Today’s guest is Charlie Hodgson, former England international and Saracens number 10 and founder of Charlie Hodgson Performance, his leadership coaching business.

As a professional rugby player Charlie achieved everything you could want to over his 16 year career. He won multiple premiership titles with his club Saracens, played for England and went on the 2005 Lions tour. If this wasn’t enough, he is also the all-time record point scorer in the premiership with 2,625 points scored. To put this into perspective if you don’t follow rugby, the closest player too him who’s still playing professionally has 1,569 points – almost a 1,000 points behind Charlie.

As I’ve said before on this podcast I’m a big believer that you can and should learn from the best, regardless of their industry, and sport is no different. Given the hyper competitive nature of elite sport, teams are always looking for an edge and given Saracens success over recent years it was fascinating to sit down with Charlie and get his first-hand insights and advice of what led them to be so successful.

Since retiring from professional rugby Charlie has combined his experience of developing winning teams at the top level of elite rugby with his coaching training and launched Charlie Hodgson Performance to help executives and their teams leverage the leadership principles from professional sport to develop their own high performing cultures.

Charlie shares so many fascinating insights from both his sporting and business careers in this interview including:

• How his club Saracens were able to go from a midtable side to the best team in the league  and the off field changes they made that were critical to this success.

• The importance of developing a positive and supportive culture in your organisation and the key elements to consider if you want to develop your own high performing team.

• How you can break down barriers between the different areas in your organisation and start to help your teams work together better.

• And much much more!

It was great to get the chance to sit down with someone who has spent so long at the top of elite sport and learn what it takes to succeed at that level, both individually and as a team. There’s so much in this conversation that you can apply to your career and your business and I know you’re going to get a lot from what Charlie has to say.

You can get in touch with Charlie via email at charlie@charliehodgsonperformance.com

And you can find out more about Charlie Hodgson Performance at https://charliehodgsonperformance.com/

Specific things we discussed in the show:

Sarcens RFC – https://www.saracens.com/

The Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Urquhart – https://amzn.to/2Jqsylz

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl – https://amzn.to/2WPH3Ce

I used to be a miserable F*ck by John Kim – https://amzn.to/2LQqhCc

What we talk about:

Timestamps to follow shortly…