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made a meaningful difference in how I show up the next day for myself, my family, and our team here at Finding Mastery. It's become part of my nightly routine. Throw on their lounge pants or pajamas, crawl into bed under their sheets, and my nervous system starts to settle. They also offer a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on all of their bedding, which tells me, tells you, that they believe in the long-term value of what they're creating. If you're ready

to upgrade your rest and turn your bed into a better recovery zone, use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. That's a great discount for our community. Again, the code is FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. FINDINGMASTERy is brought to you by Caldera Lab. I believe that the way we do small things in life is how we do all things. And for me, that includes how I take care of my body. I've been using Caldera Lab for years now. And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple and they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding

more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Okay. So I want to go back to you and I want to shape in my mind how you explain events. And so this is getting into psychological framework. Like how do you make sense of things that happen in your life? And so let's say that something bad happens. And I put quotes around bad because we don't necessarily know if things are good or bad when they're happening. But I'd love for you to

shape, if you had a history of winning, no, strike that, you have a tremendous history of winning. If you could go back to the point in time where you had a nice little streak going and then the first loss, how did you explain that event to yourself and to the men in your program? Hmm. I can remember being immensely worried for them. My concern for the program would have been that they would lose faith in the process. That, you know, they'd been giving everything they had. They'd been giving it to the team. They really could not have given more.

And here it is, they came up short. And I've always thought the best part of winning just on the other side of that coin is that you know, the players have walked away with with a you know, with the knowledge that you know, what they how they achieve that victory is you know, that's transferable to other parts of their life later on that we're actually doing something that is valuable. We're not just chasing a shiny goblet for the showcase, which, you know, isn't all that, you know, motivating to me personally. So I think during those moments, worried about them,

want to make sure that they know that how appreciated they are and that this is just part of it, you know, try to draw some perspective and that this is just part of it, you know, try to draw some perspective and that this is, this is part of it. And, you know, we were, we're very respectful about the teams we play.

It's just part of our DNA that we would, we would, we, we would know our opponents really well, and we would know what they do really well. And if you want to take something away from an opponent, you've got to know it and you've got to know how good they are at it and how big the challenge is going to be to make them do something else. And so that process kind of creates this great respect for the opposition. So that helps in this endeavor as

well. I mean, you know, the other team's good sometimes too. And, uh, you know, this is, you know, this is part of it. You're not, you're not supposed to win every time. Um, now the times that I've been personally disappointed is, is believe it or not, even when we've won, when we haven't played well, you know, I have to force myself to, you know, to be happy for them because they deserve it. They won. They're at the top of the podium. They've won the championship, mission accomplished in some ways. And I've got to, I've got to almost fake it because I'm so disappointed that we actually didn't play our best rugby in the last game that somehow we came up short of that.

And I don't find it to be real satisfying. So did I answer the question? Yeah, I think that the way you're what I'm learning is that you don't value the reward as much as you do the outcome as much as you do the process. And I don't mean that you value practice more than the game i mean the expression of becoming sounds like it's at the center of what you're looking for can can we express or can we capture who we are at our potential and when people when your people your team falls just short of that even though they get the win it's more troubling for you yeah the actual loss itself. Yeah. Now you can do that and you can actually lose. And that would be a far worse feeling. Is that a worse feeling? No, no doubt.

I mean, if you fall short and I mean, that's happened, you know, where, you know, for whatever reason, you just, you just don't get off the bus and you lose a game you shouldn't have lost. And, you know, that's a tough feeling as well. But there's no, like, winning solves everything for me. It doesn't. What feels really good, and I've had this feeling, and I've been chasing it my whole coaching career, and, you know, you win that big game, you win a championship, and, you know, the, you win that big game, you win a championship and, you know, you know,

the rugby field is pretty wide, you know, it's, it's, um, quite a bit wider than a football field. You know, you really can't see the players all the time that well, you can't see their faces. And I'm, I'm, I'm so moved when, after that big game, when they've just given everything, when the team has just fought for every inch, every possession, and I don't know how they just keep getting up and doing it again and doing it again. The final whistle, there's a bit of jumping around because you won and all that stuff. But when I really get close to the players and I see their faces, I see these hollowed out faces.

I mean, they look like they've just run a marathon or a look like they're triathletes or something. I mean, they're, they're gaunt and, um, you know, and, and it's a nice, it's a nice day or a nice night and they, they're cold all right away or, and they cry easy because they have, they know it's not cool to cry. They're not trying to, they just don't have any defenses left. They got nothing left to, to kind of hold out, you know, any pretense of being cool. And I, I see him in that state and I think, oh my God, you know, how great is this, man? This is, that's the feeling I've been chasing when we do everything we could and it comes out, we come out on top and, um, but we did it right. And it's, and it's hard work and fair play and we won. I mean, that's, that's the feeling.

