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There's IQ. There's EQ. Introducing PQ. All things human performance with PQ founder, Andrew May, exploring the latest in human performance with an all-star cast of subject matter experts covering physical and psychological wellbeing, performance psychology, sport, business, entertainment, the performing arts, leadership, and science.
Learn valuable lessons that can be applied to optimising performance in your personal and professional life. Performance Intelligence applies to the way we turn up in relationships and the way we turn up at work, it applies to the way we perform in front of 10,000 people and the way we perform in front of one.
Every now and then, you hear someone speak, it completely shifts the way you think about performance and leadership. That is exactly what happened when Gilbert Anoka took the stage recently at Florence Guild to talk about his new book, Become Unstoppable. Gilbert's story isn't theory. It's lived experience from humble beginnings in an orphanage to shaping the mindset of the all blacks. He spent decades helping people perform under pressure, lead with humility, and find calm in the chaos.
Andrew May:In this episode, you'll first hear Gilbert's exclusive keynote. It's raw, it's honest, and it's full of lessons about grit leadership and adapting when everything changes around you. Then I sit down with Gilbert in an exclusive conversation where we go even deeper into the early failures that built his resilience, the moments that define his leadership, and what it really takes to stay adaptable in a world that never stops moving. Then we asked the audience for their questions. They were honest.
Andrew May:They were open. They were real. And a special shout out to Deb Claxton from Claxton Speakers International for putting this opportunity together. This is performance intelligence. The show that unlocks potential for everyday life.
Gilbert Enoka:Become unstoppable was one hell of a phrase. I've learned that you can become unstoppable if you work on the things other people can't take away from you. And the things other people can't take away from you are things like your character and your mindset and you know you think of the people in your own life who've had a big influence on you and you would probably find that aspects of character come to mind reasonably strongly. They know who they are, they be who they are and they stay who they are. This know me, be me, stay me becomes a powerful anchor for individuals who are on a course to become unstoppable, but like a freight train in terms of what it does and I spend more time with my athletes working on a to be list than I do a to do list and a lot of that's to do with their character and aspects of who they want to be and then they behave themselves into that space and you become a very difficult opponent for anyone and anything when you do that and so that becomes hugely hugely powerful and any victory I've had in my own life that hasn't involved character has always been hollow to me.
Gilbert Enoka:And so I work on that reasonably strongly with the individuals we work with. And mindset is really interesting because I've also learned that you can only win when your mind is stronger than your emotions. Heck of a statement. You can't stop your emotions and they get you in trouble a lot of the time. And so what we have to do is to power up the way we respond to the way our biology reacts to the world and to the influences that connect with us and so we begin to understand that your skill sets don't work unless your mindset's right and so the place you work doesn't determine your value, your mindset does and so if we sharpen our mindset and we weaponise it then we have a tool which enables us to really navigate our way through the intricacies and the challenges of life and those two ingredients no one else can take them away from you and quite often to move our way forward we've got to get out of our own way and that's a lot to do with the way in which we actually deal with the thoughts that come into our head And so that's sort of how we came up with the Become Unstoppable it says it's a blueprint, it's not a menu driven approach, it's not a step by step approach, it's random sequential.
Gilbert Enoka:The book will take you in lots of different directions and because you're always different you'll find the learnings inside it will be different. Now I've structured the book in quite an interesting way, at the end of each chapter we have a section which I've called Te Puna Aotaki and in Maori that means the wellspring of wisdom and so in the Pacific culture, in my own culture and in Maori culture, people get wisdom from the land, from the sea, from the mountains, from the Wharanui where they tell stories about what happened generations beforehand. It's a wellspring of wisdom and so what I have done is created some lessons inside that and at the end of each chapter I also have what I call a widow and a Widow in our culture is if you come onto a Marai inside New Zealand into Maori Marai when you arrive at the gate somebody comes out with a manuka leaf and they place a manuka leaf in front of you and if you pick that manuka leaf up, it's you accepting the challenge and that you come in peace for those people inside that building. And so throughout the book and at the end of each chapter I present a widow to you.
