The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders (8 page)

On the Tuesday I woke up – St Patrick’s Day, 17 March – I was looking forward to it. Then I get a call to go and see Mr Burr, the chairman who told me that
Bruce had been sacked. I was called to another meeting next day. On the way, I met my mate Ian Evans, who would become my assistant for a long time. I said to him: “I think they are going to
offer me the manager’s job.” Straight away he asked: “Do they owe you any money? They might want to pay you up – you haven’t played for a while ...” So I’m
going into the meeting with two different thoughts in my head: new job or heading out. Next day, Wednesday, I get the job. I’ve broken into football management. Thursday we come in to train.
Friday we’re training again and I have to select the team. I pick Paul Stevenson on the right. John Colquhoun came to see me to ask why he’d been left out. I said, “You
didn’t pick yourself in your team and you want to play in my team? Not a chance!” So I’m a player in the dressing room on Tuesday, and I’m the manager on Friday, making team
selections and leaving out personal friends. Not easy.’ McCarthy makes light of it, but, beneath the easy-going nature, there is steel in abundance. And the loyalty? ‘John and I have
been friends for years – and still are. Very much so.’

So what did Colquhoun see in McCarthy that commanded his ongoing loyalty despite being dropped? Two things. The first is reliability. We often think of reliability as being on time, or playing a
solid, constant game – we talk admiringly of reliable goalkeepers, for example. However, being a good leader is more about whether or not they keep their promises – or, put even better,
whether they make promises they cannot keep. Tempted though he must have been to promise Colquhoun a place back in the starting line-up as soon as he was fit again, McCarthy did not take the easy
route. Beyond reliability, he acted with integrity. For a football manager with integrity, what he thinks, believes, says and does all align. McCarthy knew Colquhoun wasn’t fully fit –
and Colquhoun knew that McCarthy knew. In not selecting him, he behaved with integrity, and he and Colquhoun remain friends to this day. Integrity and steel can build loyalty.

Steel works with real people

A common issue – especially for less experienced leaders – is a nagging belief that steel can hurt people. But this does not have to be the case. The critical act is
to separate the problem from the person. In football, a common application of this principle is around leaving players off the team sheet. In other fields, an example might be delaying
someone’s advancement or promotion, or passing over a candidate for a specific task. No one enjoys dropping players, but the needs of the organisation or the club and the team are almost
always greater than the needs of the individual. If you keep your eyes on the bigger picture, then the tactical decisions become much easier to make.

Great leaders make tough decisions, and still build powerful relationships. The first big challenge is the mindset of the manager. It’s important to recognise that tough decisions
don’t have to damage relationships – on the contrary, they can build them. The most powerful relationships have mutual respect in their foundations. A losing mentality is:
‘He’ll never forgive me for dropping him.’ A winning mentality might be: ‘If I select him, we’re not going to win. The right team for this match looks like
...’

Walter Smith sees steel as an essential for dealing with players. ‘In football we don’t deal with products, we deal with people. And these people are not daft. They watch what you do
– that’s life as a manager. At Rangers in my first year they would have been looking at me asking: “Is he going to weaken under the pressure of having to handle this situation or
is he not? Is he going to be able to lead us out of this?” I realised I had to try and show all the time that I was going to lead us out of a tough place. There can be darker moments on your
own when you are making an assessment of the situation, where you think, no, this isn’t going to work – but in front of everyone I think you have to show that you can be up front and
handle it.’

Managers also have to have clear reasons underpinning their decisions – even if, like Ancelotti, they tend not to share them: ‘Usually I don’t want to explain to the players
the motivation, because here we have 28 players and before the game I have to explain which 11 play and which 17 have to stay out. I don’t have the time; I don’t want to explain. But if
one player came to me and if he wanted an explanation I would have to give it. Sometimes it’s easy; sometimes it’s not so easy because some decisions that you take are based on little
details. So it becomes difficult to explain this. And it is sometimes difficult to tell the truth, because you can’t say to a player, “You don’t play because your teammate is
better than you.” It’s difficult to say this because the risk is he will lose motivation to play so you have to find a different way to explain, while still behaving with integrity and,
of course, not lying.’

Again, how you deliver the decision is critical. A famous negotiation tactic taught at Harvard Business School in Boston is the idea of Yes-No-Yes. It runs something like this: ‘I need to
say No to you. Why? Because I am saying a bigger Yes to something else. Once I have that clear, then the No becomes much simpler to say. I can now move past it, and offer you an alternative
Yes.’ This plays out for football leaders on a weekly basis. It might go: ‘I am leaving you out of the starting line-up for tomorrow. That is because you have not been at your best this
week in training. The match is tough, so I have to field the best team for the task. On current form, this other player has earned his start. Next week, I am offering you one-on-one time each day
with our defensive coach, so you can work toward getting your place back.’

In the final weeks of the 2011–12 season, Roberto Mancini hit on an unchanged line-up that carried Manchester City to the title. He was profoundly aware of leaving great players out of the
team, but needed the momentum that was emerging from his successful starting eleven. In effect, his proposition to the rest of the squad might have sounded something like: ‘I know this is not
easy or rewarding for you right now. But if we do this, we can all become champions. You will have played your part every bit as much as the others. And then you will have a champion’s medal,
with all that that entails.’

