How Wayne Smith Built the All Blacks, Crusaders & Black Ferns Into Winning Cultures

[upbeat jingle] Sir Wayne Smith, welcome to the Hunger and Heart podcast.

What is your experience with wild ambition and fierce compassion?

Um, well, firstly, uh, just having a little conversation around heart and hunger.

Um, you know, I come from rugby, obviously a long career, and you always hear coaches, players talking about, "Has he got a heart? Has he got a big heart? Um, how hungry is he or she?" And my view is that, of course, everyone's got a heart.

Um, the size of it I don't think really matters.

Uh, but how you, how you create the hunger, the c- compassion linked with the ambition is a tricky, it's a tricky, um, thing to do for a coach.

And, you know, um, often I've heard...

You know, I used to hear a saying, "Death is afraid of them that have the heart of a lion." But are you born with that? Um, you know, you...

To me, you've gotta do your own growing up, no matter how tall your granddad was.

Mm.

And so, you know, I'm a real believer that, um, that coaching, getting the best out of people, getting the, the heart that you expect from people to have in, in pressure situations is reliant on developing a whole lot of different, um, components that create that, but also, um, building in opposites almost of, you know, you've talked about compassion and, and, um, what was the other one? Compassion and-

Ambition

... ambition.

Um, they sound like opposites, but they both play a role, I think, in, in any build-up to any, um, sporting event or any event in, uh, that's important to you in life, I think.

Can I just say, like this-- Okay, so this is so interesting straight away.

Uh, so one of the things I'm obsessed with is language, and our language is only ever an imperfect map.

And the map is not the territory, right? The word hunger is not hunger.

It's a, it's a, it's a symbol that represents the concept of hunger, right? And so being precise with our map is incredibly useful to have these kinds of conversations.

And so I find this fascinating because the way I had been thinking about the word heart is aligned with compassion, is like, do I care for myself and others? Like, what is the heart that I bring to it? And the way you've just used heart is a different way of using it, which is so fascinating, right? That like the-- do you, do you have the heart to-- the heart of a lion? Do you have the heart to keep going when things are difficult? And mu- it's much more aligned to the hunger piece.

And so one of the things I'm fascinated with is like, okay, so first of all, that, that's really interesting straight out the gate.

And second of all, how do you, how have you reconciled those concepts of the heart to keep going when all odds are stacked against you and to, you know, keep fighting when you're dead on your feet and, and it just seems like, you know, there's still three minutes to go and you're down by four and, you know, just any unconverted tribe will get it, but not a drop goal or whatever.

Like, how do you combine that with the compassion side of it, with the self-care, with the care for others, with the, the humanity side of it?

Yeah.

[chuckles] Like that's a really, that's a really good question.

Um, we did an experiment back in 2005 with the All Blacks.