Legacy Revisited

My guest today is James Kerr, a best-selling author and leadership expert best known for his book "Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life". Drawing lessons from New Zealand's legendary rugby team, which is the most dominant force in international sports history, James distilled the All Blacks' culture of excellence into 15 powerful principles that transcend sport and apply to leadership, business, and personal development.

With a background in organizational psychology and years spent studying high-performance teams, James has become a sought-after speaker and consultant organizations worldwide seeking to build winning cultures. His work examines what separates good teams from great ones, focusing on values like humility, purpose, and culture. I'm excited to have James on the Debrief because his ability to translate the intensity and discipline of elite athletic performance into practical frameworks is truly unique. Leaders can easily implement his insights immediately, whether you're running a SWAT team, building a business, or leading any organization where excellence isn't optional. I hope you enjoy my conversation with James Kerr.

My name is Jon Becker. For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Jon Becker: James, thanks so much for doing this with me.

James Kerr: Real pleasure. It's a privilege to be here.

Jon Becker: I'm excited for this conversation because 10 years ago when I read this book, I thought this is a completely different way to look at this subject. There are so many business books on culture and on leadership and I think the thing that I like most about Legacy is it is the most actionable book I have read in this subject matter.

James Kerr: Thank you. Well that was in a way very intentional. We spoke just before we came on air. My grandmother's legacy to me was a phrase which was: "Be useful". I've kind of used it as a bit of a mantra to try to apply to the work I do, otherwise it's all about me. It's not really about making stuff happen. I was very focused on what works in a pragmatic sense and how to communicate it in a way that could have it work for people. So thank you. That's a great compliment. I appreciate that.

Jon Becker: I think that this community, obviously, the community that I serve overlaps a great deal with professional athletics. There's a lot of similarity in culture. I think that the All Blacks are a fantastic kind of case study. What drew you to them to draw, as a subject?

James Kerr: Well, I think two things. One is I'm a New Zealander. I live in the UK now, but I'm a Kiwi born and bred. And the All Blacks are our guys. They're the embodiment of what it means to be a great New Zealander. And they're also the most successful sports team in human history. They have a win ratio of over 125 years of just a notch under 80%, roughly even closer to 80% in the professional era. They've only lost at home over that century and a quarter. I think it's about 43 times now. It's been that way for over 125 years.

You know, one of their great rivals and rugby nations they played just this last weekend, Wales, beat them back in 1953. They're an exceptionally competitive group in a very competitive environment. And I was interested in, what are the beliefs and behaviors that and it's not they're not the same person in the jersey, not the same people in the team season to season yet. Yeah. Decade to decade. There's something in the water. There's something in that group. There's something in that ethos, ethos, I think. I say ethos, ethos, you say ethos. That holds it all together that makes it matter and that delivers the sort of standards and the expectations, the kind of the intensity and the focus that it takes to perform at your best and to get better every day. I was really interested in the All Blacks as a case study of what that takes.

I'd argue the book is about the All Blacks and not really about the All Blacks at all in some ways. It uses them to frame a conversation around leadership and what are the transferable principles that we can apply and make useful to any environment. I'm not a massive believer in analogies. The All Blacks has relationship to say a SWAT team, but it's not a SWAT team. There are different dynamics and structures around it and processes and intent and all of that. But there are some fundamental principles, I think, at heart in all great groups and all sort of warrior bands of one form or another. Not that you don't have to be a warrior, but to go out there and that holds that group together. It's kind of the glue and the oil that makes it all work. I was really interested in finding out what I didn't know and answering those questions if you like in writing the book.

Jon Becker: I think for this community it is almost a direct analog, right? You were talking about people that are engaged in physical combat. Anybody that's ever watched professional rugby knows that it is not a sport for gentle men. It might be a sport for gentlemen, but not a sport for gentle men.

James Kerr: It's a sport for hooligans played by gentlemen, they say.

Jon Becker: Yeah, exactly. Which is candidly also tactical. It is there. I think the stories are analogies like there are books that you read on culture or books that you read on leadership where you've got to really kind of squint your eyes and draw five conclusions to get to the answer. I think any book that has no dickheads as a core principle translates directly to our community. So I think it's very on point. So what I'd like to do is look at some of the core principles and kind of talk them through and then we can towards the end think through how your thinking has evolved on it. But why don't we start with "sweep the sheds"? First of all in this case sheds are basically locker rooms to translate Kiwi rugby slang. But what does "sweep the sheds" mean to you?

James Kerr: What does it mean to me? It's a devotional act of humility, I think, but it's also an antidote to what's probably the real enemy of high-performance, which is entitlement, complacency. The sort of framing of it, the context of it was that it was a deliberate ritual really put into place that comes out of the DNA of rugby. Rugby clubs would tidy up after themselves. That's just the right way to roll. You just do that. And of course, in the professional world where you're the most successful team in the world. Everyone loves you, you're doing underwear ads, up on billboards, everyone wants to sleep with you, all of that stuff. It's difficult not to have your head turned. There's a phrase, "Success is a terrible teacher". You start to think it's all about you. So, humility is the antidote to that really. And it's a lot more than that, too. It also means you're better to work with. You keep an open mind, a beginner's mind. You don't think it all. You're able to approach every situation and leave your ego at the door. And that's tremendously important, I think, for decision-making. If you think you're the sort of master of the universe, you'll get found out pretty quickly. If you think there's always something to learn, you have gratitude for the opportunity that you're given to be in a place. It's not about you, it's about service to something bigger than yourself. It's a foundational mindset value I think for high-performance and for leadership and for just being a decent human being I think good teammate arrogance is brittle it's all right have a bit of swagger that no one's saying don't kind of back yourself right but the real strength isn't in arrogance it's in the ability to be strong enough to be humble. I think that's the real strength that's based growth grounded grownup masculinity or humanity.

I think in a very powerful way and I think the All Blacks put this ritual into place and I think actually there are sort of three aspects to it very quickly one is my book is called Legacy and it's a founding idea within that all black culture what better metaphor for a legacy is it than taking care of the place you've just used leave the world in a better case for at least a decent state. Two, it's about self-reliance. Sweep up after yourself. Don't rely on anyone else. No one takes care of the All Blacks. The All Blacks can take care of themselves. And that's a massively important thing in any team. Accountability and reliability and self-reliance. And the third is really living the values out loud and a phrase that's been used in the All Blacks and many teams but don't just put the values on the wall get them onto the floor express them somehow and one of the Cardinal All Blacks' values is and you'll never see this word hear this word but you'll see the actions all the time is around humility don't get ahead of yourself just because you're number one prepare like you're number to stay humble and stay hungry.

