Andrew Mehrtens on Culture, Resilience & Leadership: Lessons From the Pitch to the Boardroom

One of the most recognised rugby speakers on the global circuit, Andrew Mehrtens is a former All Blacks fly-half celebrated not only for his tactical brilliance but also for his leadership under pressure.

A five-time Super Rugby champion and seasoned international, Andrew has transitioned his sporting insight into the world of business, sharing powerful lessons on high performance, team culture and navigating adversity.

In this exclusive interview with The Champions Speakers Agency, he reflects on what elite sport has taught him about communication, humility, and building a winning mindset in any environment.

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Q: In high-pressure team environments like international rugby, leadership can take many forms. How did you personally approach leadership, and what style proved most effective for you?

Andrew Mehrtens: “Well, I don’t know if I had a leadership style. I was a reluctant leader. I was in a position on the field in rugby where I was making a lot of decisions, and I was actually leading, but because I was one of the smaller guys, certainly not one of the more physical players on the field, I didn’t really feel like I could be cracking the whip and saying, “Follow me, guys,” you know, over the top sort of thing. So I wasn’t at the coalface really. I was making a lot of decisions, calling the shots.

“But I think my leadership style, like I say, was probably reluctant. It was just the role that I was playing, and I was comfortable playing that role and being a decision-maker. But I guess the way I liked to think I carried myself around was that I didn’t necessarily see myself as a leader.

“There are so many different leadership styles — people who make big speeches and inspire people to get in behind them. That’s not me, although I’ve played alongside a lot of guys like that. Guys who just get in, roll their sleeves up and do the work — again, that’s probably not me right at the coalface, but I’ve played with a lot of guys like that.

“So mine was really just: this is my role, I’m making decisions, I’m conscious of that. I don’t think that makes me any better or worse than anyone else. But I’m comfortable making those decisions and trying to guide the team around.

“I don’t think I would be the sort of guy that young players should look at in terms of training and try and emulate what I was doing. There are a lot of better examples in the team for that. So I guess just understanding my contribution and wanting to do as well as I possibly could — I guess that was my style.”

Q: Reflecting on your career, what key lessons did the highs and lows of professional rugby teach you about resilience, especially in the face of public setbacks?

Andrew Mehrtens: “Well, I think the good thing with rugby is that there’s always another game very close — unless you’re playing the last game of the season. And normally you don’t get much of a holiday these days anyway.

“So I think there’s always a chance to bounce back, and like I said before, what you’ve just done doesn’t impact on what you’re about to do. I mean, in fact, it can even help. You know, if you’ve had a poor performance then obviously you’re normally motivated to go out and rectify a few things and practise and prepare even better the next time. So it can actually help your next performance.

“But I think, yeah, there’s just another game straight away. I mean, I remember in 1995, my first year in international rugby, we played in the Rugby World Cup in South Africa. My team, the All Blacks, lost in the final to South Africa — pretty devastating. I missed a few kicks that day, which any one of which would have potentially won us the match, so I was pretty down on myself.

“When we went back to New Zealand seven days later, I was lucky enough to play for my province Canterbury in a match, and the day after that I actually played for my club. So within eight days of playing the World Cup final, I’d also played for my province and my club — and we won both of those games.

“I mean, it didn’t make up for losing in the final, but you just had to apply yourself pretty much straight away because, you know, I couldn’t go into those games with my teammates relying on me to do my role if I still had baggage and was still, you know, worried about what had happened a week before.

“There’s plenty of time in the rest of my life to regret what happened in ’95 in the World Cup final. So you just have to move on very quickly. And I think the good thing about rugby is it really promotes self-awareness — and sport in general promotes self-awareness.

“So whether it’s a good performance or a poor performance, analysing how you did and why you went well or you went poorly just requires a real degree of honesty and analysis and process really to just, like I say, take what you can out of the previous performance — whether it was good or bad — and move that on to the next one.”

Q: Based on your experiences in both sport and business, what core elements do you believe are essential to creating and sustaining a high-performance team culture?

Andrew Mehrtens: “Well, I’ve played in teams which had a good culture and teams which didn’t have a good culture. And I guess the main difference is really the level of honesty that’s in the team and the level of communication — honest communication, I mean, merging the two.

“But honesty comes in several forms. You know, honesty about how you’re going about your work when you’ve got teammates, colleagues relying on you to do your job, and you’re relying on them to do theirs. So the honesty in the work that you’re doing. Honesty to one another as well.

“I think it’s very easy to think that a good culture means warm fuzzies and everyone happy all the time, but that’s not the case. We worked out in rugby that the best culture is when you’re actually able to have hard conversations with one another. You’re actually able to say to a teammate, “Hey, you know that hasn’t been good enough, and we need you to be better, and you need to tell me if I need to be better to help you with your role.”

“So I think honesty is the hallmark of teams with good culture and successful teams. And like I say, communication.

“You know, when you’ve got only 80 minutes to put out your performance on the field — everything that you’ve been preparing for during the week and in pre-season — you’ve got 80 minutes to put that on the field. It’s important that your communication is strong, is accurate, is precise, is clear.

“And I think that carries over into business as well, even though it’s not within that 80-minute performance. But having good communication in a business is important.

“When I worked for a bank in Australia, we had a number of different teams working on things for clients, and inevitably the communication between the teams doing their different roles — when there was communication, it was often because there was a problem. And so the communication got quite fraught because you’re under time pressure or whatever it is.

“And I think building those channels of communication before it becomes — before an issue comes out. You know, in rugby you spend a lot of time in pre-season working on your communication, working on being precise so that when the heat comes on, it’s ingrained in you how to communicate well to one another.

“And I think that’s important in business as well — taking the time to establish clear lines of communication, clear lines of honesty, clear lines of collaboration. “How do I do my job better to help you do yours better?” And that comes from very early on, building those structures rather than waiting till it gets to a tense moment to expect everyone to communicate effectively.”

This exclusive interview with Andrew Mehrtens was conducted by Chris Tompkins of The Motivational Speakers Agency.