"I retired from coaching the All Blacks because I thought I'd done eight years and that was fantastic and I enjoyed it and there was some major highs and some terrible lows, but um, and I thought that was the end."

How Do You Stay Motivated When You've Already Achieved Everything?

Sir Graham Henry, Episode 1, The Shaun O'Neill Podcast

Sir Graham Henry is 80 years of age.

He has won a World Cup.

There is nothing left on the list.

And when we spoke he was sitting in a hotel room in Johannesburg on a day off, two weeks into a tour with the All Blacks, and he did not have to be there.

So that was the first thing I asked him.

What made you say yes.

The answer he gave me was not really about rugby. It was about the size of the problem in front of him. He goes where there is something hard to solve and a group of people trying to solve it, because that is the thing he finds stimulating. Winning is not the fuel. The difficulty is.

He had already called it a day

People forget that he stopped properly.

He did not fade out and hang around the edges waiting for someone to ring.

He made the call and he meant it.

"I retired from coaching the All Blacks because I thought I'd done eight years and that was fantastic and I enjoyed it and there was some major highs and some terrible lows, but um, and I thought that was the end."

Eight years, a World Cup, and a few nights this country would rather not talk about.

Then he drew a line under the whole thing.

Which is exactly why what happened next is worth a look. This was not a bloke who could not let go. He let go completely, and then found a reason to come back.

So what got him back in

His first answer was simple enough that I nearly moved straight on.

"I've got a huge love of the game."

But he kept going, and the second half is the bit I wrote down.

"it's just you get get into an environment which has got a major challenge on and and uh you want to help uh them achieve whatever they can achieve with that challenge. Um and that's stimulating"

He does not say he wanted to win.

He says he wanted to help them achieve whatever they can achieve.

So the motivation is pointed outwards, at a group of people and a problem, rather than back at his own record. And that is why it still works at 80, because a record gets finished but a problem never does.

What I take out of that

Nearly every business I walk into has people in it who have already arrived.

The leader who has done the big job. The founder who has already had the exit. The specialist who has solved this exact thing so many times they could do it half asleep.

On paper they are your best people.

In practice a fair few of them have quietly gone flat, and nobody wants to say it out loud.

The usual move is to give them more recognition, because that feels like the respectful thing to do.

Graham's answer says we are aiming at the wrong target. You do not switch someone back on by reminding them what they have already done. You do it by putting something genuinely hard in front of them and making it clear that other people need their help to get through it.

And have a look at what he actually took on. He is not running the All Blacks. He is a selector, helping a group he does not lead, working to a plan that is not his.

Plenty of people would call that a step down.

He said yes to it at 80.

Book Sir Graham Henry

Sir Graham Henry speaks at corporate events, conferences and leadership days through Essential Talent.

If you have a room full of people who have already achieved plenty, and you need someone who can talk honestly about what comes after that, he is about as credible as you will find. Mainly because he is not looking back on it. He is doing it right now.