I think it's an extraordinarily powerful idea dressed up in a very soft word and sweep the sheds is a sort of embodiment of that a ritualization of that and I think there's a lot of talk as you say there's a lot of talk about culture but when you walk into an environment how do you see it what's actually happening not what People say it's about just about every law firm I've ever seen, for instance, will say, "We got a great culture here and they're all kind of siloed and stabbing each other in the back." Well, I don't see it necessarily, but what I do see is, I don't know, sports teams where the day after a player is injured, the team will turn up at the hospital bed. That's an action, that's behavior. And some and I think culture is behavior. It's the way we behave. It's the actions we take. And there are a lot of people who do a lot of talking, but the but the but the real deal, they do it. They live their values out loud.

Jon Becker: I think sweep the sheds is an example of humility and action and taking that belief and turning it into behavior and I think that's foundational for a culture. Obviously, the Dodgers are the best team in baseball for the second time in a row. And, the star of the Dodgers now is Shohei Ohtani, who is making, it's a 700 something million contract. So, he's theoretically making 70 million a year. If you watch Ohtani when he gets a walk, he takes his helmet off or he takes his stuff off, takes all the padding off. He puts it into a neat pile on the ground and thanks the ball boy when he comes and picks it up and he does it every time and it's ritualistic for him. It's not, some of these guys will take off their elbow pads and throw them and they'll drop the bat and make a pile and, like I'm really important. I have to get to first base. The most expensive player in baseball, arguably the best baseball player in the world, takes the time to very neatly and politely fold his stuff and thank the person who carries it away. And it struck me the first time I saw it as exactly it sweep the sheds.

James Kerr: Go figure. Go figure. The correlation between the humility to do it right and do right by others and success. The small things are the big things. In any environment, the cliche, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. If you're sloppy with your kit, what else are you sloppy with? If you think you're too big to tidy up after yourself, what else do you do what else are you too big for? It's the beginning of a kind of character slippage, I think.

Another LA team, the UCLA Bruins and John Wooden is a fantastic example of this that this week the sheds were just tidying up the table. Don't leave all your used wrapping, your used burger wrapping on the table or on the floor. Don't leave your popcorn on the floor of the cinema, and great players who have been through his sort of talent factory, however how many hundreds of millions they've made out of the sport, household names, they take care of that stuff. I think that the idea of devotional practice in one form or another is an ancient and powerful idea. Because you're not just kind of letting it run. You're being deliberate and being deliberate. Deliberation, thinking about something is a form of self-regulation. It's a form of self-discipline. It's a practice and what we practice we become and so absolutely no surprise that the guy who takes care of the ball boy is also walks off with the prize with the glittering prizes I think they're really very much related and that idea of practicing humility A very deliberate practice I think is a very important way to slow down, be present, get the job done, square it away, take care of the details, get your ego out of the way, be effective.

Jon Becker: I think that ego, humility is at the root of all of it, right? It is this notion that you are not that important. Even though you're doing something important and you're playing for the All Blacks and you might be the star player and you may have gotten the try that won the game last time, get a broom and clean up the room.

James Kerr: Yeah. You're playing for something bigger than yourselves and it's not about you. You look at San Antonio Spurs, Greg Popovich's group which was so successful for such a long period of time. He talks about "Just leave your ego at the door". You select on character, not on talent. I mean, you need the talent.

I think there's another sporting story I can't remember. It might have been John Wooden, but talent will win you a game, but character wins you tournaments. It isn't the sort of boy scout. Winning isn't everything. Winning is everything. But you're more likely to win if you're a human of great character. If you do the right thing on a difficult day, if you take care of the details, if you serve something that's not just you serve the badge on the front, not the one on the back, that's always one of my favorite things.

Jon Becker: This kind of underlies a second principle I wanted to talk about, which is play with purpose, right? Kind of the individual role clarity. Talk to me about that.

James Kerr: I mean, I think that sort of occurs in different ways. What is the purpose? Well, it's the why. Why do we play? So if you're, protect and defend or, clear a room or, serve my buddies or uphold the honor of the group, all of those are sort of purposeful things and purposeful kind of devotions, I guess. I think it becomes about how you link your personal purpose if you like to your collective purpose. And it goes very deep I think because there's a lovely line I you I love from the UK military I learned it which was what people really want is a meaningful role in something meaningful. A meaningful role in something meaningful. There's nothing worse than feeling our life is wasted or time is going by and we've got nothing to do with it. We want to do meaningful work and work that means something to us. If we can find that relationship between the work that we do and the purpose we serve, we were in the zone then, we're in flow. We're doing what we're meant to be doing on this earth. There's no finer feeling. There's nothing more satisfying. There's nothing more effective actually because you're not thinking about yourself. You're thinking about the impact that you can make.

I think the purpose, if you really get down to it, is about service to others. San Antonio Spurs again, how can I make my teammates better? Pericles, "Our achievements aren't written on stone monuments. They're woven into the lives of others." Your eulogy doesn't talk about, in business, your profit and loss. It talks about your character and your character is usually defined in terms of your contribution to others. So, it's a massively important motivating and satisfying mindset I think and it's been called "servant leadership", in business gets called "Level Five Leadership", a Jim Collins idea and his research says that CEOs who have that servant leader mindset, that level five leadership mindset are more successful in the share market and the stock market over time than those who are driven by ego.

So both on a personal level and on a performance level, purpose really matters. Now what that purpose is I think varies from unit to unit from individual to individual and there are different kinds of levels of purpose. Some of it might mean to protect the constitution or whatever and some might just be to get my kids through school and they're both a purpose. So really asking and answering the big question and the big question is why? Why do I do what I do? Who am I as I do it and how do I win are sort of the big questions I think in performance and identity and they're incredibly important as the sort of central ethos if you like to do that I think we all benefit from asking and answering for ourselves and for our groups.

Jon Becker: One of the things that I teach when I teach culture leadership, is that the only thing that truly motivates human beings is helping each other, right? Like money, money matters, trophies matter. In the end, we are not sending men into combat, SWAT teams into to do hostage rescues, saying "Go protect the Constitution", right? It's to protect each other. It saves lives. It has to emotionally resonate. I think that concept ties also to kind of the next thing that I want to talk about, which is this idea of "Pass the Ball", right? Trust and collaboration. They're very related.

James Kerr: I think it's our competitive advantage as a species. We can make tools. We have an abstract. We have opposable thumbs. We can make stuff. We can think stuff up. We have abstract thoughts. We have language. We can communicate that thought. But where it all comes together is in our ability to coordinate our skill sets towards something that collectively we want. We can build a skyscraper. We can put planes in the air. We can send humans into space. We can build the internet. They're all collaborative ventures. And so our ability to work as a team as humans is really our advantage. As soon as you become individualistic and say, "Well, it's just me. It's on me," then your ego is in play.