What is that feeling? Cause the, the fall on question I was going to ask you is like of all of your investment in helping other men become like, what are you searching for? Was the question. And is it that, is it, are you searching for the moment when they've given everything and you can celebrate that together independent of winning loss? Or is it only when there's win? And do I have the conditions right? I think it's special when you win. There's no doubt about it. It would be disingenuous to say it any other way. It is more special when you win, when they put in that effort.

And that to me at that moment is a validation to what we're doing. The validation comes in a lot of forms, you know, but that's one of them, you know, that, you know, they see it. I had a player tell me one time, you know, kind of after the banquet, he pulled me aside and said, you know, playing rugby at Cal was the hardest thing I've ever done. You know, and he paused and I looked at him and he said that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world. And I went, man, I was kind of going for that, you know, and it just felt so good, you know? And, uh, so there, there's a certain validation in that moment, but listen, the validation can happen 20 years later at a reunion, you know, where, you know, the players go on to this, you know, further academic scholarship and a lot of professional success. And, you know,

they come back and say that, you know, I learned a lot and I'm using it today, you know, in my family, in my community, in my workplace, that there's some validation there as well. I mean, maybe the most important validation. It's an interesting word validation. Is it, is it validation for you that your efforts have mattered? Is it validation that the commitment that we've done together has been worthwhile? What, what is the validation piece come from? I think both of those, right? I mean, um, I mean, this is, you know, big, deep stuff in some ways, but I mean, I think sport does a poor job of explaining its value. You know, I, I hear, I hear my colleagues talk about, you know, the value of being an athlete or a student athlete is, is around hard work and it's, um, um, it's around, you know, commitment, but I mean, at a world-class institution like this,

I mean, you can find students in the library at midnight, you know, and, uh, you want to talk about commitment and hard work. I don't know that that's proprietary to sport. I don't believe that. Um, I think the thing that is really proprietary to sport is team. And I have this belief, right, that we're not one bright person away from solving the big issues. You know, we're not going to, not disease, not the environment, not education, not, I mean, just list the big problems that we're going to have to solve going forward. And it's going to be groups of people that solve those things. People that can stand shoulder to shoulder, point their nose in the same direction and work together, passionately work together. And I think that's what we're doing here. Right.

And that feels valuable. It feels, it feels, you know, I'm happy to go toe to toe with any professor on this campus. And I don't diminish any of that, but it's not taught anywhere else on this campus. You know, might there be some, might there be some students that work on a project together for, for a short period of time? Yes. You know, is there an ROTC program? Sure there is. And, um, but I I'd like to believe that, you know, our players are, you know, are getting the unofficial PhD in team. They're, they're getting a really, an acute understanding of team. You know, they know what a good teammate looks like and, and the effect that they can have. They know what a bad teammate is, unbearably, right? They,

I mean, I mean, these young people are, they're past, you know, the 10,000 hours, 10 year moment. I mean, they're, they're becoming an expert in team. And especially if we, if, if we make that, that's what we're doing here. And it's going to help us win some rugby games. But at the end of the day, that's the thing that is going to be, you know, the takeaway. God, I love that. That's really clean. I've always thought that sport was a way to learn more about who we are. And what you just added to that is the uniqueness of all sport. There's no such thing for me as individual sports because it's always a team. There's never somebody that just steps out and does it on their own.

They might be the only person on the court or whatever it might be, but it's always a team setting. That's a really great way to say it. Okay, so you've been spending most of your life in sport or coaching sport. And currently for a while now at one of the world-class institutions, I think you said 30 years or 30 some years coaching here at Berkeley. What is the dark side of pursuing what you've been pursuing? What have been some of the costs or challenges for you? No, it's been a privilege, man. I mean, I, I, you know, I'm, I don't even think that way. I mean, I, if you can be a good head coach and really work in all the different buckets,

I mean, be able to work operationally. And that means, you know, budgets to administration, to communication, to all that. If you can go into the sports science bucket and customize what you want to bring from that bucket to your team, if you can build teams culturally, if you can be a subject matter expert in your sport strategically and tactically. I mean, if you can work across those various areas of work, then you could probably make a lot of money in the real world, right? And that doesn't happen in rugby, right? I mean, it happens in a few of our sports in America, but not in all of our sports. So in some ways, I represent the majority of sports, all sport coaches. And the fact that, you know, you do this because it's fun.

It's you don't feel like you're working. It feels meaningful and significant. I had a business career for a while and I was really good at it. But I don't think it ever felt significant. But the part that felt significant is if you had somebody working for you, that all of a sudden was a bit of a rainmaker in their own home and they could take care of their kids better and they could buy a bigger house and they became a hero in their own family. That felt pretty good. The idea of chasing deals and making money.