Gilbert Enoka:It's a challenge for you to take, to accept or otherwise. It's not an exam to pass, it's a door to walk through. In the Te Pooner Otaki I talk about you know the special places in sport, you know the meeting places where you meet with legends of the game, the fun times you have together, you see that cup there you guys haven't seen that very much these days but when I finished I wanted to make sure that it didn't happen on my watch you know I got kind of it was kind of strong it holds 44 bottles of Steinlager Pure and I enjoy drinking out of that often but I've also worked in cricket I had eight years touring with our Black Caps, I'm going to be working with the England team in the Ashes series over here this summer, I had twenty two and twenty three working with Chelsea Football Club and so I've had a whole range of experiences in and around it and inside these places are rituals that offer a wellspring of wisdom and so at the end of each chapter I tell a story which is meant not only to be read but to be felt You know it's a book that you will feel as much as you read and that's the special nature and I'll take you to some different places, they're obscure but inside each one is a lesson and that number eight jersey Kieran Reed who was our captain of the All Blacks and I was always the last one to leave the shed because I put the GPS monitors in the back of the jerseys and he always wanted to have his number eight so he could see it and so in the all black dressing room there was nothing on the walls the only thing that existed inside that shed was your jersey because the responsibility you had each day was to come in put that jersey on and fill it and put a performance in that pays respect to those that have gone before you and sets the example for those that will follow you.
Gilbert Enoka:You don't need motivation quotes all around the wall, you just go in and you do the business on that day and that become hugely important. You get wisdom from special places, know that's Twickenham, that's Alice Park in South Africa, Millennium Stadium one of my favourites and obviously Eden Park our home ground and so there's lots of places where if you pause and listen you can get pieces of wisdom from it and we talk about the understanding that went into the execution and when performance is rooted in a deep understanding and a connection to who you are and what you represent you create a power that is wonderfully penetrating and that's a beautiful story We talk about the pain of 2,007 worst performance in the history of the All Blacks back in 2007 and then we went to win in 2011 and got back to back World Cups in 2015. Coach actually looks younger in 2011 than he did in 2017 such as the pain and the lessons that happened in that. All of these wellsprings of wisdom and the stories are told to extract things that can help us to get better at getting better that's what the book's about how do I get better at getting better that's the challenge and this book sets out to the reader I created what I called a human library and a human library is, you know, we we brought men into the environment that were legends of the game that stayed there.
Gilbert Enoka:So it was like a book that you get out of the library and, you know, they travelled on the bus, they went to the trainings, they went to the games so it was a constant resource for the current crew to learn from and there's tonnes of wisdoms and those conversations you had in those quiet moments that penetrated more deeply than the loud moments that people see. Lots of legends who leave behind more than just stats. Everyone's got a story and the wisdoms that come from those people and magic in lots of different ways, know, at the end of every test quite often I'd stand with Richie McCaw under the goalpost which was a ritual I used to do and quite often we'd turn to each other and he said if you had two more days to prepare for this test what would you do? I quite often say nothing. He said well we're ready then aren't we?
Gilbert Enoka:And away you go. Sometimes you think you've got to do more and you've to do things but sometimes you're ready and you've just got to say bring it on. And in life that's a beautiful thing. Some mates of mine that I spent over two decades with, sharing some wisdoms in those moments, special moments, you look at those photos and you can climb inside them and you feel them you don't just see them Wayne Smith he's my brother from another mother took me on and when I first started I had to be he had to take me on as a massage therapist as a masseur because the powers didn't want anyone dealing with the mental part of the game with the players. They thought you were weak.
Gilbert Enoka:And the book tells a story where one of the board members were coming in just to check and seeing what I was doing, and he said, Bert, Bert, you better go down and get some oil to to rub. So I went down and bought some oil, and I was rubbing the shoulder when the person came in. I was saying, get ay. How you going? He looked at me and gave me the big tick.
Gilbert Enoka:And what I'd realised I got peanut oil instead of the right oil he said I wanted you to rub him not buddy fry him he said to me but he believed in me when others didn't and gave me the opportunity as did Lee Gibbs and net ball and you know at times when the world's not ready for something because their understanding's not there, there's still a way. I always say sometimes you know our impatience to win is the reason we lose. So if Wayne wanted to take me in as a psychologist or as a mental performance coach I wouldn't have got in but he got me in as a masseur so it was okay just to take a different step and that is beautiful that's a tipuna ultaki and then you follow that with the widow, remember my advice to people is to read the book, let the widows land and then go back to it flick through the widows and those that stir something in you have got your name on it and then work on them and work with them and just see how they can help you shape what it is that you want to do.
Gilbert Enoka:Alright thanks very much.