Hyperindividualistic people tend not to thrive. They separate themselves from the flock, from the herd, from the pack. All the great groups, the strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf. The British SAS say, "The regiment is the man and the man is the regiment". Your purpose of the All Blacks is to leave the jersey in a better place, to and that jersey stands for that group, for that collective.

So the pass the ball really is about that and then about how and what does that really mean? And I think that comes down to a sort of a style of leadership that I think is incredibly important which is Wayne Smith a former well current All Blacks coach or he's performance director I think director of rugby now has a lovely line where he says, "What we want is leaders who create leaders who create leaders". So we want to create leaders who are able to create other leaders and in turn those other leaders are primed to create other leaders. Pass those lessons down, pass the ball. If you think about that as a joined up organization, it means that the institutional knowledge is handed down. It means people understand their role in something bigger than themselves. So it's a very galvanizing force in a group. But it also creates the conditions in which talent rises. Leadership talent in this sense that we are mentors.

Anyone who's as a child knows that your life changes from being all about me to all about them. And the satisfaction and the passing of the ball, these lessons learned, the development of other people becomes a joy and a very powerful force and an obligation and an opportunity I think. It's the basis of miss military leadership doctrine that idea of mission command or commanders intent get the right people on board, train them right, resource them right. Command them in the way that you set out the what and the why, the end state and then you get out of the way to enable them to grow to enable them to take on the how and the responsibility and the weight of that responsibility. When we feel the weight of responsibility, we grow if we're good. So that hand passing the ball and getting out of the way, creating an environment where people take ownership and responsibility and accountability for their own stuff.

Jon Becker: That's a strategic corporal. Leadership at the point of information is really fundamental I think in high performing elite groups and any actually any organization but really in elite groups. I got this. My hands up. But also it it implicit in this is subordination of the individual to the group, right? That yes, you are an important player and you may be able to do great things, but you can't do it by yourself. By yourself and humility is a part of that obviously and purpose is a part of that.

James Kerr: So, it's sort of a bundle. It's a package deal. The metaphor of legacy was it's 15 lessons but like a rugby team they all work together I don't think you get service to something bigger than yourself unless you have a degree of humility.

Jon Becker: That's actually what I like most about this book is it you there is this kind of ideal culture that the book is espousing but what you do really well is you look at that culture from a variety of different lenses. So that the idea of sweep the sheds is looking at humility is looking at individuals. What is the culture of the individual passing the ball is looking at the culture of, leadership and passing down and sharing and, playing with purposes, identifying role clarity. It's this notion that all of these things are there and working together. It's not so many leadership books, but so many culture books, give you 75 things over the course of the book. There's 75 things that you have to do in order to get it right and it's not actionable. Whereas here it is really just looking at the culture from different lenses that at the same time are really like sweeping the sheds is a really simple concept. It's not a simple concept. There's a lot in it. Pass the ball, everybody understands that concept but I think that is part of what makes it so actionable is that they're really simple mods and they're but they exemplify a much bigger concept.

James Kerr: Yeah. Well, I thank you again. I believe in one of the most ancient or traditional ways, ancient ways we've communicated is sort of parable and proverb. We tell a story and then we have a proverb that's a hook that somehow summarizes that story but stands for something much bigger. I think that's the style of it. I think coming back I think sometimes there's a sort of you need to step into the culture step into that kind of embodiment of what that culture is and in some ways that's quite simple. Can we know if you talked about role clarity? Many of us know what it means to be a parent for instance. We can step into that role, we can step into the role of being a leader. We can and we have to step into that role. It is a role. It's almost anthropological in some ways, right? That you stand for something. So the simpler the paradigm for one of a much better word, you step into I think you want to do that. You kind of want to go actually, what does it mean to be a leader is a really important question. I think in some ways it's a very complex one but in some ways it's quite simple. Get your ego out of the way. Take care of other people. Understand clarify and articulate an end game even if there's no end to the game. Lead by deed. Represent the values of the group. Pass the ball, create other leaders who can step up if you get taken out. Be authentic, be yourself, bring yourself. Deal with pressure, self-regulate, maintain your state. All of these things are really what it means to lead culture, I think. I'm not a great believer that you can sort of change a culture of a big organization but you can certainly change your own relationship to those around you and I think that's kind of mimetic that's contagious.

I kind of think that cultures change team by team not the whole organization and the team represents the culture but almost hey this is what a great team works like and if you take Stan McChrystal's idea of a team of teams organizations are these groups of groups of great groups of greatness if that makes sense and so if you're talking about a tactical team don't worry about what the bureaucrats are doing. Don't worry about the big bigger picture. It's not controllable necessarily, but what's your group doing? What standard do you hold yourself to account? What are your expectations? How can you be a good teammate to each other? How can you take care of each other?

I mean just very quickly it's interesting if you go back in time and you go back to Roman times where the idea of culture really started. It starts from the same metaphor is to cultivate it's to create a place to grow. So if you take Self-determination Theory and the psychology of Self-determination Theory what we want is capability. What we really want is mastery. Autonomy and relatedness mastery: good people want to be good at something at the thing they want to be good at. Get better every day. You want to create the conditions for professional growth like that. Autonomy, pass the ball. No one likes to be micromanaged. Set people up for success and then get out of the way. And relatedness, connection, and care. Now, it's both.

I think it's not just I don't think it's simplistic. I think it's radically simple in some ways. If you can get down to those and why I started off talking about the principles if you can get to first principles about what a great group looks like and works like it's very difficult to get there. But it's in some ways the principles are quite simple and we in a world that likes to complicate things sometimes that radical simplicity of thinking to boil down to that principled level is very powerful.

Jon Becker: I think it was Einstein that said, "If you can't explain something simply". Einstein or Feynman said it.

James Kerr: It may be made more complex by the internet and everything that seems to be attributed to him. But yeah explain it like I'm five otherwise.

Jon Becker: You can't explain it like I'm five. You don't understand it well enough to understand it.

James Kerr: It's true.

Jon Becker: The older I get the longer I lead people the more great leaders I work with the more I realize that the greatest leaders are not the ones that have 500 axioms that they thumb through every day. They tell the truth. They treat people well. They care about other people. They try to try. I think that's what resonates so well with this book is it's not trying to make this hard. It's not trying to make it complicated. And I think part of what has made the All Blacks' culture so effective is it's a culture that a rugby player can understand.