That didn't feel significant ever. And every day that I coach feels significant. So I don't know. I mean, there's challenges, right? There's the challenges with inside the pursuit. There's good teams. There's a lot of human exchanges that can be challenging. The game itself can be, you know, the luck of the bounce of the ball sometimes.

But those challenges are welcomed. There's some challenges outside of that with administrations. And there's some things outside of your control that you can't ever change. So I just don't worry about them. But it's been a privilege. I mean, I really wouldn't trade jobs with anyone. I mean, anyone, but I mean, you got a pretty good gig. I have to rethink that.

Mine's good for different reasons and some of the same reasons, but to be in the amphitheater for as long as you have to go through the struggles and still come through, um, with the perspective that it's the greatest way to live your life. Sounds like you have great value in the way that you spend your time. Yeah. It feels like it. So if I, if I dig just a little bit deeper on the other side of that, which is, can you think of, or what story comes to mind when you think about the single most difficult experience in your coaching career? And it could be, it could be your personal life for sure, but the single most, whatever naturally comes up.

Well, believe it or not, it's probably a blessing at this moment in time, but it wasn't at the time. You know, I was still playing at this point in time. I probably, the arc of my life would have been, I would have gone overseas and continued playing rugby. But I was the victim of a violent crime. I was, you know, kind of wrong place, wrong time. And I had a bad day at the office, they say. I was shot five times with a high-powered handgun.

And, you know, I had to fight for my life and I had to fight for my leg at one point. And I was no longer going to be an athlete. And that, you know, overnight, that's a pretty hard reality. I had played earlier that year in a World 15. I mean, and, you know, one of the, you know, one of the players around the world had been recognized as being a good player. And, you know, so in a period of months, it was over. It was one of those periods in your life where, you know, the fundamental decision is,

are you going to be a victim or are you not? That's how I looked at it. And, uh, you know, I don't think I was a victim. I think I, you know, I think I carried on, you know, I, I think I, you know, there was some, there's some challenges. You're in the hospital a long time and, um, you know, you're not the same, um, physically, but, um, you know, I kept going, you know, and I, um, I, I, you know, I'm thankful that I had these experiences early in my life where these people I looked up to were coaches. So to me, this, this became, this became an automatic that I was going to turn my energies to coaching. And I, um, uh, you know, I, I, I didn't look back now. I have to admit, I kept my,

I kept my options open because I, you know, I went to business as well and I would come and I would coach in the afternoons at Cal. So I was the part-time head rugby coach and I, I had a career as an investment banker and, uh, I, and I did that for 10 years. And then I made this massive leap. I just decided one day that I was going to resign my interest in the business world. And I was going to go coach full time. And, you know, I was going to live on savings until I figured it out. And it was a real leap of faith for me. I mean, it was one of those moments in time where, you know, okay, I'm backing myself here. This is what it feels like.

It, this is, this is, you know, there wasn't a transition at that moment in time to, oh, a new career. It was like, no, there, you know, you can call it a career, but it doesn't really pay any money. And, um, it was, it was exhilarating in a way to, to feel like there was no safety net, um, had to figure this out on the run. And, um, I'm glad I did. And I, and so in some ways that incident that happened, you know, that, you know, that, you know, being shot turned out to be this wonderful thing in my life. I would have gone overseas. I would have kept playing rugby.

I don't know what my life would have been like. I would have, you know, do I ever come back and coach? Do I ever enter the business world? Do I ever, what happens? Do I, do I ever live in America again? And, uh, uh, I'm just, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm so pleased the way things worked out. What allows you to take that leap? What were the mental skills, the way that you saw the world to go from an investment banking job, which is obviously was spilling money. If you're doing half decent at it into a career path that didn't have a bright financial future, but had a way to recalibrate you to who, to your true self. I was chasing this significance. You know, I, I just, I just, you know, I mean, at some point, you know, you know, you can buy that big BMW and it's pretty

exciting one time. And then after that, it's like, well, that gets me from point A to point B. And it kind of, you know, when the guy comes in and you're getting your suits measured in the office, you know, that, well, wow, this is pretty neat. And then you go, well, really, is it? And you do a deal and you're like, okay, let's celebrate. And then you go, okay, well, what did we really do? And don't get me wrong. I mean, I, you know, those were the goalposts. That's where the success was. So you chase those things. It's just that there wasn't any significance in it for me. time in their life. And, you know, I get to contribute to the education they're getting at the university. It all feels significant. It feels like if I did a bad job, I could make a

hash of it. I mean, it feels dangerous in a way. I mean, it feels like, you know, and I have days when, you know, I'm probably not at my best and I go, my, I hope I didn't do any damage, right? Because it's not as if just doing your best is okay. No, you've got to be successful at this. That's the requirement here. If we really care about, you know, Cal rugby's purpose and its mission. And if we care about the people that comprise the institution, then, you know, you got to get it right. There's no not getting it right. What gave you the confidence to be able to make that switch? I think it had a lot to do with the coaches I had before. I really thought that I was pretty well grounded in the right stuff. I think I had good experiences from them.

