The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders (10 page)

Howard Wilkinson picks up on this theme of setting the tone yourself and inspiring through values: ‘At its best, a football club is a greenhouse, where you can really create a culture. As
I watched people, I realised that group behaviours have a massive influence. In football, the manager is the culture. I need to embody what I want to see – in training and elsewhere.’
Like Moyes, Wilkinson found that modelling values reduced the need for rules: ‘My rule was to have as few rules as possible. We worked on the basis of respect, trust, fairness, honesty
– and team spirit. Team spirit is acting in a way that gives us all the best chance to succeed most of the time.’

Wilkinson recalls a moment when he knew that team spirit had really taken hold in Leeds: ‘Four players came to me one Monday – almost a delegation, led by the team captain. I’d
been a bit tough on our fantastic goalscorer, Tony Yeboah – all about sharing a responsibility for working to get the ball back. They were saying: “Gaffer, we think you should leave
Tony alone. We know when we give him the ball in a goalscoring situation, he scores – so we’re happy with him. We know that the most difficult job is scoring, and he does
that.”’ Wilkinson was so happy to see the values permeating his team that he did not mind at all what a less confident leader might perceive as a challenge to his authority.

The values message is clear. If a leader can both articulate and embody a clear set of values, then his people will not only police themselves – they will eventually stand up and be
counted for something they believe in. Achieve this, and there is inspiration for everyone.

On a lighter note, the importance of setting tone and embodying values is amusingly illustrated by Alex McLeish in a story about Ferguson at Aberdeen: ‘I was never really scared of Sir
Alex, but I had great respect for him. He took the game seriously, and so did we. We had a multi-gym for players to use when they were injured, but there was a snooker table in the same room.
Players used to use both at the same time – kind of, “Right, you play a shot while I do the multi-gym and then when it’s your turn I’ll go in the multi-gym.” We could
always hear him come down the corridor so it was fine! One morning, they thought Fergie was away training, but sometimes he would hang back a bit and do some administration stuff. It was 20 minutes
into when training would start, and this day he caught them red-handed. The lad had the snooker cue in his hand ready to pot when Fergie put his head in the door! Superb moment – the lad was
absolutely brilliant – he put the cue around his neck and started doing squats! Fergie loved it, but he never let the seriousness of the football slip.’

Level 2 again: Work with beliefs and motivations

Also sitting below the level of thoughts and feelings is the question of beliefs. These are the things we hold to be true – about ourselves, our work, our colleagues, our
purpose. Ultimately they determine our priorities, and Wenger is a master of them.

He begins by identifying his own: ‘What keeps me going is my love for the game, for doing the job I do and for football. I have that internal desire to be as good as I can, refusing to be
average. Unfortunately sometimes in the job I feel very average when I don’t deliver results, but there is something in every individual that pushes him to try and be excellent. That is my
petrol.’ This combination of pure love for the game and striving for excellence naturally influences what he looks for in players: ‘If you want to make a career at a big club you must
be capable to believe in your abilities, and keep them in perspective off the field also. You can have players who appear quickly to have a big talent, but if they cannot handle keeping their feet
on the ground and continue to improve, they will be eliminated. So always the people who last are those who can handle that kind of pressure and that kind of approach to their life. When you go out
there [on the pitch] with the ball, it must mean something to you. Of course, you make mistakes at any age, but what basically always brings you back on track is that deep love and deep motivation
to be as good as you can be.’

Once a player has that motivation, he must stay focused on it – against all the obvious distractions: ‘The consistency of focus around an individual’s motivation is an
underrated quality. This is what sets one talented player apart from another with similar talent. And if you analyse people who have been successful, they don’t remain successful
automatically. Their standing goes up and down, and to come up again you need a huge level of consistency in your focus. So, for example, if a player is only motivated by money he will not go far.
Players are made rich very quickly, so if he has the money and is only motivated by money where does he go? The players at the top are people who have a very strong internal need to be the best. We
are all motivated by that. Strikers may love to win, and defenders may hate to lose; but the final focus is the same.’