Andrew May:Hi. It's Andrew again. Before we get into my interview with Gilbert, we're going to go to a couple of quick ads, and when we come back, you'll get to hear all about how Gilbert teaches his teams to deal with pressure. I wanna go back to the teams you've worked with, the New Zealand Blackcaps, the Silver Ferns, the Crusaders, Chelsea Football Club, the the mighty New South Wales state of origin, the England cricket team. What do we think about that?
Andrew May:There was there was no booze. Come on. The Australians here, we gotta rip into you. In twenty three years with the All Blacks, there's one team missing. I've been with the Wallabies the past twelve months.
Andrew May:Half of our team is from the All Blacks, the mighty Joe Schmidt, a good buddy of yours, Micron. We've got Sass now, one of our forwards coaches. What have you ever come across to the Wallabies?
Gilbert Enoka:I got close. Joe asked me about four times to be fair, but once I saw your jersey I couldn't. You know, I just it's funny, you know, like I love those guys and I love them to bits and it's just the black, I just couldn't work against the black jersey you know, it's a and yet I can work in other sports, know, but that's just been so infiltrated. I still think Joe Smith is the best coach in world rugby at the moment by the way. I agree.
Gilbert Enoka:And that was close to I'd never say never but probably unlikely.
Andrew May:Left it open. Do you feel like that when you line up against the New Zealand cricket team, so as we record this, we're in Australia heading into a summer with the Ashes. Do you feel any guilt working against the homeland?
Gilbert Enoka:It's funny because I work with them in the t twenty series over there. They're now playing the ODIs and struggling actually England are, and then obviously I'll join them in Perth for the Ashes, not all of them, I'll just do the build up, the first test and probably another one, but it did feel a bit funny, but not the same.
Andrew May:Well, their coach is a Kiwi.
Gilbert Enoka:That's right. Yeah. Hey. There's four Kiwis in the England thing. There's Jeet and Patel and Tim Southey, myself, and Baz.
Gilbert Enoka:So and I tell you he does things differently. I'm learning quite a lot of him.
Andrew May:In your book, one of the things that I found gripping was your notion of pressure as a lifestyle. You say the truth about pressure is that nobody's born with skills to perform under the weight of expectations, scrutiny, and consequence. They learn them pressure is a lifestyle. You go on to say pressure can even be addictive if handled correctly. At your tender age, are you in your thirties now?
Gilbert Enoka:Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Andrew May:Do you reckon you're addicted to pressure?
Gilbert Enoka:Look. I I still hate it, but I mean what I've learned to understand is that pressure isn't the enemy it's the arena and once you understand that as an athlete and an individual like the great thing about the book is everyone has pressure inside their roles but once you understand that it's not the enemy, it's the arena that we operate in, and it's not a matter of rising above pressure, it's a matter of just getting inside that bubble and acknowledging the discomfort because there's always discomfort that associates with pressure, and then learning skills that help you navigate your way through it. How do I manage the butterflies that I get when I'm coming up to something that's really important to me? How do I manage the negative thoughts? Know like I talk about the fact that my upbringing caused me lots of challenges and I get lots of scars and lots of triggers but and they happen sometimes every day but I can catch them when they're a spark before it becomes a flame So once you understand that pressure is the arena and not the enemy and I just need a whole set of tools to navigate my way through, then you can lean into it.
Gilbert Enoka:And I do enjoy it, I enjoy those moments now that you're not sure what's gonna happen, that everything you know, Richie McCaw used to say to me, we'd go to the walkover on a game day and I'd catch his eye and he'd catch my eye and we'd just give him the Kiwi g'day. But what we're really saying is that, you know, everything that we'd work for comes back down to what happens today. You're playing a knockout at a Rugby World Cup. I've been intrigued the last two nights watching the Women's World Cup cricket. You know, England got knocked out by South Africa.
Gilbert Enoka:Big surprise. And then when I went to bed last night, Australia had scored 338. And one day, thought, wow. They're gonna motor, and then India knocked them over and got three forty five. You know?
Gilbert Enoka:And And then all of a sudden, Hadden lost the tournament and they come to that moment and had a game in the tournament and everything's up for grabs. So I've I've learned to to navigate my way through it and sometimes it's not always enjoyable, but it's it's certainly a place I'd rather be in than just to be comfortable and sedentary.
Andrew May:You mentioned your book is not just for athletes or coaches, while the lessons have been learnt in that crucible of pressure called elite sport. As I look around this lovely audience, very athletic looking audience, but we've got a lot of entrepreneurs here. Athletes in the room, put your hand up. Every middle aged male puts his hand up. I am.