I had a lot to figure out, but I, you know, and also to be honest, the bar might be a little low. I mean, there's a lot of pretty ordinary coaches out there. You know, I mean, it's a funny job. You know, it comes with a bit of authority and, you know, I mean, it's, it's a funny job, you know, it comes with a bit of authority and, you know, I mean, flip, flip on your TV at some point and you find some guy in a gym throwing basketball at guys' heads, you know, and you go, really, you know, a division one basketball coach and that could actually happen. I mean, I think there's a lot of people mailing it in. There's a

lot of people that are, that, you know, and there's some, there's some wonderful coaches and peers. I'm, I'm in a group of peers at this point in my life. I call as friends, a bunch of extraordinary coaches in a lot of different sports that I get a chance to learn from and share with. And, uh, but the bar, the bar felt a little low. I didn't, it didn't feel, I mean, it felt like it was going to be a big personal challenge. I didn't, I didn't think I wouldn't be able to do it though. I thought I'd be able to be a good coach in time.

And then for folks that are wanting to make a change in their life and they've got a pretty good steady Eddie gig and they've got the car that they want or it's good enough for them or whatever like you can paint that scene what nuggets or pearls of wisdom would you want to almost install or hope that they would get right to be able to make that leap well i mean the safe thing is to do nothing, right? I mean, that's... That might be the most dangerous. That might actually be the riskiest thing. It could be. I mean, it could be in time. I mean, everyone has different situations, right? But different responsibilities. I mean, you can't be irresponsible, right? I mean, that doesn't work. I mean, that's just being indulgent. There has to be like, I'm going to be able to pull this off. This,

this isn't blindly optimistic. There, there is a plan. I can, I can do this. So, I mean, it's, it's gotta, it's gotta be thoughtful, but, um, geez, if, if, if you can imagine it and if you can see it and, and if, if there's a chance it could happen and it's something you really want, I would push them. I'd push them right off the cliff is what I'd do. I love that. Okay. If there was one question that you could ask somebody on the path of mastery, if you could sit across from that person, I'd like to know who that person is for you that naturally just came to mind, but what would be the question that you would ask them? When did they know they got there and are they there? I mean, that's my dilemma around it.

I mean, I think we all know what it looks like, right? Externally, it looks like expertise, doesn't it? This great competency, subject matter expert, uh, internally, it feels very different though. I mean, to me, I mean, I, I think I have good days where I feel I am, I might be that person. And then I have a lot of days where moments in the day where I know I'm not that person. So for me, it feels like a real pursuit. So the idea that somebody has arrived at that position, I'd be interested to know what that arrival feels like and how do they know.

And obviously everyone continues to learn, but when did you get to the point where you were really an operator? I mean, you were really, you were really a guy that could, you know, land a plane in the Hudson of everything went pear shaped. I mean, when, when did that happen? How did you know, you know, that I, I'd be around, I'd be curious around that stuff. I love it. I, we have this idea. I think that Leonardo da Vinci, you know, I'd be around, I'd be curious around that stuff. I love it. We have this idea, I think, that Leonardo da Vinci, you know, knew he was a master and everything that he was going to put his pen to or his ink brush to that he was going to absolutely create a master, a masterpiece.

I don't, most people that I've spoken to in these conversations around mastery have said, I don't know if I am. I mean, Jesus, like I've got days, like you said, days it's pretty darn good. And most of the days it feels like there's a civil war inside of me where I'm arguing with myself trying to figure out like, how do I do today better? Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. All right. Golly. I mean, there's so much I want to talk to you about. What is the top of the list, you know, and over time, right. I mean, I've coached players that are no longer alive. Right. I mean, you know, I've, I've coached players that are hurt. I, you know, you know, guys that get damaged, you know, in one way or another. Um, and so that, uh, is probably the top of the list. Then the program, I feel, I feel like I'm, I'm the custodian of something that's been going a long time. It, it, it stands for all the right stuff in sport and I feel responsible to that. Um, so I feel responsible to make sure that it, it, it, it continues on, you know, that, you know, it's, you know, the campaign

when I first started that we created was Cal Rugby Forever. And that meant a lot of things. It meant, you know, dedicated facilities that weren't there at the time. It meant building endowments that can forever fund the sport. It meant some things. Now, I think, you know, the next hundred years, you know, I feel that responsibility for the next hundred years. Now, you know, I'm a short timer and all that, right? But that'll keep you up at night,

right? Worrying about all those people, you know, and it's not just the 60 that I coach right now, right. It's every one of them. Like I remember every one of their names and every one of their stories, every one of them. And, um, and, and they're all worth me worrying about. Right. And, uh, can I bring up two names? Sure. Robert Paylor. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Robert's battling right now. He had a spinal cord injury in May and, you know, he's battling to walk and to be functional. And it was, you know, it's, I'm just now almost coming right.

