Shane Bond

International Cricket Coach

NZ BLACKCAPS

“I have known Richard (RJ) for over 30 years as he was my high school physical education teacher!  We have remained friends since and during my transition from athlete to coach Richard was critical in providing me with support and coaching expertise as well as being someone who would offer honest feedback and challenge me.  Because of this I have continued to use RJ to develop and hone my coaching skills and philosophies. Richard is honest, trustworthy and knowledgeable. I would have no hesitation in recommending him to help you or your business. 

Tom Willmott

Head Coach Park & Pipe Snowsports NZ High Performance Programme

Olympic Coach

“I have been lucky enough to have many great mentors in my coaching career.  Richard Smith stands out as one of the best, providing me with just the right level of support and challenge in my formative years as a high-performance coach. Richard’s ability to apply theory into practice, his wealth of high-performance knowledge, his caring and empathetic nature were of high value to me and have helped guide my performance and development.  I continue to seek feedback and support from Richard after meeting him over 15 years ago. Much of the input that he has provided to myself and to Snowsports New Zealand (formerly Winter Performance Programme) still influences our coach development programme, our coaching team values and our culture.  I highly recommend Richard Smith’s involvement to any individual or organisation looking for a personable, well-informed and supportive approach to enhancing development and achieving excellence.”

Tim Carswell

Olympic Coach, New Zealand Track Cycling - 2008, 2012 and 2016

Head Coach, New Zealand Junior Track Cycling Team

“I have known Richard for nearly 20 years in my role as a HP coach in the sport of cycling. Richard was in charge of HP Coach Development with the New Zealand Academy of Sport in Christchurch in 2001 when I first transitioned from an athlete to coach and he was instrumental in making this journey an enjoyable and educational one.

I worked with Richard for six years on my professional development and the programme that he had put together certainly accelerated my progress into a High Performance coach and assisted in my appointment as Head Coach of the New Zealand Track Cycling programme in 2007. I continued to work with him during my tenure as National coach and I had such great trust in his abilities that he even worked with our programme as a Team Manager at World Cup competition level.

I can say categorically that I would not have developed into the coach I am today without the guidance and opportunity that Richard provided, and I am enormously thankful to him for that.

I also feel his work with the BikeNZ organisation ensured strong succession planning that saw New Zealand coaches develop into some of the best in the World and the BikeNZ programme enjoy an unparalleled period of success during those years.”

Sir Steve Hansen

All Black

Coach

“I have known Richard for over 30 years – as a team-mate, friend and in working in High Performance sport. During the 3 years that I was a member of the HPSNZ Coach Accelerator Programme, Richard spent time observing, listening, and providing me with feedback on my coaching. Getting this sort of individual support and feedback has been an important part of my development and learning as a coach. As a ‘coach of people’, if you want to get better at what you do, in any situation, then I would recommend Richard to you.”

Gary Stead

NZ BLACKCAPS

Coach

“I have known Richard in a number of different professional capacities - as a coach developer and educator when he was working for HPSNZ back in the 2000’s; as a coach advisor in his time at NZC as the High Performance Coach Development Manager and throughout my coaching career as a mentor/critical friend to be able to bounce ideas and have coaching conversations with.  Richard is well read, knowledgeable, experienced and well connected in the professional coaching world – he understands the pressures and differing roles of coaching landscapes.  I have always found Richard to be considered in feedback and given his own rugby coaching to a high level, the coaching conversations are natural, relevant, and meaningful. Richard has been a great sounding board for me, someone with wise counsel and unwavering support.”

Shane Jurgensen

NZ BLACKCAPS

Assistant Coach

“Richard is the “Coaches coach”. He provides unconditional support for all coaches. He has been key to delivering high-level performance coaching support and development programs across the country at Provincial, WHITE FERNS and BLACKCAPS levels. He has worked extremely hard for all coaches to be well-aligned to NZC values, encourages/pulls people to all work together for the best outcome, builds trusting working relationships and ultimately this hard work down the line produces better cricketers to represent New Zealand. As mentioned he is the coaches coach that provides unconditional support 24/7. He is an outstanding facilitator/communicator and he has an amazing network of people outside the cricket world to provide specific professional development. His help and support of me personally has been significant.”

Hans Wouters

NZ Spinal Trust

CEO 

“Our internal culture had suffered – a consequence of the impact of the earthquakes on how we delivered our services, plus a number of other ‘issues’ that had festered away. I was a new CEO and needed to rebuild our culture and redevelop a team of champions into a champion team. We had become silo’ed in our approach and could no longer behave like a high performance team. I asked myself what does a high performance team look like? I wanted to project vision to my team and describe what we could achieve if we worked together and developed the characteristics of a high performance team – both individually and as a group. It would be hard to find anyone with more experience or mana in the field of high performance than Richard. I had some friends who knew him well and highly recommended him - Richard was perfect. In double quick time he was able to connect with our team, describe what we were needing and set us on a path to getting it. His stories of working with highest profile sports team in NZ were inspiring and we felt very privileged to be tapping into his wisdom. Richard knows his stuff and was just what we needed to get us back on track supporting positive futures for those living with the effects of a spinal cord injury.”  

Chris Mulvaney

StockCare NZ

Farm Consultant

“I have been doing consultancy with sheep and beef farmers for more than 20 years. Over the last few years recruiting and retaining excellent people has become a significant challenge for many farmers.  

In 2019 I invited Richard to get in front of about 30 farm business owners and their employees to talk about the concepts and philosophies of managing a great team.  Richard was able to provide a series of small group workshops using an approach that was quite different from the “normal”.  The way he used relevant examples and case studies resonated with the participants and he was able to actively involve everyone in the groups.  The feedback from the participants was extremely positive – perhaps something not quite expected from a group of farmers! From this grew a series of workshops that he delivered throughout the South Island, which again were very well received.  

I can certainly recommend Richard as someone who can very effectively offer expertise and knowledge to help business owners create and manage excellent teams.”

Wayne Smith

All Black

Coach

“I have known Richard since the 1980’s. He has had wide experience over the years in a number of different capacities - teacher, educator, coach and a developer of high-performance coaches. I have spent time with him in all these environments.  He has a wide range of experience, skills, knowledge, and an ability to implement his expertise in a practical manner. This really connects with people and helps them to get better. Richard is a lifelong learner himself and I enjoy the conversations that follow these sessions - they are always vibrant and growth centred.”

Nick Ydgren

Chief Stipendiary Steward 

NZ Harness Racing

“I sought out the assistance of Richard to better myself as a manager having only had limited experience in that role. What I got from him was the skills and tools to become a leader. I adopted a completely new mindset as to how I approach my role and now actively seek out the learning in each challenge. This is resulting in a huge change in how we, as a group, monitor and measure performance with excellent results.”