James Kerr: Not to knock rugby players, but yeah. No, but exactly. And that is transmissible, that can be passed on in bite-sized chunks, that you can, and if you think about, I don't want to get too biblical about it, but if you think about the Bible, "You go do unto others as others do unto you, as you would have others do unto you". There are ten commandments. They're pretty simple, don't nick stuff from people, don't sleep around, don't covet your neighbor's wife, few others. They're pretty simple principles, but those principles hold a multitude of truths in them.

I think that aphoristic or mantra or motto kind of way of hanging. They're sort of like hooks for meaning, I think. And you don't want too many because then you just muddy the waters. And if you think about a strategy, if you think about a strategy, of any kind, it really comes down usually to four or five pillars. We're going to capture market share by doing X, Y, and Zed. Simplicity is very difficult, getting right down to I wrote, I don't know, 15 drafts of Legacy to get it as simple as it is. They probably ascribed it to Einstein but "if you want it shorter it will take longer". You have to do the work to boil it down to get it right down to first principles but once you do they will guide you in the right direction otherwise you're just making it up as you go along everything changes it's superficial and surface I think.

Jon Becker: I think in that regard I think what should have been the first commandment is the principle of no duckheads.

James Kerr: Yeah. It's biblical, isn't it? It's got that biblical feel to it. The sermon on the mount and my first lesson to you is no dickheads. Yeah. Exactly.

Jon Becker: I mean, it's funny, right? It's a funny thing, but that notion of culture protection that is and this is again what I think is great is it's a simple rule and it's one that everybody can remember, but it's a much more complicated concept than that like it's not it's not just a funny phrase. It is this notion of larger cultural protection and the way you act.

James Kerr: Yeah. A great culture and again without sounding too pretentious is a sacred space. It's a sensitive sacred space shared between people in one form or another. It has its own stories, has its own dynamic. It's easily broken. It's really easily broken. There's a wonderful Turkish proverb which says, "It's better to have 5,000 enemies outside the tent than one on the inside". You'll spend 80% of your time dealing with a dickhead inside when you should be spending 100% of your time dealing with what's outside.

So, one way of looking at high-performance anything is about the control of attention. Where are you putting your attention? Are you putting your attention on the elements that make you better and more effective at what you do? Or are you sorting out stuff that is just tribal warfare inside your own tribe? I mean, you don't want that. Again, it's like folksy knowledge, but it's true. Folksy knowledge is, "One bad apple spoils the barrel". And it does. And we know that. And we've all been in that environment. You get into an environment, you think, "This is the best job in the world." And then suddenly there's this there's just this pebble in the shoe. There's this niggle. It's just and it gets worse and worse and worse. It's the thing people don't talk about. It's the thing that the person usually that when somebody says, "Hey, how's work?" And you go, "Oh, it's fine." They're the person you go, "Well, it's not fine, actually." and then people are polishing their CVs. They're trying to get jobs somewhere else.

There was an interesting thing around the U.S. government. Actually, I won't name names or anything like that, but the system is sort of so broken that the best way to get the dickhead out of your team is to promote them. Employment law, all of that stuff. It can be difficult, but it's vital and it's particularly vital when you're facing weapons incoming or a rampant rugby team on the other side of the field. Great groups are run on cohesion. There's been a lot of work done around what's the winning formula and groups that stick. You need capability. You need that you need all of that but if patterns and gaps if you find the gaps appear somebody will exploit those gaps you are exploitable you are you are weaker. You think about ancient times the Roman phalanx, or the Spartans in a square, and it's the old thing of the Spartan shield, the weapon is for you, the shield is for your mate. If you lose your weapon, well, that's on you. If you lose your shield, well, you let your mates down. Create cohesion in your group.

Now, you don't have to like everyone to love everyone, right? It's not about being best buddies, but you do need to be best, you need to be a band of brothers or a band of sisters. Well, whatever. You need to be cohesive. We talked a little bit before about the individual versus the group. Subsuming yourself into the group isn't sub isn't giving yourself away. It's making yourself stronger actually, I think, because all boats rise with that tide. So the idea that it's me, my ego against the collective in some sort of socialist utopia, or if it's just actually what works, guys, what's pragmatic here? Well, what's pragmatic is that if I let my ego get in the way, I am creating gaps. Gaps break cohesion. We will get exploited. We will get found out. And so, you have a duty, I think, to not necessarily like others in your group, but to kind of love them, to love them like they're your own. And because they are. And if and if you get that reciprocity within that group, it's a very powerful thing. Just to go on one moment more. It also means you can have difficult conversations because the lifeblood of groups is information.

Now if you get fracture or a [ __ ] over there or you get that kind of siloization and atomization the information that people need doesn't get transmitted and that's in the line of work many of the people listening today that's a dangerous thing that's suboptimal so I think it's incredibly important to and it's not about group think there's nothing wrong with a maverick You've got to be in a position to challenge. But a lovely line from Gilbert Anoka, the mental skills coach of the All Blacks, says, "You want disagreement without disconnection." And I think that's spot on. Disagreement without disconnection. You can disagree all you want, but don't disconnect, right? Don't walk away. And it's like, don't break those bonds because those bonds are critical. They're mission-critical bonds.

Jon Becker: You can disagree without being disagreeable. We can agree that we have a common purpose, agree that we care about each other, agree that we are better when both of us are firing on all cylinders and still disagree about what the correct approach is. But I think that, one of the things that's very implicit in the "no dickheads" rule is that what a dickhead does is ruin the culture at an individual level. It undermines the cohesion of the group in a way that everything else begins to suffer.

James Kerr: Exactly. Exactly. And from a leadership point of view, you're spending all your time concentrating on a problem that shouldn't exist, and that's not where you want your attention to be.

Jon Becker: One of the things that's really changed in my personal leadership is my tolerance for dick-headedness now is almost zero. I would have previously, "Well, this guy's a high performer. He does really well." I made the mistake early on in my business of hiring somebody who was a high performer who was a terrible human being. And it's not a mistake I'll ever make again. One of my favorite tactical units who we work with quite a bit describes them as the high-performing asshole. Don't hire a high performing asshole.

James Kerr: Another unit they say, would you want to jump out of a helicopter with this guy? And even more importantly, would you want to share a tent? Character counts and respect counts and treating people well counts and being a good human being is a strength. It's an incredibly strong thing. "The sign of a good man is not somebody who throws his strength around but knows when not to", and all of those things I think are all part of it. But, for me it comes down to not breaking those bonds, and those bonds are necessary to have those difficult conversations. To say the things that need to get said to create an optimal environment.

