James Haskell built his career in rugby’s hardest environments. A former England flanker, British & Irish Lions tourist, Premiership champion and Six Nations Grand Slam winner, he played through the pressure, scrutiny and setbacks that define elite sport.
His career took him from Wasps to France, Japan and New Zealand, before he became one of rugby’s most recognisable voices off the pitch.
Now a broadcaster, author, podcast host and mental resilience expert, Haskell speaks with the same directness that shaped his playing career.
His message is clear: performance is built through habits, honest reflection, resilience and the ability to learn from failure.
In this exclusive interview with the London Keynote Speakers Agency, James Haskell discusses the behaviours that separate elite performers, why failure needs a process behind it, and how mental strength can be developed long after the final whistle.
Q1: At the top level, what are the controllable habits that separate athletes when talent alone is not enough?
James Haskell: “I think the habits are around what you can control: resilience, consistency, the desire to get better, being prepared to work when others aren’t, reaching out to others for feedback, and having self-awareness.
“There’s no miracle answer to reducing those margins. The honest answer is that if you do all the things that require no skill, those margins are reduced.
“In rugby terms, that means how quickly you run, how quickly you get off the floor, and how much you communicate. Those require no skill. You can do them to the best of your ability.
“Whether you play well, or whether your team plays well, is out of your control. But if you can go to bed at night and be totally honest with yourself, and say, ‘I’ve done these things,’ then you’ve managed what you can control.
“Being consistent, being prepared, being aware, listening, asking how you get better, and seeking the opinions of people who have achieved what you want to achieve are all very important.”
Q2: After a mistake or setback, what separates those who learn from it from those who let it affect the next performance?
James Haskell: “I think people are often scared of failure. There’s a great analogy: you only ever see the final creation of an artist hanging on the wall, in an exhibition, or in a gallery.
“You never see the hundreds of sketches, the failed paintings, and the work that didn’t get to where they wanted it to be.
“The ability to deal with failure, accept it, embrace it, and not be frightened of mistakes is important. Life is a complete smorgasbord of people making mistakes. That’s how they achieve.
“Once you can embrace failure, you need a process to back it up. If I missed a tackle when I played, and I hadn’t put a process into that tackle, I could only look back and say, ‘I missed a tackle. That’s bad.’
“But if I had a process, I could look at where my feet were, where my head was, what sensation I wanted to have, and what little triggers I needed. Then I could say, ‘My footwork wasn’t there. My head wasn’t there.’ If I fix those things, I make the tackle.
“In life and in business, if you put processes around things, then when something fails, you can go back, reflect on it, see where you need to adjust, and move forward.
“You should be emotionally disappointed by failure. You should allow yourself a couple of days to be pissed off. But ultimately, you should then say, ‘Right, this is a chance to reset.’
“It comes back to the things you control. Within that failure, did I do everything I needed to do? If it were a business meeting or a campaign, did I prepare properly? Did I get other people to check what I was trying to do? Did I put a process in place? Did I understand what I was trying to achieve? Did I give it enough time? Did I sleep properly before the presentation?
“When you reflect on the failure, you can look back and ask, ‘Where was the learning?’ If you breach your glass ceiling and can’t get past it, you can reach out to someone else and say, ‘This is the process. This is what we did. On paper, this should work. Why doesn’t it?’ Then they can help you reflect.
“Failure should be seen as an important learning curve once you take the emotion out of it. People become defined by failure when they are worried about taking risks and making mistakes.
“But life is about mistakes. You have to fail to achieve. Every billionaire and every successful company failed before they became successful.
“It should be disappointing. It should not be something you want. But if it happens, you should see it as an opportunity to get better.
“Some people are crushed by failure. But if you fall off a horse, you have to get back on it. If you get injured, you need to pick yourself back up again. If you make a mistake, you have to do it again, because that’s what life is about.
“Ultimately, when you are successful, you have a rich tapestry of things behind you that make up the failure. It gives much more context and wealth to your success.”
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