Andrew May:So look at me. Can we get really practical and tactical? Because your book is especially around pressure, I love your reset routine around part one, regain emotional control. Part two, clear the deck. Part three, next action.
Andrew May:How would you do that for these people in the room? How would you reset? It could be a board presentation, sales meeting, or could be going for a new job. It could be going on a date.
Gilbert Enoka:Again, you know, you can only win when your mind is stronger than your emotions, so having a reset structure like I had some I had some general patterns, so in the book you'll hear me talk about what I call a holy hour. I kind of want I encourage everybody to have a holy hour and in your holy hour you do three things. One is you work out. What what aspect of your character do you really want to strengthen today or this week? Not five, not six, not three, just one.
Gilbert Enoka:And then I quite often get people just to write it in the steam of the shower in the morning before they get going and then you can behave your way forward to that. Two, what's likely to happen that is an event that causes a bit of stress for me, high pressure moment that is risky for me and once I prime my mind for it and say well if this happens I want to do this then I've primed it and if it happens I act better in the moment for it. Third way is like when I'm on tour like we're on tours most nights I'd sit with George Duncan who's a muscle therapist and we'd have two glasses of red wine every night and we'd close the door and we'd vent. No one was safe. No one or no thing was safe.
Gilbert Enoka:We just vented and bang bang, we only took about you know forty five minutes and then we open door go to bed and we feel all good. So that's the bigger picture have structures in place in the microstructure in those moments where you feel that anxiety, I kind of think it's important, lead action lead emotion I think is really important Andrew so you know when you're on the field and all of a sudden you're starting to feel gosh this next period's really important to me or I'm going into a board meeting and this presentation's really important to me, we bring the time horizon forward and just say right, okay just concentrate on the first five paces that I have when I walk into the room and if your action and you bring your horizon forward those micro moments give you a sense of connection to the moment and before you know that that leads things and then you get onto the breathing and all the stuff you're awesome at to be able to manage your physiological state but there are things that have helped.
Andrew May:Very practical, very tactical. I think the whole audience has gone. I could do that one, get a mate, get two glasses of red wine, forty five minutes and vent. Did everyone notice there are other skills there as well? The work that you've done, so 23, it's a long time with the team, and this is one thing that people often misunderstand.
Andrew May:They think that of the morning of a big game, so Wallabies, we play England and Twickenham our time Sunday morning, the players are front loading skills, and I've heard you talk about this as well. It's the work you do outside of the big tournaments that prepares you. I think that's something we miss in the corporate and the entrepreneurial world. We go for the big moments and think, I've gotta prepare now. Talk to me about that, how how you first of all discovered that because when you were masquerading, I love that story, you with your peanut oil, you're here to massage and not fry them.
Andrew May:Sports cycle's come a long way, but how did you first navigate that and realize that we've got to prepare in those quieter moments to step up when it really matters?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, I think a lot of
Gilbert Enoka:it started back when I was playing volleyball and you know, I I I tell people when I came out of the orphanage and went into live with my mother who'd met another man in Palmerston North who was my stepfather and was an alcoholic and there was just dysfunction everywhere, know, and it was just a horrific sort of environment to be in. You know, so I went down and I started I got out of there because as a 16 year old and said, this ain't gonna be helpful to me. And I arrived at Christchurch as a 16 year old with no place to live and no firm work prospects, but knew I was in a better place. And I started playing volleyball, sport of volleyball and someone once said to me, you're good at this Gilbert? Took me by surprise.
Gilbert Enoka:Because when he said that, I felt good. So when you hear something and you feel good, what do they wanna do? I wanted to hear it again. So I had to work harder so I could hear that comment again that was all I was doing and so I learned the act of kindness and the power of a kind word and just how powerful that is to any individual you know like you can do a lot of things in your life but if you never ever forget the acts of kindness and so if we can give that to the people we work with live with love with then we're penetrating in a lot of areas and so I wanted to get better and that's how I met Wayne Smith and he was an All Black and he started talking to me about what I was doing in volleyball and I found that most of the problems people were having in volleyball were between their ears when I make a mistake, when I'm not selected, when the teammate pisses me off, all these things they were all mental and so you know I called it the final frontier so I started exploring that so we gave each of them a book and so whenever they came to the meeting the first twenty minutes we sat down and we you know, what's a high risk situation for you, okay where do you want your attention to be should this occur, what do we need to do in training to ensure we refine it, so all of a sudden we were doing mental practice and even with the corporates I work with, on a Friday afternoon you go back to your room and you sit down and as a leader you ask yourself three questions, what did I lead this week to?