Our first responsibility is to create an optimum environment for ourselves and everybody else to perform and dickheads break that.

Jon Becker: It also goes to kind of the next thing that I wanted to talk about which is this notion of "embracing expectation".

James Kerr: This notion that pressure is a privilege. So, a Billie Jean King quote and I think it's over the I think it's beside the door over the door at the U.S. Open. Pressure is a privilege. If you're not feeling pressure, maybe you're not up to enough, it's like you ride a motorbike, you want to get a bit of wind in your hair, you want to get a bit of push back. It's not an aberration. It's part of the condition of high-performance. So get used to it and embrace it and I think in fact you don't. It's not just expectation from outside it's expectation from inside but also within a group. There's a line I like using which is that "The standard you set is the standard you get" if you have low standards and low expectations you'll be happy, happily fulfilled they'll come about. You have high standards might be more difficult to hold to them, but you'll nail it, and so, so setting high standards, setting high ambitions, throwing your hat over the wall, figure out how to get there. All of that we're talking about high-performance environments, high-performance, high standards, high expectations, high pressure. Right? High capability, high risk. All of these things are heightened, have a have a have a have a height to it. So, if you don't expect that of yourself, you're not going to reach the levels required.

Let's not kid ourselves. Being the best at anything takes hard work and sacrifice and pain and failure to get there all the time.

There's a wonderful clip of Roger Federer, the tennis player, talking about tennis and talking about how many games he's won, how many matches he's won or tournaments he's won. And his percentage is, I don't know, 80% or something. How many points he's won, 54% or something like that. It's a margin error that it takes between good and great or between ordinary and not. It's those percentage points that you want to get and so setting expectations and most importantly holding yourself and each other to them becomes a high part of it. So there's no point in setting high standards if you ignore them. It's holding yourself to account for maintaining those standards, and also holding each other to account and having the kind of an environment of care and challenge. You care the hell for each other, but you also challenge the hell out of each other. You hold each other accountable. You say, "Mate, is that good enough? Let's go again. Let's go again till we get it right." "Yeah, I know you promised your kids pizza, right? But you can deal with that later, but let's stay here till we get this one right."

So, setting those expectations and holding yourself to it and being prepared to go through the discomfort in order to set that standard and hold that standard. I think in the business the readership or the listenership is involved if you don't want to be around low standards. Low standards get people killed.

Jon Becker: It's also embracing expectation cognitively reframes expectation and pressure not as something that you are subjected to but something that you have the opportunity to embrace. The building of high standards, the building of excellence is not my coach screaming at me because he's creating an environment that will sharpen the blade-- "iron sharpens iron". I think it's a really important reframe cognitively because pressure can crush you with the right mindset but with the right mindset pressure is a privilege.

James Kerr: Absolutely, and the physiological reaction and we'll talk a little bit about what I call climate maybe a bit later on but I hope we can kind of have a moment to get on to that. The physiological reaction between what we describe as anxiety about a task or a situation and what we describe as excitement. Pretty much the same physiological reaction. The heart rate goes up. If we go over the sort of eustress curve we start to tense up. If you turn anxiety into excitement, then you're per, then you're performing, then you become reward oriented, and you go for it and you and you make stuff happen. You get on the front foot. If you think that's anxiety, that's fair, that's something to be avoided, you move away from it. You play not to lose. And that's a very different mindset. So it can be just a quite a simple reframing but also what are we here for? Are we here for an easy life or a good life? Are we here to do kind of for a comfortable life or are we here to stretch ourselves. It's that pleasure satisfaction thing.

Ice cream and a bear and popcorn and our feet up on the sofa and a lazy day might be pleasurable, but you link too many of them together and it's not very satisfying. I think high performers at least, who are committed to being in an elite group of any sort generally are the sort of people who want to be the best or good at what they do. They, to be the best, work with the best, challenge themselves. You want to be in a challenge state to a degree.

Victor Frankle, a brilliant, brilliant book "Man's Search for Meaning". If anyone wants an exceptional book, we don't want that. We don't want to live in a state of rest. It's actually not a healthy place to be. We want to be in a state of appropriate challenge. Where we're lifting ourselves all the time. That of course is the state that gets c talked about as flow, when we're when we're, our talents are appropriately matched with the challenge that we face. I think that expectation and reframing it and putting yourself into that challenge state, that's where we grow, that's where we get better, that's where we find satisfaction, that's where we perform at our best. We don't perform at our best comfortably on a couch. We don't perform at our best fearfully either. We perform at our best where we're excited by the challenge and we seek the reward and the satisfaction of proving ourselves against it. So that embracing expectation, run to the sound of the guns, seize the moment, go for the gap. That kind of mindset I think is fundamental. It activates us physiologically in order to perform.

Jon Becker: It also underlies this notion of emotional regulation. Implicit in embracing that pressure is learning the ability to regulate yourself emotionally because to perform at a very high level obviously you have to have pretty good control over your emotions. You have to frame it correctly. In the book you talk about the notion of "keeping a blue-head", keeping your composure, not allowing yourself to be made angry, not allowing yourself to lose control. Talk to me a little bit about that.

James Kerr: Well, the blue-head/red-head model, if you like, was put into place with the All Blacks. Well, they really realized their kind of missing link of success. They were world champions between World Cups. But they went 24 long years as being kind of the best team in the world but not winning the World Cup. And they started to look at why they had a terrible loss in 2007 and they really rebooted the way they looked at pressure. The idea really was the reason I think they weren't really challenged in knockout rugby between World Cups but when it came to the big event was knockout everything was at stage and they'd freeze up they'd "The Centipede Effect". The centipede knows how to move 100 legs until somebody says hey how do you walk with 100 legs and you go start thinking about it too much I can't walk anymore we become self-conscious all of that.

So red-head is choking it overthinking it's future-based or the way I interpret it and from other work that I've done It's future-based thinking. So my example is you've got a job interview and you're running late. You're caught in traffic. The freeways p there's a pile up on the freeway and your mind starts racing and you start trying to solve the problem in your mind and you go, "Well, I'm going to be late. I'm not going to get the job. If I can't get the job, I can't pay my mortgage. If I can't pay my mortgage, my cat will leave me." Whatever. And of course, it's at that point that you're not watching the road. So, your mind is literally not on the road. You have an accident because your mind's not on the road. You're not paying attention to the right thing. Blue head is, time slows down, horizon opens up, your attention is focused on a task, on what it is you want to achieve. There are two kinds of aspects to it: preparing for pressure and performing under pressure.