I think, I hear that there's phases of grief and things, but I was kind of stuck in sorrow and anger for a long time here since May, to be honest. And, you know, Robert's just such an inspiration, how hard he's working at this, how little self-pity he has. He's just kind of getting on with the next most important thing. And he's doing that on a daily basis. He gets up and answers that bell. And but, yeah, I mean, there's there's just so much to there's much to, there's so many challenges there. You know, it's, oh man, you know, I mean, there's, there's very immediate challenges in his care and transportation and living and, and then it's, it's, it'll be ongoing. And now, now Robert's special, right?

I mean, he'll come back and he'll get his business degree. He's going to go on to some great things, but that, you know, there's still a lot of challenges there. And, you know, Robert hasn't given up on getting more back, right? I mean, he's battling to get more use of his body back every day. And so, yeah, I'll tell you, it really puts in context what we're doing. I mean, we had to, we had to go play in a tournament after Robert's injury. I mean, it was, it was, it was surreal. None of us wanted to, to go back on the training field, much less go into competition again.

And we had to, we had to go into competition and, um, um, and we got through it and we won and all of that. And, but, you know, it was like, wow. I mean, you know, at one point, you know, they put a microphone in your, in your face and say, Hey, you're going to try to win this for Robert, you know, and you just, you shake your head. I mean, are you kidding me? I mean, this is a, this is this beautiful young kid and he's just trying to walk again. You know, I mean, this, this is like a rugby game. I mean, it's got nothing to do with his challenges. It, it, it, it makes a lot of what we're doing almost meaningless. I know it's not,

I know it's not, I know it's important to the bigger picture of a lot of kids, but, um, it puts it in context for sure. Hmm. So the, uh, the next name is Mark Bingham. Yeah. Can you tell that story? I can, I can. Um, you know, Mark was one of our players, uh, in the early nineties and he was, uh, he was a good rugby player for us. You know, a tall, rangy player. And we had seen Mark and he'd come to a reunion and he looked great. You know, he's a big, tall, handsome kid, you know, and he had a firm and, you know, they had offices in New York and I know he's going back and forth between San Francisco and New York, and it was good to catch up with him.

And then, of course, he died on Flight 93 and stormed the cockpit and made sure that plane wasn't going to be used as a weapon. And, uh, you know, I mean, it was just such a, that day was so surreal for all of us and, and how quickly it became personal. You know, it, it wasn't something that happened to the towers and to the Pentagon and to America and to, you know, it, it was, it was something that happened to us. So, you know, just proud of Mark and, you know, proud of him. And then we've forever been, you know, walking the tightrope of trying to honor Mark, but, you know, not dying out on what he did. He's the hero. We aren't the heroes.

He is. And so, you know, trying to make sure that no one thinks that we think that, you know. But, yeah, I mean, you know, some serious courage there. How do you think about your thank you for sharing? And it's not lost on me how intense it was for you to try to describe that. Um, and then, so I don't want to be insensitive with this, but how do you think about your involvement in readying him on flight 93 on nine 11, um, and your impact as whether you're his coach or just a man that two men that knew each other, but you happen to be his coach for four or five years, I would imagine.

How do you make sense of that story in your own head? You know, I haven't thought for one minute about any influence I might've had. And that's, that's the, that's the tight rope. I'm going to continue to walk. I haven't, I do think it is interesting that there were other athletes on that airplane that, that acted. You know, there's a moment in time, right? Where, you know, through cell phones, they know what's going on. They know that this isn't going to end well. They know that other planes have been hijacked and it hasn't

ended well. You know, the guts to make an informed decision at that point and not to be paralyzed. I think that's interesting in looking at it from an athletic standpoint, that you can get some information, even though it's horrible information, and you can say, you know, we need some action, you know, based on that. I mean, had, I think, had the information been different, I think the act is different. You know, these are, you know, I mean, the information could have been that these guys aren't going to crash this airplane, right? So why would we get up and, and do anything that might crash the airplane, right? But that wasn't the information they got. That wasn't, you know, that wasn't the intel.

It was time to act. And so maybe there's something there for sport. Maybe sport does some of that, where you, it teaches you how to make really difficult informed decisions. Um, but at the end of the day, you got to do it, man. It took some courage, right. And, and, you know, who, who really knows there's some, you know, uh, I know Alice Hogan, Mark's mom has, has heard those flight transcripts and it's awe-inspiring. Okay. All right. So in the journey of helping men become, and you're on the journey as well, becoming,

do you have a word or phrase that cuts to the center of what you understand most? Team? Team. I mean, I'm, I'm willing to stand with other experts and talk about team and, uh, what it, what it looks like and, you know, what are, what are the, you know, what are the values of team and, um, what aren't they? And, uh, you know, so I, I'm, I'm, I'm probably, I'm probably happiest in that. I think it's again, and we talked about it before. I think it's the biggest takeaway that we have. It's really our product. Um, if you will. And is there a word or phrase that guide you? Do you have a philosophy that guide you?