Gilbert Enoka:What did I misleading this week? Saw it but didn't actually act in the moment and three what did I miss altogether? I didn't even see it but now that I look back on it I should have done something and if you spend ten minutes on that then it gives you some reinforcement about things you can move next week so you know, so these all of a sudden you're actually engaging in practical work that can help you manage situations that can potentially derail you.
Andrew May:Good segue the word reinforcement in preparation for this I rang up one of your buddies that you worked with for a number of years and said, I'm talking to Gilbert, and could you give me a little bit of a message? He recorded this for us. Are you feeling nervous?
Gilbert Enoka:A little bit. A little bit.
Speaker 4:Bert is more than a mental skills coach. He's a real leader in developing a world class culture within a team. If everyone in the management group agreed on something and Bert didn't, he was prepared to put his hand up and have a debate. Now that's brave. Not always he was right to be fair, but as great, he was prepared to stand up for what he believed in.
Speaker 4:Over the years, Bert did a lot of videoing for me at trainings. He was always hanging on to an iPad filming my coaching sessions, and he was always a great sounding board after training, about his observations about what he had heard and what he had seen. A truly unique man who has not cloned himself on anyone else. He's truly his own man.
Gilbert Enoka:That's very nice, Krono.
Andrew May:Krono did say, did you want some other stories that we can tell after dark? I said, no. No. We'll keep it, PJ. So Mike Kron, the scrum doctor known as the world's best rugby scrum coach, Great man.
Andrew May:What do you think when you hear those words?
Gilbert Enoka:Oh, look. He's from Chrono. He's such a a great man. It's it's humbling. When I first started with the All Blacks, had a huge comp impostor syndrome.
Gilbert Enoka:Know? You can imagine my background walking in there and and being in front of all these icons but you know as I got more comfortable in that environment I felt that I needed to challenge you know when things I didn't agree with and you know you can't leave thoughts buried inside your head that you should have shared so and as he said I wasn't always right but I felt more comfortable sharing it in a safe way so that people could debate it and we just wanted to do what was right for the team and that was the most important thing.
Andrew May:Another part in the book that I really dug into was when you talk about vulnerability because it seems a juxtaposition doesn't it? You're talking about big strong men and women rugby players going to war against each other and mean, you're talking about being vulnerable and dropping your guard and sharing your your deepest, darkest inner soul. How did you navigate that balance between being a warrior on the field and being authentic off and on it?
Gilbert Enoka:Look I think there are many pivots in my career with the All Blacks and one of them was around the understanding of vulnerability you know people used to feel if you're being vulnerable and sharing what you really feel that you were weak especially men you know there was this manly notion that people held but boy after 2007 we really had to be vulnerable you know the best way I can explain it to you is that you can't improve or train what you won't talk about. I'll repeat that you can't train what you won't talk about. So I can't help you if you don't tell me what your struggle is. If you tell me what your struggle is then we can set up drills and things to help you manage your attention and your execution in those moments. It's the same with us sitting in this room, in your work and in your life if you won't talk about it we can't help you improve And so once you do that, what a release it was for the players and so vulnerable became the new strong and you know when our leaders had their greatest impact, when they shared their innermost feelings with each other as a leadership group and even with the wider group.
Gilbert Enoka:And so it became a power beyond measure because moment somebody does that, we can then help them get better at getting better.
Andrew May:One last short break before we get into the final q and a section with Gilbert. Let's listen to some ads, and when we return, we can hear some of the questions the attendees had. We're gonna open up to the audience. We've a couple of roving mics. I think we'll do this in the old school format.
Andrew May:Your your hand has gone up even before I said to put your hand up. So you can ask first question. Can you tell us your name and then ask the question?
Speaker 5:Sure. My name's Lou. I now wanna read your book, so thank you very much. I'm in a clinical
Andrew May:Isn't it good that say my name's Lou and I don't wanna read
Speaker 5:the book. So I'm a clinical psychologist and executive coach, and I'm loving hearing a lot about vulnerability and so forth. Wondering and I also specialize in acceptance and commitment therapy or training. I'm not sure if that's something that you've come across. I'm wondering about how you actually work around emotions that might show up even during the match or just before.
Speaker 5:So whether it is kind of like an acceptance based willingness or whether it's kind of just doing breathing exercise I'm really curious what you do around that.