Preparing for pressure the suk Suvorov I think is pronounced the great Russian general and he never lost a battle. He lost a lot of men in training right because he trained like it's a real "Train hard, fight easy". Raise those standards and raise those expectations and create the conditions where you're putting yourself out deliberately under pressure and a lot of pressure because then when you come to the moment you're prepared. You've seen the picture before. It's basically, clearing rooms over and over again, cleaning rifles in the dark, whatever it is, make it hard for yourself. So when you're under pressure and it's less optimum because pressure impacts us, you've got the muscle memory to do it right. So but also under pressure how do you regulate? There are a lot of different ways. Obviously breathing is the most obvious and actually the most profound, box breathing because it's the only way we know how to do a physical action that impacts our heart rate. So we can bring ourselves down by oxygenating and by regulating. So there's a physicality to it that allows us to do it.

The All Black example is know yourself are you are you fight or freeze when you're hit with massive pressure. Do you lash out? Do you freak out and get out? Or do you freeze? And begin with self-knowledge because we all respond in a slightly different way, right? And then you go, okay, well, how can I create a shortcut in order to be an antidote for that response pattern that I have because it is a stimulus response under pressure. So, the pressure mounts, something bad happens. I go into fight, I over respond or I underrespond or I don't respond at all.

So, a couple of All Blacks examples, one player would crunch up his toes and kind of do the he get himself grounded because that was his antidote to wanting to get the hell out of there. He used the haka, the All Blacks challenge to kind of ground himself. Another player would look in every corner of the stadium in his own time, his own private ritual because it gave him the big picture because he knew he closed down. Another player would lash out and hit people under pressure, which you can no longer do in rugby. He threw water on himself to literally and metaphorically cool himself down.

So very simple practical ways of physically responding to a threat state or a perceived threat state in order to self-regulate. And there are a lot of other aspects around it. It's being able to name the feelings, the emotions. It's being able to recognize the triggers. Particular circumstances that you're walking into. It's about recognizing the precursors, tingling palms, scrambled thoughts, whatever it is. So, self-knowledge, it begins within. It's, in therapy talk, it's "Do the work", "Know thyself and do the work". "Lead from within" I think is a really important part of it because then. Again it's the ancients it's Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics what you want to do is kind of be unflappable whatever the world throws at you that you are able to cope with a degree of equanimity because and why is that important not just because you don't tear up hotel rooms in anger or whatever it's also because that's the optimum performance state to make good decisions under pressure and so you owe it to yourself.

So, if you're doing a breach and suddenly there's an unidentified gunman on the other side of the road, you didn't know and there's incoming. I don't know. I'm kind of creating a scenario. You either are subject to your emotions that will flood you. You will panic and make bad decisions and maybe you die or you go blue. You breathe. You get in touch with stuff. You slow down to speed up. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. You do all of that stuff. You might have simple rituals that help you.

You know there are sportsmen who have just elastic bands that they ping themselves with the elastic band just to remind themselves to come back to the moment because action and attention has to be on task and in the moment to be effective.

Thinking of the result, thinking of the consequence, thinking of the people watching the expectations that others have of you. None of that helps you on task.

Mindset is a skill set that we can learn in order to transition from an unresourceful state to a resourceful state. Think that's the name of the game.

You look at another tennis player, Djokovic, he speaks very well on the internet, well worth having a look at about the difference between say, mental what he defines as mental toughness. We all go through the same emotions. We all feel fear. We all feel insecurities, anxieties, and depression sometimes. It's our ability to process it and to come out of it quickly and effectively that defines us in high pressure situations. Those who are still worrying about the last point on the next one, they're going to lose the next one as well. So how quickly can we process effectively what we feel sluice through us and come back to the moment and put our attention on task. I think that's got to be the question.

Jon Becker: It's also you positioning emotional regulation as a performance enhancer. It's the recognition that we want to achieve this… and I teach this to my kids. My daughter does theater. How do you feel? She's like "I'm really nervous". I said no you're really excited. This is your body getting ready to do something amazing. It's not your body getting ready to [ __ ] you. It's your body getting ready to do something amazing and recognizing what I like about, keep a blue-head is this notion that in order to perform at the highest level, you have to be emotionally regulated and you have to focus on that emotional regulation and realize that you want to harvest the upside of fear. In the case of the people listening to this show, fear is an always present companion. Recognize that is preparing your body for a high level of performance but then also not allow it to emotionally hijack you and take you down a negative path.

James Kerr: And also the afterlife of fear can be debilitating for performance and for life. If we don't process it properly. It doesn't go away. It comes back to us in our dreams. You think about the idea of process and processing; processes change. You take a bunch of meat and you put it through a machine and it comes out as a sausage. That's a process. You take a bunch of feelings, you put it through yourself, and it comes out as self-regulation. You've gone through a process where you have transformed those feelings into something else, something useful for you. So rather than it's I can't feel those feelings and you push them away or you bury them or you drink them away or you take them out on somebody else, which all are characteristics of this kind of profession often. The dark side, the shadow side of this kind of profession. A lot of it is unprocessed emotion. Mindset is a skill set; It's not a stigma.

I think one of the things that's fantastic about the time that we're living in from a performance point of view is Gilbert and the mental skills coach for the All Blacks had, he's a relative veteran. Had been with him for 20 years, had been with him before he retired 20 maybe 30 years but when he started he had to pretend he was the masseuse. His job title was masseuse because both inside the team but particularly in the fan base the idea that there might be somebody working on the mental game was what's wrong with you. It's pretty unreconstructed and in fact unprofessional I think attitude to mindset work. We have a stigma about it. It's like, "Well, he needs fixing. There must be something wrong with him. He's weak." Well, maybe that's where real strength lies. Just maybe that's where real strength lies.

Now there are very few professional sportsmen I work with now who don't work with a psychologist, a psychiatrist or a psychologist generally and because it's a force multiplier it's an optimizer. It's not about fixing. It's about getting better and when you reframe that talking about reframing when you reframe that role and that function around the idea of performance. It's a different conversation and a very powerful one to have.

Jon Becker: There's probably no sports teams that do not have performance psychologists. There are very few tier one units or even tier 2 units now in the military worldwide that are not using performance psychologists.

James Kerr: 20 years ago, there were very few that did.

Jon Becker: Well, because they've realized it works.

James Kerr: This isn't about equity and, this isn't a soft thing. These are hard skills. They're the most difficult skills to master. This is the hard stuff. I've got a line, the soft stuff delivers the hard stuff. If you can get into the mucky sticky business of what it is to be human and you're able to be almost more human in your self-understanding, you are a better operator. You will operate better in this world because you are better adjusted for the conditions in which you will find yourself. And that's high-performance. That's an optimum optimization strategy. It's brilliant because it adds so much potential.