Of course, for a player this deep motivation brings with it a flip side. It is down to the manager to provide a valid channel for that motivation to express itself. Wenger makes the point that
this challenge surfaces weekly: ‘One of the difficult things of being a manager is to sack 14 people every Friday morning – and then re-employ them on a Monday morning and say,
“Right, we start again – I take you back on board.” This, of course, is extremely difficult. Somebody who doesn’t play or who is injured feels useless. The difficulty of our
job and the key for the club is to take care of these people. And the nature of elite sport is you can be number five or six in the world in March and be number 500 in November. So if a player
isn’t playing, he is feeling in danger and is asking how he can get out of that. Therefore inside the club it is important that we give respect and credit to people who for a while
aren’t really in situations where they can show how good they are.’

Level 3: Create belonging and fulfilment

At the bottom of the iceberg, Wenger sees the need to create belonging for his players – both individually and as a team: ‘I believe in creating an organisation
where every individual believes that he can exploit his full potential, and as well that he contributes to the goodness of the club and team. We have a sense of belonging and a sense of wanting to
realise what we are capable of doing. In an organisation you can get these two things right: I feel I belong to it and I feel I can get the best out of myself by doing that. You have a chance to be
successful. Unfortunately that’s not always possible and some of the aspects of our game are completely the opposite of that. When you have 25 players and on Friday morning you filter them
out, you turn those people into unemployed people and the sense of belonging diminishes ... the sense of being able to show what you are capable of doing disappears.’ The danger here is that
a demotivated player can lose his appetite for the game, descend into a victim mindset and even begin to drag others down with him.

Leaders in whatever setting need to create belonging in their teams: belonging to something special, something intimate, something big and something lasting. Being part of the first-team
dressing room at Manchester United is a good example of something special – and not least because Sir Alex maintained a strict confidentiality. He saw it as essential for his players’
well-being: ‘You’ve got to have a system in your club where it stays in the dressing room. Anything that we have to say remains there. That was true for me right from the start, from 32
years old. I never ever would talk about what happened between me and the players. I’ve always held that confidentiality. By doing that I am laying a foundation of trust – a sense they
can depend on you. Human beings need that because they are fragile. In fact, the human beings that we deal with now are more fragile than they ever were.’

Intimacy is important for a sense of belonging too – and it does not have to be incredibly profound to have a positive effect. Kevin Keegan would create an easy sense of belonging simply
by being there with the players every day: ‘I would be there all the time, make sure the staff and I are first in and last out: looking around trying to feel what’s good, what’s
right, what’s not right, sitting at tables when the players are eating – not actually listening to the conversations, just getting a feel for the mood. When the players train I’m
there, when they’re doing their fitness I’m there. Then people know this guy is full time, he’s serious, he’s committed.’ Keegan is serious about relationships, but
pragmatic about how deep to go: ‘The secret is to get people to believe in each other. Once you’ve got that, you’ve got a chance – because you won’t beat the
opposition if you’re beating yourself. But they don’t all have to love each other.’ He gives the example of his excellent working relationship with John Toshack at Liverpool:
‘John Tosh and I were a great partnership. We weren’t
great
friends; we were good friends. I never went out for a meal with him, we never socialised together other than at club
functions, but on a football pitch we were
best
friends. Everything I tried to do was to make him a better player, to make him score goals, to help him – and vice-versa.’

The something special also needs to be something purposeful. Thoughtful goal setting helps turn that sense of belonging to something worthwhile. Howard Wilkinson is a big believer in this:
‘The first thing I did before my first full season at Leeds began for real was to sit down with my players and talk through some facts: “to get out of this league you need that many
points, to win this league you need that many points, to do that you need to score that many goals, you need to concede no more than this many goals, and looking back over the last ten seasons, the
number of players we need to use is 16 (or whatever the right figure was). So now what do you think we can do? What do you want to do?” I’d have my own view and I’d throw that in
at the end, because players in that situation out of bravado always think they can win it. Then it’s hang on a minute, let’s think about this and what it means. It was very important
for me to get them to commit to goals.’