Gilbert Enoka:Yeah like there's no script in elite sport that's what I've found you know like it's just self awareness you can read as many books as you like you can listen to as many podcasts as you like and all this but if you can't read yourself then it's an issue and you'll find in the book as I talk about and I call it a performance triangle sort of where you have your mindset, your skill set and your structure you know you have the three parts and when things go really really well there's alignment between those three. What I've found is that one of those though is a superpower. When I'm working with an athlete and something's not going right and I often say is it a mindset issue, skill set issue, or a structure issue? And it helps me navigate their way, but I found one of them to be a superpower, more important than all the others. Who thinks it's skill set?
Gilbert Enoka:Put your hand up. Wow. See, it's the same. Who thinks it's mindset? Put your hand up.
Gilbert Enoka:Beautiful. Most of the hands. Who thinks it's structure? There's two I found it's structure that structure is because everyone comes into the All Blacks and they nothing wrong with their mindset they want to be a 100 test All Black they want to be there for ten years they want to be great and that becomes a real focus for them and their skill set is awesome they can do wonderful things but when things break down it's because they can't manage the competing demands that enable them to execute either in the moment or the bigger picture rehab, prehab, analysis, maintain my relationships, do all these sort of things. It's like that game of Jenga where you pull pieces of wood out of the Jenga and you pick one or two and it wobbles, all of a sudden you do three.
Gilbert Enoka:And I was speaking to a young one of the players and he said that's bullshit, Bert. He says I'm on the field and the referee makes a decision that I don't agree with and I wanna punch him in the head. Unless I shift my mindset, I'm in trouble. And I says correct. And he says I said on a scale of zero to 10 where are you in terms of frustration he said I'm 11 out of 10 and I said what about if you're on the field and the referee makes a decision you don't agree with which is going to happen more often than not what if you take two paces away from where you are, one two, and then basically when you're there ask the first person what are you seeing, what are you seeing, listen to the response, repeat one back, take a breath then come back and connect with the next moment.
Gilbert Enoka:He said, okay, I'll try it. So he tried it and I said, how'd it go? He said it went from 11 out of 10 to a six or seven out of 10, hadn't taken it away. What have we given him? Structure.
Gilbert Enoka:Once we understand that we can shift mindsets by giving people structure but if you keep going through the mindset window you'll keep hitting a brick wall so coming back to your question so what we tend to do is when you get things that happen that may emerge like the emotional challenges what's the structure you have to deal with it and sometimes you need a structure for when you haven't got a structure and that's how you I'm not sure whether I'm totally right but boy I've helped more people than I haven't by driving down that path and that's why I call it in the book the Lethal Cocktail and the land of high performance structure is king and every king needs a queen and its queen is discipline and with those two things you navigate your way through most things in life long way to answer your question but
Andrew May:I just round out one other thing what's different between working in a clinical setting which is often one on one or maybe one to small groups in a squad you have up to 36 or 38 players so sometimes you'll have a player it's got to be a mindfulness based technique or something that is very quick and sharp right through to you might have senior players that Gilbert talks about that have understood purpose and values and really connected, and you can get deeper. It's like having a tool kit, and then you pull out, and you got five, six different hammers. You don't always hit the same nail with the same hammer, That's what someone very skilled like Gilbert does is the right conversation with the right person at the right time.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But I mean, can
Gilbert Enoka:I have a check of that too because there's a lot of times people come to me and I say, I don't know? I don't know. But I said, give me give me some time to think. That honesty has been really good and and then we I talk to people and somebody has has a has the first door. You know, most coaches came to me and come into my room and they caught up and say, where were going with this bird?
Gilbert Enoka:And I say, I don't know, but I know I'm heading in the right direction. And they learned to understand and accept that. So just being honest and boy, I tell you there's a lot of times I didn't know, but once I sat reflected I found the first step you know that we could take.
Speaker 6:Yeah good afternoon Stephane. I mean you talk a bit about sort of the implication of sort of the learnings from elite sport into business potentially. I'd like to bring you into another field, field of parenting and youth. And what sort of the where you're coming from?
Andrew May:What are sort of the
Speaker 6:learning as we think through the youth and in particular as they go through their you know the difficult teenager years?