I think high-performance it's about taking you from potential to peak more consistently. What tools do we have?

Jon Becker: Make better All Blacks.

James Kerr: People make better All Blacks exactly what tools do we have in order to lift our game and there aren't that any you just create the right conditions around you, the correct the right environment, train right, have the right resources, have a real clarity of role and goal, of mission and at my part in that mission. Don't have any dickheads. Stay deeply connected. Be able to have the difficult conversations and create an environment in which an internal environment that enables you to perform more consistently at your best. And you don't do that when you're not processing whatever's going on. Look, we've all got stuff that goes on outside work. This isn't even about fear. It's also destruction. It's also jealousy. It might be sadness. We have parents who are passing on. We have children who might have challenges. We have partners that we might not be getting on with. There's a lot that goes on in the human mind. And each one of them is a performance enhancer or whatever the opposite of that is, degrader.

So you have a professional responsibility to do the work. I would argue it should be a non-negotiable if you're really about being the best and really about being there for your mates and not letting the side down should be a non-negotiable.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I think it is when you look at elite units it is implicit in their culture too. Let's pick up one more topic before we move on to kind of how your thinking has evolved which is this notion of leaving the jersey in a better place. The idea of legacy.

James Kerr: Yeah. Well, we talked about purpose earlier and I think it's a I think it's the beating heart of the purpose of the idea, the ethos of the All Blacks. But I also think it's the beating heart of most cultures of sustained success. You stand on the shoulders of giants. We represent all those who come before us and all those who have come after. We write our story among stories. And of course, that's kind of the story of life in a way.

The haka the All Blacks perform-- the haka is called a war dance, but it's sort of a challenge and it's well worth going down the rabbit hole online to check out the haka. It's an extraordinary ritual and in some interpretations the haka--the it's the idea that the sound is the sound of the earthquake and that earthquake opens the earth up and reveals our ancestors to us who are buried in the ground and they step up and they stand beside us in our struggle and so we represent them. We are the tip of that spear, and it's our job to take that story forward. We're part of this long unbroken chain of people from the beginning of time to the end of eternity. We're all linked arm-in- arm and the sun shines on our link and it asks of us some questions, right? What are we going to do with our time here on earth? What's our chapter going to be? What's our how will we fulfill our promise and our purpose? What's it all about? What's the why?

Now, I don't think that's an All Blacks idea or a haka idea. I think that's a human idea. That's the idea of parenting. We've talked a bit about fatherhood here. That idea that as soon as you have a child, it's not about you. Your job is to leave that jersey in a better place. It's a very powerful hardwired into us, service to something beyond ourselves. And I think that's our children. It can be our partner. It can be a podcast, what's the next? I just wanted to get better all the time and I want to make my contribution.

So it's a very powerful idea. I think when you take that legacy mindset and you put it on anything, you're taking a long view. It's not a transactional view of what I can get out of this situation. It's a view of what I can contribute to this? What's my role here? So, they're just better, bigger questions that you get to ask yourself, I think than a kind of a transactional short-term exploitative taking kind of view, if that makes sense. I think the more we give, the more we get in life. There's a sort of a reciprocity that's really hardwired into us as humans, and it applies to teams, it applies to organizations, and it applies to marriages. If you take more out of your marriage, try to take more out of your marriage than you put into it, it's not going to last very long.

I believe deeply that we create value by adding value, that's where value gets created and that we and so from our values we add value and when we add value we create value. If that makes some sense. We stand for something and that contribution creates value for someone somewhere. Now, that might be a new brand of soft drink. If you're creating a health drink, if you're creating value for somebody, they'll buy it and you get the value back. You make some money out of it. That way of starting to think about leaving Jersey in a better place, leaving a legacy, what am I doing with my time here on Earth? What will my impact be are just high-quality questions?

It's not a boy scout thing because you get paid back in spades. It's not altruistic, give myself away and do all of that. It's like finding a cause worth serving. And you choose the cause, right? Whether that's your family, whether it's writing a book, whether it's doing a podcast, whether it's being a great team member, where it's saving a life from a burning building, whatever it is, you'll get your life out of creating a life for others. So, a life of contribution, I think, is not a boy scout girl scout equation. It's much more profound than that, I think.

For me that's what that idea of legacy is and that idea of and it's a quote I used before the Pericles quote. It's not that our legacy isn't written on stone monuments. Who cares about the medals really your mom might but after a while if you care about the people and you make a difference to people around you there's deep human satisfaction and impact and value and therefore or you get that value back in one way or another by that mindset of contribution.

Sorry for the long answer but I think that's how I kind of see that legacy idea.

Jon Becker: Well, I agree with you. Yeah I mean it's it's it's the whole point of this podcast is try to make people safer try to make the industry better try to take the position. I like to say if you have the ability to do something, you have the responsibility to do it.

James Kerr: It's yours to pass on. Whatever that gift is, whatever that talent is, for me, I write and I speak and I coach and that's what I love and that's what I love doing and that's what I'm good at. I think and I hope it's my obligation to do that. I've been given those gifts. For someone else, it will be something else. You'll be a healer, you'll be a warrior, you'll be a parent, you'll be a teacher, you'll be a musician, whatever the gift is that you happen to be given. And, that's kind of genetics and random chance. Find what you're good at and give yourself to it and give it away to others. Well you give it to others and you get paid in return in one way or another. So to me that's the rule of life actually that the golden rule it's it's reciprocity and contribution and legacy.

Jon Becker: I agree and the book is exceptionally well named in that regard. So, it's been a decade since you wrote this, (which is it doesn't seem like 10 years ago that I read this, but it's crazy). Looking back now, you're working with a lot of organizations, you're coaching people, you're helping others to do this. How has your thinking evolved on this topic?

James Kerr: I'm not sure I'd change a word of the book because I think where I stand by it is around those principles I believe are timeless. I think about what I'm interested in and the direction I'm in. I actually have just beside me a pile of notes that's the beginning of the end if you like finishing another book. It's called "Ethos". It's sort of a how do we create that? How do we create the conditions? How do we actually do it and get down to do it? I've been thinking a lot about that. One aspect that I think is important and maybe increasingly important and it's a nuance on the idea of culture. So if you think about it, a school for instance might have a great culture, might be a great school with a great culture, but the individual experience of the student at the school is going to be much more defined by what's going on in the classroom. I call that "Climate". I'm not the first to have called it "Climate", but I think of that as a sort of climate. What are the conditions between human beings? How do we make each other better genuinely? How do we connect? How do we treat each other? We know a lot more now.