Um, I try to be authentic to who I am with a bit of discipline, right? Cause I'm, guide you? Do you have a philosophy that guides you? I try to be authentic to who I am with a bit of discipline, right? Because I'm not the real article. I've got to convince myself to be a certain way a lot of times. I can be too emotional. I can be too negative. I've got to use a lot of discipline to make sure that the impact I'm having is balanced. But honesty, you know, is a word that comes to mind. I mean, I think a lot of what we do is around honesty. We're not afraid to say it as it is. And, you know, our players develop pretty thick skins. You know, I've heard other coaches talk about how important

it is to just have a quiet word with a guy, you know, and I think we all appreciate, I mean, I would appreciate that if I'm, you know, if somebody could just give me a quiet word about, you know, what I'm doing and how it could be better. But the fact is, I can't get a team from point A to point B giving quiet words to 60 guys on a field that is, you know, 70 meters by 120 meters. Right. We're spread out. I mean, it can't happen. So there has to be this recognition that we're going to be honest with each other and we're just going to say it. We're just going to say it as it is. And then you're going to have to be OK with that. Right. And it's going to sometimes it's going to be shouted because everyone's got to hear it.

I mean, fundamentally, this will be one of my early points that I'll make as the team assembles this fall, is we have to learn from each other. If you're waiting to make your mistakes and for you to get coached individually on each one of your mistakes times 60, we're never going to get there. It's not going to happen. There's not enough time in the day. There's not enough events that'll happen that are learning your own personal learning experience. We're going to have to learn from each other. We're going to have to see, you know, we're going to have to aspire to where the love is going when guys are doing it right. And we're going to have to aspire to learn the lessons that other people learn so that, you know, his lesson can be your lesson. And you can learn that rep even if you're not in the middle of the grid, in the middle of the activity.

You know, so and that's that's a challenge for players. I mean, you know, you're talking to him, not me. No, we're talking to everyone, right? Now, if we can multiply those lessons, now think about this for a second. If we can create a culture that's a little more thick-skinned, where obviously players can't be abused. Obviously, you can't denigrate a player. But if we can have an environment where we can just be honest and talk about things and say it as we go and keep moving and everyone can learn from that. Think about the lessons that we can we can multiply and boxcar together and think, you know, in a month's time, think about all the lessons that all the players can have as opposed to just their individual lessons.

And then in two months time and three months time and then think what we can be by the end of the season. It's, it's, it's dynamic. I love it. Over the 27 years that you've been coaching or 30 years that you've been coaching, how do you keep yourself energized? Obviously you've got great passion. You care deeply. It's significant to you. How do you more mechanically, how do you wake up every morning and have the vigor and the passion and all the zest and zeal to be able to do it over and over again, to develop coaches, to develop athletes? How do you do this? Well, it changes, doesn't it? I mean, I've never been in this situation is how I feel. I've never had these particular players. And, And sometimes I've had that player,

but never as a junior before, never as a senior. So the talent level's different. The strengths of this team will be different than the strengths of last year's team. I'm anxious to know more. I'm anxious to build an approach to how we're going to play the game. I'm anxious to see what contribution these players can make to who we are vis-a-vis our culture. It's kind of exciting. I don't feel like I've ever been in this particular place before because I haven't. You just described the applied art of Zen. You just described mindfulness to its T, which is this moment is completely new. And so I need to, my body of work and life needs to condition my mind to be able to be here now,

to be fully present in this moment. And then when that moment is experienced, it's gone. And then, so there's another one right waiting right around the corner. And so that is not easy to do. That's something that is significantly challenging because our busy mind wants to think about later, later, later, later. And I had this question for you earlier, which was with all the winning, how do you appreciate now as opposed to thinking about the next win that you need to get or the next coaching session that you need to get to, to get that just right, the Monday or the Sunday session, if you played Saturdays. So how have you conditioned your mind to be present in the way that you just described? Just being lost in the team. I don't know how else to say it. I mean, I'm, I'm, I feel like I'm,

you know, each season I, you know, you get fully emerged in the team and the stories of the individuals. And I kind of lose track to a degree with the outside world, which actually right now is a blessing. You know, it's great to know everything that's important is right there. And, um, and, and I, I, I, I find it comforting that I don't have the answers yet and that I have to rely on a new group of players. We have to rely on a new group of players and a new form of leadership. I mean, one of the things in collegiate athletics is, I mean, we didn't lose a ton of guys, but like, you know, the, the,

the brainpower of the team walked out the door. We just matriculated them. They just graduated. I mean, some unbelievable players that, that, that were just such great operators and, and, and, you know, the guys that really made sure Cal Rugby stayed on the rails when no one was looking. The guys that really, really believe in what we're doing and we're committed to it and this embedded culture of players. And now they're gone just like that. Now there's others there, but they haven't been in the position they're going to be in this year. Right. And all of that's fascinating in a way. Right. It's a big challenge to think that we can again get there. That, you know, that at some point this academic year, I'm going to hand the keys to a brand new Ferrari to a bunch of young guys and they're going to hope they don't put it in the ditch. And the fact is, is they're probably the perfect guys to have it. That's a good save.

