One of the most important things I learnt during my career as fly-half for the All Blacks was that to be successful, you and your team must be able to perform under a lot of pressure. Those moments when you are on the verge of achieving at the highest level and the weight is on your shoulders.
The All Blacks learnt a big lesson about this in the 2007 World Cup. We were the number one team in the world, and everyone expected us to win the cup, but France beat us by two points in the quarter-finals. We were looking each other in the eyes during the game and we had no answers. We hadn’t spent enough time on the mental side of performing under pressure — we wanted to be winning by 20 or 30 points; we didn’t like having our backs against the wall.
There are plenty of high-stakes moments in business too, but a lot of people really struggle under pressure. After that defeat, we spent the next four years changing our mindset — learning to walk towards pressurised situations rather than trying to avoid them. Pressure is not a burden, it’s a privilege because it means you can achieve something, and if you can get excited about living under pressure then you can really achieve anything.
Fast-forward four years to 2011 and the same French side put us under pressure again, this time in the final. But we embraced it and we won the game — and the World Cup too.
You must practise being under pressure so that you know what it feels like and how to respond. At training, I’d often say to a couple of the guys: “Be offside, even cheat a bit — really put me under pressure.” The more you can do that in training, the less you leave to chance and the easier the game becomes.
Advertisement
I also learnt that leadership is about what you do as well as what you say. A leader is not just someone with vision and purpose who sets lofty goals to challenge the team. They also need to lead from the front with their actions. There’s no better example of this than the All Blacks captain Richie McCaw. He didn’t always say a lot during the week but he put his body on the line every weekend and that really inspired those around him.
It was the same off the field — at the end of a game we always left the changing rooms as spotless as we found them, but it wasn’t the new guys in the team who picked up a broom, it was guys like Richie. Humility is a vital leadership quality and he set the perfect example with small, selfless actions.
Like business, rugby is a team game and it’s not always the most talented players who really exceed expectations. It’s the people with the strongest work ethic and the most self-belief. I started playing in a small town of 700 people and I never made any New Zealand schoolboy teams, but I had wanted to play for the All Blacks since I was five years old. When a few guys got injured in 2003 and I got the call-up it was a dream come true. The feeling was incredible and I could have walked away then as a happy man.
But when I came off the pitch, something had changed. I didn’t just want to be an All Black, I wanted to be an All Black great and to play for as long as I possibly could. I knew that I was going to have to work harder than anybody else on the team, really look after my body and keep evolving as a player.
That was the vision that drove me through my entire career — being the best player I could possibly be. On Sunday before a game, I would write down my plan for the week ahead so that when I got out of bed each day I knew what I had to achieve and how I was going to be better than I was yesterday. As a player, you are the custodian of the All Black jersey and your mission is to leave that jersey in a better place than you found it.
Advertisement
The worst point in my career was probably when I went to play in France. I thought I could just copy everything that we had done at the All Blacks, but you can’t just go from one culture to another and expect to have the same success. I didn’t spend enough time learning about the French language and culture, such as the fact that they have three hours for lunch and don’t like anything to disrupt that, not even leadership meetings.
Now I have hung up my boots, I am in the process of finding a new purpose for my life. That’s why I got involved with the Oxford Foundry, to help the next generation of entrepreneurial students to be the best that they can be, by sharing my experiences of performing under pressure and being resilient in the face of uncertainty. Lessons that I hope will be as valuable to them in their business careers as they were to me in rugby.
It’s a very exciting time as I start a new chapter. Handing over a legacy for the people coming after me has always been my goal and I’m passionate about mentoring. So much can be achieved when we lean into pressure, face our fears and proactively build skills that are vital to success in both sport and business.
Dan Carter won 112 caps for the All Blacks between 2003-2015, winning back-to-back Rugby World Cups in 2011 and 2015, and holds the record for the most points scored by any player in test history. He retired in February this year and has become “Leader in Practice” at the Oxford Foundry, an entrepreneurship centre at the University of Oxford
