The Great Coaches: Leadership and Life – Mike Hesson

The Great Coaches Podcast | January 17, 2024

Mike Hesson is New Zealand cricket coach.

He started his coaching career in his early 20’s while playing in the UK. From there he progressed through Assistant coaching before accepting the role as Argentina’s head coach in 2003. He returned to New Zealand and became Head Coach of Otago and leading them to the 2008 one-day trophy and the 2009 T20 championship.

In 2011 he took on the job of Head Coach of Kenya before being appointed the Head Coach of the New Zealand national team, the Black Caps in 2012. He went on to take them from a One-Day international ranking of 8th to 2nd by the time he left the role in 2018. He finished his tenure as one of the most successful coaches in the nation’s history with highlights including a record breaking 13 game winning streak. He has gone on to coach the Kings in the IPL and Islamabad in the Pakistan Super League.

Some of the highlights include: 

• On being comfortable with silence and not feeling like you have to always fill it as a coach with information. But instead using it as a space to observe and gather information so you can be helpful later on.
• The way he uses questions to help lead people, as he believes that the majority of the team the player has the answer, they just haven’t been asked the right question.
• The importance of authenticity and in his words “if I want my players to believe in me and trust me and have relationship with me, they need to know that it's actually me rather than me trying to be somebody else.”