Yeah, that's a good save. It's gone, man. You're going to hand them the keys to the whole thing. So you've been in the trenches and guiding for the last 30 years, what would you hope an entrepreneur or a seasoned president or a CEO of a company could glean from your insights in a sentence or two or a, you know, a thought or two? Yeah, I think it's, it's, I have thought about this and it, and it's around, it's around culture and it's around scaling culture is what it really is about. Cause that's the hardest thing I think for them is, is, you know, I get to know every guy that joins my team, right? I mean, I recruit him. I mean,

I think there's a lot of chief executives and a lot of people in the corner office with the best business card. They don't even know who gets onboarded anymore. Right. I mean, they're, they're relying on some corporate training documents and some, you know, and, and the idea that, you know, and I bet when they started that company, it was different. I bet they knew every person and they all believed in the same stuff and they knew what they were doing. But over time in all businesses that in all organizations, really, it becomes the hardest thing. I use the word embedded culture here, you know, but the idea of being able to embed and scale culture as your company grows. And, you know, I mean, we have one office and I know everybody on the team. I mean, in some ways, people should look at me and say, well, I hope you can build culture in that situation. Try it in mine. And I think that's, that's interesting. That, that really does point to the challenge. And then do you have a practice that helps embed culture?

Talk about it and, um, and test it. Um, I mean, I'm not afraid to, you know, have a young person come to the front of the room and say right up on the board, you know, one of our values and explain it to us. I mean, at some point, these have to be more than just words. Because, I mean, we see it all the time, don't we? I mean, you know, we see, you know, words on the gym wall. We see, you know, a section where you can, you know can hit about us and you can hear an XYZ company talk about their beliefs and their culture and their values. And if you actually pulled one of them aside and you asked about it, they wouldn't even know anything about it. I mean, these things have to be real. I mean, this is how our beliefs, our culture, we're going to process every transaction we have, human or organizational, through those values.

I mean, they're to be used. They're to be used to make these value-based decisions. And that's how we're going to use them. We boxcar them all together and we use them as a system. And, I mean, you say there's five. You mentioned that I had five core values. Well, I've never been able to be asked a question about what we do that I couldn't refer back to the influence of one of those values on the question. I mean, I don't think you need 50

things. I don't think, you know, I think you can get by with three or four or five or seven or 10, but they have to be complimentary, not contradictory. And they have to function as a system. They have to be a touchstone to guide you. They're just not these wooden sayings that end up somewhere. And I mean, so they really are beliefs. Really cool. Okay.

So the timing wasn't right in the earlier part of our conversation, but you mentioned big games and, and right. And my experience in that model is that it's really hard for the people that are performing. So big game versus another Olympics. It's the craziest event in the world, as opposed to it's the track doesn't change. You know, the javelin shaft doesn't change. The soccer ball, the pitch for those elements don't change. There's still X number of players on the field. So your job is to go do what you do. There just happens to be more people watching. So you go the other way. I'm more of a fan of that. There's no such thing as a big game. There's no such thing as a big play or even a big moment. There's just this moment. So our job is to prepare ourselves to be in this moment, and we don't need lots of people watching for it to be big. But you go the other way.

You say, and it's not right or wrong. I just wanted to pull on that thread a little bit. That it's the biggest moment, biggest game, biggest play, biggest whatever, whatever. Yeah, not because people are watching because it matters more. How come? Well, it's win or go home. It's single elimination. It's time for the top of the medal stand.

It's not every competition leading up to that is the same. It seems disingenuous to me not to acknowledge that. Now, I don't want people so worried about that that they lock up and can't perform because at the end of the day, whether we're in a comparably meaningless event to a high-meaning event, it's still about, you know, let's revisit the strategy, the tactics, you know, what we're taking away from the opposition, what it is we're going to exploit, when we're going to exploit it and how we're going to exploit it and where we might have to make an adjustment and let's get ready for that adjustment. I mean, I want my teams to be lost in that, not in to the importance of the event, but I don't think it does anyone any good to suggest that every event is the same because they're not. The way I look at it is that there's no

more important moment than this moment. And because it's the only one we have and the next ones aren't guaranteed. And there's a fatigue that's required by our minds to assume that the next moments are going to happen. There's a laziness, not a fatigue. Because if we're always having to think about the next moment, then we certainly would become more fatigued. So the idea for me is that this is the most important moment. So I can train myself to be in this moment because it's the only one I have. And so what's ever going to happen later is, let's say it's from this date, exactly two years from this date, from this moment in time, that that too will be unique in and of itself.

