Football Lessons for Managers

(MoneyWatch) 

The experiences football managers collect through their careers are as intense as any a leader in the commercial world could expect to find and the lessons they learn along the way can easily be applied off the pitch.

See Also:

The Premier League of Debt

Arsenal, ManU and Portsmouth: How Clubs Manage Costs

UEFA Clamps Down on Fat-Cat Footballers

Jose Mourinho. Photo: Flickr

Business managers might think that the football World Cup will be best spent ordering distracted employees to close down the video links and concentrate on their work.

But there s much to learn from the tournament about organising teams and motivating individuals.

If they do, they will find themselves in eminent company. Sir Terry Leahy, outgoing chief executive of Tesco, is among the many business leaders who emphasises the management education potential of the only global game, telling us that “there are lots of lessons (from football) for managers to see what really matters when the pressure is on.”

Raising morale and engaging employees are priorities in the current economy and if football offers one lesson, is the importance of good managers for motivating individuals and delivering team performance.

That may seem obvious, but it”s a lesson business has yet to fully absorb. Why else would companies continue to promote excellent functional performers — top sales people or accountants — to management positions, regardless of their suitability for the role?

Why else would companies continue to reward managers for their own individual performance, rather than that of their team?

Here are some of the lessons from the pitch:

1. Management is a full-time job

There is no relationship whatsoever between functional expertise and managerial ability. Jose Mourinho tried playing football as a young man, but soon realised his shortcomings. Now at Real Madrid, he has achieved outstanding success as a coach. If he’d been similarly inadequate as a graduate salesman or marketer, his employment would have been hastily terminated and his company denied the commercial impact of his very considerable managerial ability.

2.Talent is contextual.

Coaching a team at a one-off tournament like the World Cup is akin to leading a short-term project, staffed by disparate and often unacquainted individuals from various departments. The coach has little time to work out how to extract the maximum potential from their charges. That means aligning people with roles, and possibly location. At the World Cup, you may see appalling performances from players who consistently excel for their club teams when fulfilling very different duties. Talent is meaningless unless it’s deployed in its most fitting context. Will Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard, often played for England in their less favoured positions, underperform again as a result?

3. Managers adapt their style to individuals.

Coaches must act quickly to gauge the people they’re working with. “Man-management is about adjusting your style to suit the player,” says Harry Redknapp, Tottenham Hotspur’s coach. Interviews with those who played under Brian Clough, arguably the greatest ever English manager, reveal conflicting narratives. Some say Clough was avuncular and caring, others that he was an intimidating tyrant. Neither was true — he had just simply worked out how to press the buttons of very different characters.

4. Managers are highly visible and accessible

They must constantly deliver feedback and performance assessments. Ask the average English employee what they think of their CEO, and they may draw a blank.

Ask them the same question about Fabio Capello, the Italian coach of the England football team at this World Cup, and you might find it difficult to get a word in. In leadership, Gareth Jones and Rob Goffee describe this as authenticity — showing people who you are.

5. Managers promote self-belief.

If we look at our own careers as employees, most of us will say that the most productive and enjoyable period has been when we worked for a manager who had the confidence to push us to our limit. Arsene Wenger, Arsenal’s manager, summarised the galvanising effect this relationship has: “All great successes, all great lives, have involved the coincidence of aptitude, talent, but also the luck of meeting people who have believed in you. At some point in your life, you need someone who will tap you on your shoulder and say, ‘I believe in you’.”

Company leaders might tone down the language a bit, but if they want to promote loyalty and genuinely see their teams succeed, they’ll take a leaf from football’s playbook.