A slightly awkward pause was uproariously broken by Norton: "Charming! Sorry to keep you. No wonder you fall out with people."
The All Blacks seem not to have problems of the same magnitude. Aaron Cruden, not required for the third test running after missing the team's flight to Argentina after a late night and Steven Luatua's apology after he appeared to endorse a drinking game on social media are the national side's recent scandals.
Sonny Bill Williams is an example of a rarely talented young maverick who has matured into a professional since early indiscretions, including walking out on his contract with the Canterbury Bulldogs league team and going skiing while on injury leave. Demand for his talent enables him to call the shots on his career moves but he consistently delivers for whichever team he is with.
It is tempting to put the All Blacks' good discipline down to its mantra that "better people make better All Blacks". The most unwelcome headlines in recent years involved the repeated drunken misdemeanours of winger Zac Guildford, now playing for a French club.
Managing him fell to Crusaders coach, the former All Black, Todd Blackadder, who eventually let him go. "Zac was more an illness. He had the best of everything, the best counsellors, there was a specialist looking after him. He was given a lot [of help] but still couldn't overcome the illness that he had."
"At the end of the day he was having too big an impact on the team and we had to act. You can't save the world."
The danger for managers, says Blackadder, is to treat players based on their potential and talent rather than dealing with the issue at hand. "If you allow your best players to live outside the team rules, you just undermine your own standards. What you tolerate, you condone."
Most organisations - sport or corporate - have troublesome talent. Trouble without talent should be managed out the door, former insurance industry manager Victor Lipman wrote recently in Forbes magazine, while some talent was so exceptional that wasn't an option.
Jesse Ryder's drinking has featured in the media.
"Many employees who are very difficult, can also be exceptional contributors," Lipman wrote. "Sometimes the same keen intelligence that makes them talented also makes them challenging. Think Steve Jobs and Bill Gates would have been easy to manage? "
The starting point of the professionalism of today's All Blacks was the end of the amateur era in 1995. "There was a lot of drinking and a lot of other things that happened that didn't sit well in the professional era or in future society," says John Hart, the All Blacks' coach at the time. "We had to change a lot of those things. I wasn't very popular but it needed to happen."
"It takes all types of personalities. The fundamental thing is you have disciplines and base standards and values that you do not compromise and which everyone can meet."
Next step is a development plan for each person. "That covers life as much as it covers sport." Hart's All Blacks attended a seminar to help them with new challenges, from managing the big salaries they were suddenly getting, to how to behave in public.
"Once you go professional, the players are much more public property. The media changed their attitude. In the old days the media came on tour and what happened on tour stayed on tour. Now if a player transgresses, it's in the media. "
While it is accepted mistakes will be made, you can't make the same mistake three times, says Hart. "Aaron Cruden has made a mistake. Well, I'm not sure he will do that again. He has learned a very hard lesson. These things are part of growing up."
Di Patston is at the centre of the Kurtley Beale saga
Can Beale's career be saved? "It's very hard to tell from a distance but he is obviously a very talented footballer and he's obviously got some issues off the field. Only those around him know whether they can manage and grow him successfully."
This is the ninth time Beale has faced disciplinary action since 2007. Allegations include assaulting a bouncer, fighting with team-mates, drink-driving, breaching an alcohol ban, the verbal abuse and lewd texts.
Blackadder was surprised the texts were leaked months after the issue appeared to have been adequately managed.
He says he is too distant to judge whether the Wallabies have a culture problem. But where multiple problems arise, "the first place to look is in the mirror".
Hart says there are a lot of similarities in what makes teams and companies successful. "You have got to have standards, you have got to have discipline, you have got to have values, and leaders have to lead and players [and staff] have to be grown along with it."
It was a meeting of the leadership group in 2004, a three-day summit under head coach Graham Henry, that James Kerr, the author of the book Legacy: What the All Blacks can teach us about the business of life, says has led to the team's current status.
Though the All Blacks had an extraordinary 75 per cent winning record over 100 years, they were in a slump, having come last in the Tri Nations. "Their inspirational captain, Tana Umaga, was threatening to quit. Others, too," Kerr writes. "The culture was drunk and disorderly, rotting from the inside."
The retreat produced a new resolve to redesign the team's culture. Develop the character of the players off the pitch and they will perform better on it. A philosophy of continual improvement, devolved leadership, personal development, match-intensity training, apply science to help cope with stress and build rituals around the All Blacks' story.
Between 2004 and 2011 the win rate rose to 86 per cent and has pushed higher again since.
"We didn't have a 'No Dickheads' policy," Henry told the Herald, " we had an educational policy of trying to improve and get better with a humility base. Everyone had to realise that they weren't the finished product and could always improve."
Henry points to the experience the All Blacks have with several players led by Richie McCaw, with more than 100 tests under their belt and coaches and a manager who have been with the team more than a decade.
