'There’s No One Way to Be a Good Coach'

As a boy growing up in Australia, Rohan Smith knew he wanted to pursue a career in rugby. 

As the years went on, it became clear to him that he was better suited for the sidelines than the pitch.  

“I was an amateur player at a competent level, but the desire to physically prepare myself, the detail that goes into that side of things wasn’t there,” Smith said.  

An intimate knowledge of the tactical side was, though, so Smith got into coaching in his early 20s — and found that his lack of playing experience actually benefited him in many ways.

“I didn’t have to transition from being a professional athlete,” he said.

“All this time while guys were playing, I’d been studying the game and learning about coaching.”

The Daily Coach caught up with Smith, currently the head coach of the Leeds Rhinos in England, to discuss keys to making the transition from an assistant to a head coach, having tough conversations with players, and the importance of tuning out outside noise.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Smith is a Daily Coach Network member.

Coach, thanks a lot for doing this. Tell us a little about your childhood and some key lessons from it.

I was born into a coaching family. My father was a professional coach through my whole childhood, so we moved around the world, to and from England a couple of times. I was surrounded by the struggles and scrutiny that come with coaching a professional sport from the early days. The toughness and the resiliency, the highs and the lows were taught at a pretty young age.

Maybe the biggest thing I learned was the ability to think for myself and challenge authority. I wasn’t overly rebellious, but I was always curious to find a better or different way and do it my own way.

You got into coaching pretty early on. What type of leader were you initially and how has that evolved? 

I started as a professional coach at 21, now I’m 42. I was always focused on helping them, but I wasn’t as focused on the personal connections. I think having children and becoming a parent myself and coaching younger players has helped.

Before I had kids, I was mostly an assistant coach. I was more instructive and focused on goals and helping players play better. Post-kids, the last eight- to 10 years has been centered around helping the person as much as helping the player. The easiest way to sum it up is leaving a legacy rather than achieving a goal.

What was the biggest challenge in transitioning from an assistant coach to a head coach?

Taking the whole organizational approach. As an assistant, you’re focused on the offense or the defense. It can be very tunnel vision.

As a head coach, some days I feel like when I have a plan for the day, none of that happens, and instead a whole bunch of different things from different directions and angles pop up. That holistic management rather than just coaching is a shift.

Did you find your relationships with players changed in any ways?

When I was starting out, I lived away from family and friends and was younger than a lot of the players. At that point, I was friends with them and had similar interests in similar stages of life. It is about connection. A lot of players I’ve coached, I’ve been very close to, but I wouldn’t call them friends. They’re sort of family, they’re more than colleagues, someone you’re on a shared journey with in life rather than just trying to get a win this week.

I don’t see it as friendship. I see it as more than that because you’re on a collective path to making people better and trying to leave a legacy.

What’s the key for you in building trust with players?

It’s getting to know them on a personal level. I find in sports, some guys just want to talk about the sport. That’s the easiest way to bond. Some guys have been through a messy recruitment phase. A couple of the guys I recruited, I hardly spoke about rugby league. It was more on the personal side of things, trying to see what people need from me and center the support around that. It’s case by case and trying to provide what I can to help the individual get to where he wants to go.

What’s the toughest coaching decision you’ve had to make? 

The hardest ones are recruitment or retention decisions of staff or players. You may have a very good relationship that works well, but the organization needs a change. Putting the organization ahead of any one individual is the right thing to do, but it’s a difficult thing at times because you have to tell people they can’t stay anymore.

You have to be as direct as possible, but with a sense of empathy and care. Sometimes, there’s no way to sugarcoat it. Other times, it’s complicated as well because players’ agents are involved. There are times where it’s not always as direct communication as you’d like.

This last season, there was a lot of external pressure to do certain things, and I had to stand my ground and do what I knew was right. When you come back to trying to do the right thing for the greater cause, it becomes a little simpler.

Do you have team values?

We actually just had a values session today reviewing how we’re doing with the values we set. To me, there are a lot of individual words that can help direct us, but the overarching theme is to do the right thing.

Understanding what that is can be difficult because players are from different backgrounds, and you have to find common ground about the right thing for the organization. But I think the majority of people understand what the right thing is. Then, it’s about keeping the standard.

Our values are family, respect, gratitude, relentlessness, enjoyment, pride and trust. Our players selected these.

How do you evaluate a season and assess where you are and where you need to go moving forward?

Our season is very long. We start in early February and finish in October. The review process is week to week, and it’s quite intense. We review the review process in season and try to take a breath and remove some of the emotion post-season to work out the path forward.

Sometimes, the path forward is slightly different because personnel or staffing is about to change. We’re looking for small gains every off-season. A small gain in process can end up in a big gain in result.

If you go into a season with an inexperienced team, how do you keep pushing and demanding while also being realistic about expectations?

It’s a one-day contract mentality: Win the day. Seeking growth and improvement is maybe more important when you don’t have the talent of other teams. I’ve also been part of clubs where the perception outside maybe isn’t that high, but with the right approach, you can actually achieve great things.

It’s coaching cliched stuff, but the fundamentals of what we have to do are seek improvement and do the job as best we can each day.

Then, try to do it even better the next day.  

What do you think is the biggest obstacle you’ve had to overcome in coaching?

For me personally, it was the lack of a professional playing career and having no resume. A lot of coaches in our sport have been great players and get that instant respect. I was trying to prove to myself I could be a valuable coach without the playing experience.

The other thing in our sport is there aren’t many jobs. There are 29 professional teams throughout the world. That’s it. It’s a big sport in Australia, not a huge sport in the U.K. but big enough to be professional. It’s quite a small pool of resources. You have to make the most of them.

The last thing is staying true to yourself and not internalizing the external noise. That’s something all coaches battle, living in their own little bubble and listening to who they need to listen to. Every once in a while, you can’t help but hear some of the outside noise. 

How did you find that bubble and how do you tune that out?

When I joined Leeds, I chose to stay off social media for six months until the season was over. There was the occasional check in to see what friends were up to, but I stayed off it and made a choice not to follow that or the newspapers or the online press. If you take that away, it takes away a lot of the external opinions. I haven’t found it too difficult, but it can impact people around you who you care about. If they’re influenced by the other stuff and it infiltrates. That’s the challenge.

How do you think your lack of playing experience may have benefited you in the long run?  

I actually think it’s a huge advantage. I’ve managed to create opportunities for myself coming from a different angle than the majority of coaches in our sport… I have a holistic background in exercise science, nutrition and sport management.

All this time while guys were playing, I’ve been studying the game and learning about coaching. I think it’s an advantage. Everyone’s on their own journey. This is just mine. There’s no one way to be a good coach. I just try to embrace each day.

I’ve learned a lot and studied a lot, but I’ve always got a lot more to learn.

The Daily Coach Network, led by three-time Super Bowl-winning NFL executive Michael Lombardi and Naismith Basketball Hall-of-Fame Coach George Raveling, is a vetted membership community of sports executives, business leaders, and coaches who learn together and support each other to improve their team's performance.

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