Finally, the something special should carry some sense of the long term. David Moyes recruits for that: ‘I’ve always looked for players I feel could go on a journey with me, not just
do a job. I try and sign players who I think could go with me for four, five or six years if possible. I always have to believe I could work with them in the long term. I’ve got to say
I’ve met quite a few players and chosen not to take them, some quite well-known players I’ve not chosen because I’ve felt that what I heard wasn’t quite what I wanted to
hear. A lot of them have turned out to be top players, but I just felt there was something missing, so I’ve stayed away.’

When we think of human needs, we often think of the basic stuff: food, shelter and so on. The reality is that the people we lead will have pretty developed needs – and belonging and
fulfilment are at the heart of them. Football is no exception, and the great managers meet those needs head-on.

Back to Level 0: Set (and enforce) boundaries

For all the need to work lower down in the iceberg, the simple act of agreeing boundaries at the least makes it clear to everyone what is acceptable behaviour and what is not.
Gérard Houllier cites it as one of his four foundational values, saying players should: ‘Be a pro, on and off the field.’ He stresses both: ‘A player has to be a top pro in
terms of looking after himself, and doing the job properly – because he lives for that job, which is different from other jobs.’

The challenge to managers is only very rarely about the high-profile misdemeanours we read about in the newspapers. David Moyes says the more common issues by far are around personal commitment:
‘It’s much more likely to be someone turning up late for training, maybe somebody saying something through the media which they shouldn’t have done, maybe a tweet, maybe while
they are away on international duty which causes you problems. The overall discipline of the players is much improved against previous generations.’ Manager of the England Women’s team,
Hope Powell, also finds it’s about timekeeping and personal discipline: ‘I’m very strict on time, as in turn up for breakfast on time, turn up for meetings on time. And they are
very good. Just now and again they might just need a gentle reminder.’ And is it ever more than a gentle reminder? ‘Oh yes, and sometimes it’s innocent really and they say,
“I didn’t mean to”, and the response is, “If it happens again it’ll be the last time it happens.” And that’s it.’

The women’s game is different from the men’s – with less media profile and different group behaviours. But, regardless of gender, David Moyes believes societal trends allow
leaders to be much more empowering in their approach to discipline: ‘The style of leadership is different to what it was in years gone by. Maybe leaders needed to be stricter then. In the
world we are in just now, players can’t really step over the mark because there will be so much to lose – their work is worth too much to them. With camera phones and instant media,
players have to be much more self-disciplined than in the past.’ The approach now from football leaders at the top of the game is about role modelling, self-discipline and appealing to a
player’s sense of responsibility. André Villas-Boas decided early on that he could ‘only be a leader with open-minded leadership – open-minded in the sense of implying
responsibilities in people and making sure people are made accountable for the mistakes that they do instead of me reprimanding them hard for what they are doing wrong.’ Moyes adds:
‘There are the basic ground rules that most football players have to abide by, and one or two which are important to me which I might mention to the players, but I really want them to
discipline themselves. Good leaders don’t have to be too heavily involved in it all the time. Only in extreme cases do they need to come in and take action.’

Essentially, the leaders set the environment for self-discipline. It begins, of course, by hiring people who are likely to embody your own values. Moyes would only sign players who
‘display self-discipline, honesty and respect’. For Gérard Houllier, respect is the second of his four foundational values: ‘Respect means that the player cannot say,
“I should play,” because if he says “I should play” in the press, he lacks respect to his teammates who he is playing with, or to the institution, or to the manager who
picks the team. He must have respect even to the kit manager, not just to throw things away. He must respect the facilities, everything. Respect is a huge thing.’