The Power of A Mentor
Wayne Smith has had a massive influence on both myself and DG so it was only fitting that he was our first guest on Talking Performance. Smithy has been my mentor for over 10 years now and that came about through one of DG’s typically challenging conversations, and as I write this I have a huge sense of gratitude towards DG for all those conversations we have had over the years.
It was in about 2012 that DG challenged me to get a mentor, someone who would challenge me and someone I would be nervous about spending time with. I thought long and hard about this and there was one name that kept coming up, but surely he would be way to busy and not be interested in a golf coach. After some deliberation I thought “what the heck” and I wrote an email to the generic Chiefs email like support@chiefs or something similar, introduced myself and said something along the lines of “I’m sure you get these sort of messages all the time and I fully understand if you don’t pass it on but if you do happen to I am looking for a mentor and would love that to be Wayne Smith”.
I didn’t expect to hear anything back, after all this was a guy who was regarded as ‘the professor’, not only one of the greatest rugby brains on the planet, but quite possibly one of the greatest coaches on the planet, and I was just a random golf coach!
Much to my surprise, the next day I received an email from Wayne Smith saying, “I would love to, let’s catch up on Friday, bring your stuff” Knowing Smithy now, I am not overly surprised he did this, he is just that sort of a guy, but at the time I had two thoughts. Firstly there was doubt, I thought I must have read it wrong but once I tripled checked it and confirmed with my wife that he had said that, well, then the fear set in… I had no stuff!
More than ten years on and after numerous coffees, rounds of golf and even a week spent with him and his lovely wife Trish in Japan I have come to know a man who cares deeply about those people around him, a man who has a love of learning and has strong values that he lives by daily. I remember being with Smithy in Japan on his 62nd birthday, this is after he had helped the All Blacks win back to back world cup’s and achieved almost everything in rugby and could be forgiven for slowing down, He didn’t, he got up at 6am biked to work, spent the day looking for ways to help the coaches and players develop and was as engaging as ever with everyone he encountered.
What this taught me was there are many educated coaches out there and people who can talk the talk, but here is a man, who has had so much success and still walks the walk. He embodies the values he lives by and this is why the mentor relationship is so critical because I have been able to observe it in multiple settings and see the theory come to life in practice, he doesn’t say one thing and do another he lives what he says.
There is a saying “never meet your heroes as you will be let down” and I can tell you this is not the case, if you have never had the pleasure of meeting Smithy I can promise you everything you have heard or read is true and probably not even doing him justice. Once again DG was right, get a mentor, ask someone who will challenge you and hopefully you will get someone like Smithy.