In contrast, the Wallaby story is constant change. Coach, captain and senior players have come and gone. "They could probably pick a better Australian team picking players playing outside of Australia," says Henry, "whereas Carl Hayman is probably the only player outside of New Zealand who would get in the All Blacks."
The difference, he believes, is creating the right environment. "They [the All Blacks] enjoy the process of getting better. Self-improvement is a huge motivation and inspiration for young guys. 'Better People Make Better All Blacks' was the statement. It came from B.J. Lochore, way back in about 2004."
"But you always have your hiccups and those hiccups are good, because it keeps people focused and sharpens up the group. I felt sorry for Aaron Cruden recently because it was totally out of character ..."
Workplace psychologist Helena Cooper-Thomas says research shows corrosive personalities lead to more relationship conflict in teams.
"If you do want to select that kind of person you have to do that ground work to make sure everyone is prepared," says the University of Auckland senior lecturer.
"You have to manage it with the team to ensure they are ready to accept it and also help the individual with their interactions with the team and with the manager to ensure that they are able to be brilliant and to minimise those corrosive effects."
Some of the most challenging people are those with borderline personality disorder. Because they had a chaotic sense of themselves, says John Faisandier, director of corporate coaching company Thriving Under Fire, they compensate by performing very well in their jobs and so are often highly valued. The downside is they can be destructive. "One way to make themselves feel better is to put others down. They will say the wrong thing because they don't know how to relate ... say 'you're hopeless', or 'you're f***ing useless'."
If not caught early the behaviour could become bullying. Such people often didn't realise the impact on others or would deflect blame.
Managers needed to make clear what authority such people had and the behaviour that was expected and keep emotion out of exchanges.
Employers were often reluctant to fire them because they they didn't want to lose their talent or knowledge.
The hardest thing for managers with troublesome staff - including those with drug and alcohol addictions - was to set boundaries in a way that was not punitive or judgmental.
Those with the disorder easily took offence, held a grudge and could be vengeful if the wrong thing was said because they saw criticism as an attack on their whole being. "They can be receptionists as well as top scientists or top IT people."
Regardless of the scale of the problem, sometimes the problematic person was the boss.
A rare case of misconduct by a state-sector head became public in 2012 when complaints from a staff member were upheld in 2012 against Katrina Bach, then chief executive of the former Department of Building and Housing.
Incidents included swearing and speaking harshly to the employee and putting her hands on the person's head and saying, "What is going on in that head of yours?"
Bach, described by the State Services Commissioner as a "long-serving public servant who has demonstrated a high level of energy and commitment in all her roles throughout her career", was warned and fined an undisclosed amount. The staff member left after reaching a confidential settlement.
Six tips for managers
Brad Pitt as baseball manager Billy Beane in Moneyball. His character stuck to the facts. Photo / Sony
1. Give them a challenge: TBDs hate doing the boring stuff, so try to give them assignments that stretch them and use all their skills. That doesn't necessarily mean they always do the most high-prestige jobs - sometimes your temperamental star is best suited to a near-impossible task that would stump most other employees. Just don't let them languish in work that they see as routine and pointless.
2. Give them space: This has to be managed carefully or other workers will resent any implication of special favours. But you will get more out of a TBD if you give them room to solve the problem in their own way and don't insist that they follow long lists of procedures. Resist the temptation to check up on their progress all the time. You are taking a risk here - you may not get the result you expected or wanted but you may also get something better.
3. Get a wingman: Most TBDs need someone alongside them who can respond to their creativity but also see the dangerous gaps they leave and the boring details that will have to be filled in. That person needs to be talented in their own right but not so talented or ambitious that they will clash with the TBD. Think Conrad Smith in the All Black backline.
4. Spell it out: Give regular feedback, both positive and negative. TBDs need to know where they're making a strong contribution and where their behaviour is badly affecting colleagues or the organisation. If there's a problem, state it clearly. Resentments and misunderstandings can build up if a manager thinks a staff member's behaviour is obviously disruptive but has never told them so directly.
5. Stick to the facts: What is the TBD's real value to your organisation? Don't be swayed by emotion either way. Look at verifiable outcomes, preferably things that you can measure, write down and refer to for performance assessment or - if necessary - disciplinary action. The sporting blueprint here is Moneyball, the story of baseball boss Billy Beane's transformation of the penniless Oakland Athletics into a successful team by ruthlessly concentrating on statistics, rather than experience or gut feeling.
6. Don't promote them: At least not into management and not unless you are sure they've overcome their selfish ways. Often the very qualities that make for wayward genius (such as obsessive single-mindedness) are disastrous in a leader, who needs good people skills. There is a counter view, that making a bad boy the head prefect will bring out the best in him. Wayne Rooney getting the England football captaincy could be a good example. Or not.