Gilbert Enoka:One of the things I wanted for this book there's something like there's pressure in everyone's role you know this we're just talking about high performance sport but we're talking business, coaching, parenting all the roles and I did a sort of a word event similar to this in Christchurch when I released my book 400 people in the group. The youngest was 19 and the oldest was 90. And I kind of loved it because I sort of wanted people there's something in it for everybody and that's why I say it's a book you'll never finish because when you're reading it different things land with you at different times and so I want to I summarised right at the end and we're talking about become unstoppable if you could paraphrase it into one phrase it's you against you. It's not you against who you work for, it's not you against the market, it's not you against the political system, it's you against you. And whether you're a child, a parent or anything if you understand that and you can visibly see that obstacle then you can navigate your way through some of those things and so I'd like to think the skills that are applicable for an A lead athlete, for a grass roots athlete and for a child aspiring, a young person aspiring or a parent going through parenting issues will get great value from some of the tools inside the book.
Speaker 7:Thank you. Hi. My name's Charles. I was interested, I guess, in around self driven culture, particularly within the All Blacks. Obviously, they're renowned for the way they conduct themselves and I guess basically I was interested in high performance teams or any team and how kind of you approached having within the team and everyone buying into the same ideas.
Speaker 7:Obviously, everyone likes to think they have all these great values and we're all foreshort in different areas, but how kind of everyone stayed focused around buying into the same systems, conducting themselves in the same way? What kind of ways you perhaps approach that? For an All Black the legacy is far more intimidating than any opponent. Full stop. So living up
Gilbert Enoka:to the expectations of those that have gone before you is the biggest driver for an All Black and for a young male and now females with the Black Ferns growing up in our country wanting to be an All Black or a Black Fern is an endeavour that a lot of people want to pursue and so it bleeds its own expectations and so I kinda when people came in I always use what's my job when I had twenty three years with the All Blacks three zero four test matches what's my responsibility and was always to ETJ was the phrase I used enhance the jersey and that's my job and that's what everybody that comes into the All Black's responsibility is and so with that comes an accountability that you've got to live up to and don't use it as a burden use it as something that is hugely strong we don't have a lot of rules you know like if you have a strong purpose you don't need rules and if your purpose is to do that we introduced the no dickheads policy because we had a few people who were being dickheads and they weren't helping the legacy at all so we just jettisoned them and got rid of them really smartly but most of it's wrapped up in the accountability that they have and the expectation to live up to what has gone before them that drives you know I'm not a great fan of the word values I kind of prefer standards you know the standard you walk past is the standard you accept so you know if you're doing things that aren't in the best interest of the team expect to be told and if you don't tell me then you're letting me down because I don't know that my behaviour is not in the best interest of the team so you know that's not complex it's reasonably simple and when our culture's going really well I hear lots of people picking people up for standards that that are not where they needed to be
Speaker 7:yeah thank you very much thank you
Andrew May:anyone here gonna bring the no dickheads policy back into their workplace? Makes people a bit nervous doesn't it Gilbert? Hi my name is Chi Ho, I was just wondering what teams or organisations do you admire today?
Gilbert Enoka:I've always gravitated to leaders and teams that buy into something that's bigger than themselves you know the thing about the All Blacks that I loved was the fact that the team towers above the individual you know I kind of enjoyed Brendan McCullough who's coaching cricket for England because you know how many meetings that guy has in a week? Which is really really different to the model everyone else has because he says we force people into paradigms that we think is helping them but they're not because what we want to do is free them up so that when they play they can just perform and so he's going against the norm so I've always thought leadership is more personal before it's positional, so I love leaders and organisations that lead from who they are rather than where they sit so I've never worked with a team or a leader where that was compromised because that becomes much more challenging for me I always I look at the leader and if that leader he or she is strong in that area then I'll give them everything I got and when I do that then I kinda like being on teams that can move towards a good goal.
Speaker 8:Pretty easy to find meaning in change room, so meaning what people are doing, what they're going out to conquer, they're going out to battle. Have you got any suggestions for we're all searching for meaning in the meeting room with our with our own teams. You know, personally, we're we're trying to close down some certain businesses that are underperforming, things like that at the moment, things that need to be done. How does what you do translate for us into the workplace with our own teams? And I know that's a broad question, so hone in on a couple of things.
Gilbert Enoka:Great question. Okay, so two things I think from that. One is something I sort of said earlier on is that you won't get an external shift unless you get an internal shift. So I spend most of my time working out what's the internal shift that I want to get in the players. So in the All Blacks every week we had what we called an MMA which is a mental meeting MMA maximising mental ability I led it with the players MMA is an acronym for the mixed martial arts too and so we actually we put the chairs in the shape of an octagon okay so it's just like you know it was a metaphor for that.