The work of a football manager – as with most leaders – is to balance the needs of the task, the team and the individual. There are times when the greater needs of the team or the
greater demands of the task (for example, beating the team in front of you) simply have to take priority. Working with this principle, transparently, allows many football managers to make tough
decisions well.

Steel in the cauldron

Professional football at the highest level is, at best, a defining experience for managers. At worst it can be brutal. Steel, if you don’t already have it, becomes a major
priority.

After Brendan Rodgers’ disappointment at Reading, his move to Swansea already had a real sense of last-chance saloon: ‘I came in and now I had to show my character. My career as a
manager was almost over before it had begun. I didn’t know how much of a chance I was going to get, but now I knew the rules. I had learned from my experience at Reading, and now I knew I was
in the business of winning. My philosophy had been tested at Reading – the first time in all my years that it hadn’t worked out. I had gone away for a six-month reflective period, so
that when I arrived at Swansea, I again had great belief in my philosophy – maybe even more so than before. I was also stronger and more realistic. I had to be more clinical in my
decision-making and get to the end point much quicker than I had done before.’

Rodgers realised that he needed steel mixed in with his natural style: ‘Because of my caring background, I was always about giving people the opportunity and the chance. I have not lost
that, but I have tempered it. I was simply giving people too many chances for too long. So I went in with my personal philosophy unchanged, but then I did three things differently. First, I became
much more open in my communication. I started speaking to players like men and not boys, and I expected them to speak to me like a man. I became straightforward with them – not waiting six
months to tell them something that I know now. Secondly, I committed to provide more quality in my work. I’d study, I’d prepare, go into detail in my planning and preparation to ensure
that the players were as prepared as possible. And thirdly I would be much more ambitious: for the club’s success, for the players’ success and for my own success – in that order.
So now we have both style and steel. That is the phrase the team uses – it is true for them, and it is true for me.’ Rodgers’ shift to steel expressed itself in his one-to-one
dealings with players. He was still investing in them – indeed he took even more time to think through his messages and his interactions, linking them to his vision and his personal
preparation. But the messages were clearer, stronger and with no room for ambiguity.

Changing times: steel expressed through values

It is not uncommon for leaders to regard values as stakes in the ground – anchor points against the seemingly endless change of the environment around them. And
that’s all very well. But living out these values in the face of criticism requires a steely commitment from a football manager to his deeply held beliefs. Since joining Arsenal in 1996,
Arsène Wenger has seen huge shifts in the very foundations of football. He reflects on them from a player’s perspective, as a good leader would who understands his people. But there is
an underlying steel also to his words: ‘Let us say honestly they have gone from a very normal world to a very privileged world, today all the players are in a very privileged situation. So
how players are perceived has changed. Some people believe now that because they make a lot of money, they just have to produce. But it doesn’t work like that. No matter how much money you
make in life, you are a guy who wakes up in the morning with a pain in his neck or his knee, who feels good or not so good, and you are first a person, no matter how much money you make. At this
club – as at a number of others – we manage to keep traditional values at the foundation of all we do. These include respect for people, solidarity when people are in trouble,
supporting players’ families, keeping our word. Basically old-fashioned qualities are still respected here and maybe that is why people have fond memories of our club.’ This
understanding and these qualities are at the heart of successful one-to-one leadership.

The Graphic Equaliser

There are four challenges to great one-on-one leadership: capturing the loyalty of your people, understanding their humanity, the extent to which the environment you’re in
is one of high pressure and high visibility and the changing nature of the world around. In response to these challenges, football’s leaders must deliver a mix of empathy and steel.

1. Empathy:

2. Steel:

There are no hard-and-fast rules for what the mix is. Instead, the leader needs to see it like a graphic equaliser. With sound, the settings are adjusted to give the right
effect for the music, the venue, the audience and the occasion. With leadership, the context is defined by the organisation and its values: the business challenge (the competing needs of task, team
and individual), the person involved (does he prefer a gentle approach to feedback, or does he value head-on confrontation) and the natural style of the leader himself.

Individual managers will also have their own preferences. Leaders are unique too, and have a bias toward empathy or steel. The best ones can dial up either dimension when needed. Gérard
Houllier says of himself, ‘I think I’m tough, but I’m a loving person – and you need tough love to win. I can be extremely ruthless, but at the same time I can be extremely
generous, indulgent and patient.’ Ancelotti is high on empathy – but there is real steel. Sir Alex is high on steel – but there is real empathy. This is a case of
‘both-and’, not ‘either-or’. No leader will deliver real success without mastering the two.

THE BIG IDEA

Time spent on the field is short. How players live their lives off the field – what they believe and how they behave – shapes them as people and ultimately
determines the quality of their performance. Players of integrity build great reputations for themselves and their clubs.

Creating the environment for success is an essential component of a leader’s role. Being able to engage with people one-to-one is, of course, a part of the answer, but there is more to it
than that. Having set a vision, a leader needs to ensure his people have a fighting chance of fulfilling it. He needs to address his team’s behaviours since right behaviours will assist on
the journey where poor ones won’t. Deeper than that, he has to establish some values which will help his people become self-determining. Deeper still, he may have to address some human needs
or risk losing his people along the way.

These are important issues for leaders. Employees and even directors leave businesses when their basic needs are not being met – sometimes with serious consequences for the organisation
and those who remain. Players leave clubs when they are not playing – their need for growth and for belonging is not being met.

Great football managers meet their players at all these levels. It is a rare skill indeed.