"They didn't have everything go their way, and but they stayed in the fight and stayed in the wrestle, and eventually momentum come their way"

How Do You Keep a Team in the Fight When Nothing Is Going Their Way?

Sir Steve Hansen, Episode 2, The Shaun O'Neill Podcast

The All Blacks went into that first test in South Africa as underdogs.

They won it 33-16.

So I asked Sir Steve Hansen the straightforward question. Out of everything in that performance, what impressed you most.

I was expecting a name, or a moment, or something tactical.

He did not give me any of that.

What impressed him was that they stayed in the fight. His view is that a match like that is an arm wrestle, and arm wrestles do not get won so much as lost, because someone gives up first. The team that is still there when momentum finally turns is the team that gets to use it.

I expected him to name a player

"just their ability to stay in the fight"

That was the whole answer, at least to start with.

No standout individual. No clever move. Nothing you could put on a highlights package.

Which is worth sitting with, because this is a man who has watched more test rugby than almost anyone alive, and the thing he pulled out of a 17 point win was that nobody stopped trying.

The line I keep coming back to

"arm wrestles you don't win them, you lose them because you give up"

I have thought about that one a lot since we recorded it.

He is describing a completely different model of how those games go. Not two teams reaching for a win, but two teams waiting to see who lets go first. The result is not something you go and take. It is something the other side eventually hands over.

And if that is true, then the whole job changes. You stop asking how do we win this and start asking how do we simply still be here in twenty minutes.

Momentum is the reward, not the starting point

"They didn't have everything go their way, and but they stayed in the fight and stayed in the wrestle, and eventually momentum come their way"

Note the order in that sentence.

Nothing was working. They kept going anyway. Then momentum arrived.

That is the opposite of how most people talk about it. We tend to treat momentum as the thing that gets you going, so when it is missing we take that as evidence it is not our day. Hansen has it as the payment you receive for hanging on while it was not your day.

And when it did turn, they were in a position to use it. That only happens if you are still upright when it comes.

What I take out of that

Every business has arm wrestle months.

The long deal that keeps not closing. The turnaround where the numbers refuse to move. The quarter where the work is genuinely good and none of it is landing yet.

Nobody quits in those weeks. That is not how it goes. What happens is quieter. The standard slips a fraction. People stop putting their hand up. The Friday meeting gets shorter because nobody has anything new to say.

That is what giving up actually looks like, and it does not feel like a decision at the time.

So the useful question for a leader in that stretch is not how do we turn this around by Friday. It is what do we need to hold on to so that we are still in a state to take advantage when this finally breaks.

Because it usually does break. The problem is being too flat to do anything about it by the time it does.

Book Sir Steve Hansen

Sir Steve Hansen is available for corporate events, conferences, leadership days and in-house sessions through Essential Talent:

He is a strong choice for teams in the middle of a long grind rather than a quick win. Restructures, turnarounds, drawn out projects, or any group that has been going hard for a while without much yet to show for it.