Now, you can kind of go all hippie- dippy and "woke" and be talking about it in those terms, but actually I think human beings impact each other. Emotions are contagious. The and it comes down again to a physiological thing that it very simplistically this is simplistic but within our in our endocrine system there are two kinds of aspects there are many aspects. There are two particular things to focus on, one is the behavioral activation system. We're reward oriented. We play to win, we go for the gap, we take risks, we're enterprising, we use our ingenuity, use our initiative. And then there's also the behavioral inhibition system which we play not to lose. We retreated a bit. We protect ourselves. We get defensive.

Now one is an optimum performance environment and the other one is not. Now we can talk about culture and getting all that right and you have to but almost the kind of the icing on the cake or the top of it is what happens in the room. Are people walking into that room and feeling anxious, judged, scared, threatened, or are they walking into that room and their dopamine, their adrenaline goes down and the dopamine goes high? So there's aspects around belonging. There's aspects around psychological safety. There's aspects around getting that challenge state just right. So the eustress curve is kind of "Goldilocks of anxiety" if you like-- not too much or not too little and not too much. You want to have an appropriate level that we talked about before that appropriate level of challenge. What happens in the room and there's a lovely idea in the Pacific Islands called "VA" and it means "the space between" the "in between"-- the way we're connected. And so in that conception, the idea of a team isn't the individuals in the team. It's the connections between the individuals. And the symbol of that in that culture is what they call fine mats which are woven mats. And the mats weave us together. In Maori culture, the idea of the chieftain is the rangatira, "the weaver together".

So the power of human connection is immense and we've touched on it and it's a big part of culture but specifically how do we conceptualize it how do we understand its importance and you look at it in different sporting context you you get in English cricket there's an idea it's named after their coach called bazball which is just create the conditions for positive effect and for initiative and for bold enterprise.

There's a psychologist who said, "What humans really need is a secure base from which to boldly venture". What we want to get is conditions of what gets called psychological safety of belonging, of being part of something of feeling seen, heard and appreciated, of not feeling you can't put your hand up and volunteer an idea.

Now in predominantly masculine environments, these conditions don't occur readily. So there was a really interesting study done on oil rigs around one of the large fossil fuel companies that went to North Sea oil rigs and was UK based and looked at the behaviors, leadership behaviors on oil rigs high-risk environments. Lots can go wrong right now the more hierarchical and fear-based they were the more the more accidents happening. Why? Because people were scared to put their hand up and point it out. They were scared to challenge, they were or unwilling to challenge, let's say.

So coming in and changing that dynamic, creating a kind of flatter and more egalitarian maybe giving voice was very powerful in changing the risk conditions of that environment because. How are those rooms managed? How are those small group conversations managed? Is it because one person dominates and the quiet voice from the corner doesn't get heard or do we create the conditions for communication that's flat and fast? I think the more we understand about the sort of physiology of high-performance and the need to belong and those needs for safety not soft safety but just we want to not be worried about getting stabbed in the back or being brought down or being ostracized. They are very human fears. Because if we are fearing that we won't take the risk or make the decision we will pull back at a critical point. I'm really interested in if we talk about where culture becomes climate if that makes sense. And what is the impact of character on that climate? Culture produces character. Character produces climate. We're all leaders. How do we create the conditions around ourselves in which we and others are able to perform optimally? And that is a culture conversation. I think there's a distinction within the idea of culture that's around climate.

So I'm really interested in that. I'm exploring that at the moment and what those conditions look like and how we might better create them. Without sounding like an old hippie, the optimum conditions for growth it's kind of love. Now that might be brotherhood or mateship or friendship however we put it's love.

Jon Becker: We can rebrand it however we need to.

James Kerr: We can rebrand it however we need to for people's egos or now love is the most powerful force in human history of God like love of love of love if we run into burning buildings to save cats that we love we move countries. We spend our children making crazy decisions. We're hugely motivated by it and it's usually important for us. Why? Because they are the optimum conditions for growth.

Jon Becker: I think we're hardwired to seek love and to resist being outcast, right?

James Kerr: Human beings are survival, on that outlier thing. It's survival. The I don't know how true this is, but it's a brilliant story. The to be fired. To be fired, you're fired. Comes from when you'd come home in medieval times to find your build your home burning because you're being outcast. And that was death because suddenly you're on the road. You don't have a tribe to look after you. You don't have an extended family to take care of you. If you get sick, you die. If you're on your own, you die. So there's something hardwired into us that is connection which is care which is acceptance which is a positive reinforcement which is a willingness for others to grow and to do well. All of those things that we feel in our families, (well hopefully we feel in our families and good families that are nurturing and passing the ball to the next generation) I think in the first principle form of that (and I'm not talking about love fests but I'm talking about you don't have to like them but you need to love them kind of environments) they are highly cohesive, highly purposeful and highly conducive to getting better every day. For me there wouldn't be a high level coach I've worked with that doesn't intrinsically recognize this and coaches are connectors. They are able to be good leaders and connectors first and foremost. I think they bring that group together. There's a lot of sports coaches I've worked with. They have no sense of personal space. They are completely in there. They bring you together physically. And so it's it's the most powerful force we've got. And so how do you create a climate of genuine connection?

Jon Becker: When is this book going to be out?

James Kerr: Well, next year. I've got to finish it by April. So next year. I've probably just given it away. Somebody's going to beat me to it, but I think it's a story that is worth telling and worth telling and worth telling.

Jon Becker: Where can people find your work? If I want to learn more about what you're writing and what you're sharing, what's the best way for me to do that?

James Kerr: I think Google is your friend, just put my name in. James Kerr Legacy. Plenty of stuff will turn up. I'm on LinkedIn for my sins are the best way to get in touch with me. I think it's just a platform. But you'll find me online relatively easily I hope still. There are podcasts and films and various things that you can kind of get a sense of and the book is "Legacy" comes from all good bookshops and Amazon and for those of you who want to read it in the car, there's an audio book version as well.

Jon Becker: The book's fantastic. I've done both. I actually really liked the audio book.

James Kerr: Yeah. So, well thank you. We talk about love. It was a labor of love and we talked about parenthood. My children were very young as I have two boys and they were very young at that point as I was writing it. And I think a lot of that idea around leaving the jersey in a better place, about passing the ball, about humility, about authenticity, about self-regulation are lessons that I wanted to understand more deeply myself and maybe pass on as a legacy to them.

Jon Becker: James, thank you so much for doing this. Will link to the book and the thing and I hope that when the new book comes out we'll get back together and talk about that.

James Kerr: Enjoy that very much. I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you very much. And I hope it's useful to paraphrase my grandmother. I hope that this has been useful for your audience.