And that then, whether we're on the world stage for whatever, or we're in another conversation, that those have equal importance. So I think philosophically, we come at it in a different way, but we probably arrive much in the same place, which is your job is to be here now. That's right. That's right. That's right. But, but I also want, I also want something special for them in the biggest moments that require something most special. But what's more important than this moment? This is the most special moment. Now it just happened

unless you're going to downgrade me and by saying that Mike, this conversation, I'm joking, but. No, we're talking in the context of building a team though is how I'm thinking about this. Right. And, and, you know, there'd be a lot of times when I would mix up the lineup and the players are looking around going, this is a game that we're probably going to win. And this isn't probably the lineup that's going to play the biggest game of the year. And, you know, there, there'd be a, there's just differences. I mean, you know, in all sports, there's, there's a time, okay, you're qualified for the playoffs and you're going to play another game in the NFL.

That's not the same. Players know it's not the same. And, and I'm not, I'm not trying to build a philosophy around the moment, um, as much as, um, I'm trying to just acknowledge it to the point where we're trying to become this team that can play in that moment all year. That's what we're trying to become. And, and I, I'm, I'm really proud of the fact that we've played our best rugby in the games that's required us to be at our best against the best. And I think we've been working for it all season long and we've been hard on ourselves in some ways to get there. And then we've been able to go into that moment and to be big game players when it really, really mattered.

And now, mind you, I just don't think you can, you know, yell and scream in the locker room and say it's a big game and go out and get anything done. I mean, I do think it's about, you know, what have we been trained to do and let's go do it. And, you know, mentally and physically, but no, I don't, I don't want to not acknowledge that the Olympics are different than a normal track and field event. Cool. Very cool. Your, your idea on taking risks, are you a risk taker or rule follower? Um, informed risk. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I want to, I believe in a lot of notational analysis in my sport. I'm, I'm, uh, uh, I kind of understand where the risk and reward are in, in, in our game. And I think that there are some really dumb risks that you can take that might pay off, but I don't think you can, if you make a habit of that, it's going to work against you.

And I, but I also think that there's some other risks that you can take that you should take every opportunity you can, because although it might not work out for you sometimes, you're going to be a better competitor and a better team by taking those risks. So I think it's very strategic to our game and it's based on real notational analysis. But yes, I want to, in our sport, I want to offload the ball from the tackle in certain parts of the field, even though we might turn over some of those balls, but that's going to create a fractured defense and we're going to ring the bell more times than not. And there's some other situations where people would say,

people would say in your own half the field, you should kick the ball. That's the safest thing. I think there's more space to defend. I think that's a really good time to be adventurous with the ball and to run the ball. So I'm against, I think, conventional wisdom in some areas. I say no to some risk, and I really welcome others. Love it.

Where's pressure come from? Self-expectations. I think the players feel that pressure. I think we all feel a certain pressure, which is program pressure. I mean, we've won enough to where we you know, we can't have a good season. We're supposed to compete for a championship and we're supposed to win a championship. That isn't going to go away. So we've just decided to make friends with it and welcome it and say, that's going to be a factor. There's going to be some pressure from that and expectations

that we're going to want to adhere to. But the guys themselves, I think, on the team have really kind of advanced goals that are aggressive, you know, to the point where you almost sometimes got to back them off that and say, this is more realistic right now this year. But I think there's a lot of pressure on all of us to, to want to, to want to be excellent. And we're not always excellent. Coach Clark. Thank you. Oh, cheers, Mike. Thank you. This was awesome. Yeah. I'm going to turn the mic on you here in a minute. Yeah, this was fantastic. So where can people follow along and learn from you? Yeah. I'm not the greatest social media guy, but at Jack Clark Rugby, we'll get you to a few places.

And then I would imagine that you've got a lot to teach the corporate world. How can folks connect with you that way? Yeah. Through social media? Yeah. Same way or through the university. And yeah. the corporate world? How can they, how can folks connect with you that way through social media? Yeah, same way or through the university. And, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I enjoy that as well. I mean, you know, anyone trying to build a team, right. I mean, that, those are, those are my people. You got a lot to teach. Okay. So thank you everyone for listening. Thank you for being part of this and you can find this interview and pearls of this conversation on minutes on

mastery. It's a separate podcast. You can go to iTunes or whatever players. You can also find us on finding mastery.net. And you can find me on social at Michael Gervais is Twitter. And then at finding mastery is for Instagram. So coach Clark, again, thank you. Cheers. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of finding mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you.

We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday,

punch over to finding mastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening.

Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.