Gilbert Enoka:I used to, that meeting presentation to the guys would go seven or eight minutes and I'd spend twenty to thirty hours preparing on how I'd do that session because from the moment they walked into that room I wanted to capture them and connect with them and I was exploring and working ways to do it So I think that's the first thing I always say, how am I going to get the internal shift that gets them to buy into the external one? Sometimes just the brutal reality is what you have to do. What's the second part and I've always mentioned it that we need? A solid what? Say it loudly.
Gilbert Enoka:Structure. Structure. Correct. Just think structure. What's the structure I'm going to use to put across to the people to get them to hear the message in the right way?
Gilbert Enoka:Those two those two things I think will get you a good way there, mine get you totally there, but they really really help you get to those places and I'm always looking at it and saying how am I going to get them to see this, the picture I want to do and explore that and then I just say right what's the structure I'm going to use to do it and both those are tools that can help.
Andrew May:We've got time for one or two more questions but before we take another one I've just got to go back up to thirty hours preparation for a seven or eight minute discussion? Correct. Absolutely. And what would that thirty hours look like?
Gilbert Enoka:Well if you read the book there's a quote I think in the front testimonial by Dane Coles who was one of the All Blacks and he says if you walk into Gilbert's room on tour, you'll see all these pieces of paper hanging up in the room and it looks like a five year old's gone into his room and scribbled all over the walls. And so I'm old fashioned, I use paper. I use those big you know, a o post its and I start with an idea and I put it up and the game's finished and I just start just it's like that movie Beautiful Minds really. And so I just start sort of getting ideas, getting thoughts. I had a group from my MMA group would come in and we would talk and we would add different things and I'd listen to the coaches and what they're wanting to achieve so that I was never ever against what they did, it was always in line with what they did and then slowly it would piece together and I'd start that on probably a Sunday night and it's delivered on a Thursday so it's throughout that period that I generate that, so it's collection I'm a strong believer in collecting the dots before you connect the dots.
Gilbert Enoka:Too many people rush in to your situation and connect the dots straight away, collect them. Who are the adversaries here? Who are the influences here? How can I move them? Maybe I deal with this person first and this person first and I move them, so once I collect the dots then I can get right this to this to this to this, but I want them from the moment they walk in and I open my mouth and one of my leaders open their mouth as I want to have their attention in the palm of my hand and and that's when you move them.
Andrew May:I think final question up the front or could we could squeeze in two more.
Gilbert Enoka:Thanks, mate. My structure girl.
Speaker 3:Bert, how if you're seeing something come up in a player or a person, how do you decide if that's something that is limited to that person or something that the whole group needs to learn? I was thinking about those MMA things where there could be one critical skill or lesson that needs to be learned, but it might be the individual but it might be the group as well. How do you sort of delineate how you work and what the right sort of toolkit is?
Gilbert Enoka:Inside our team we had what we called IOUs, Independent Operating Units. K? I later changed them to PODs, P O D, pockets of dominance. Because a lot of people said well how can we be great if everyone else is a plonker? You know, and people say that in organisations but if you get them working only on the little pocket that they're in and make that dominant.
Gilbert Enoka:So in the All Blacks we had IOUs and PODs and that goes right across the team, had one representative in my MMA group, I had one representative from each of those different PODs. So whenever we're talking about that then they're speaking on behalf of their pod so any of those indiscrepancies that would come in that we felt may have been individualistic and not general would normally be picked up in that conversation So whilst I started my work on a Sunday, I met with my group on a Tuesday, we terse out what the message might be then worked it again and anything that was individual was dealt with individually but we just said what's the collective message that the team needs to do it. I kinda like, you know, that that people say how can I be great if everyone else around me is just a load of watch them call it? You can. Just don't compromise on being great in the pocket that you're responsible for and you're operating in and then you move and other people look at it and say wow look what's happening there and it can accelerate the progress in other areas as well
Andrew May:Can I thank you today on two levels one can I thank you from everybody in the mental skills and sports psychology space to be so open in your book, to give your forty plus years of work? It really is a masterclass in mental performance culture and leadership in that intersection of all three that you beautifully write about. And for Florence Guild and the members here today, what a great opportunity to have you speak openly, so authentic, so raw, and to bring all those skills, not just from sports fields, but how we bring that into our life and even to family and having relationships. So can you all please join me with the rambunctious thank you to Gilbert and Ogar.
Gilbert Enoka:Thank you.