by Carson, Mike
Arriving at a Manchester City starved of success, Mancini the natural commander simply said: this situation needs turning around. I know what to do here. If we do it, we will succeed. If we don’t, we will fail. In the end the margin to win the title could barely have been smaller. But Mancini’s strong leadership delivered success and, although he has since moved on, his fans are now legion. Or, as he would put it, there are many people in his car.
The Gift
While the delivery of results in top-flight football is an almost unique challenge, there are interesting lessons for a wider leadership audience. Football’s leaders, like business leaders, would agree that the underpinning dimensions of the task are the skills and mindsets in the team. Then there is a six-stage flow from preparation to fall-out that enables repeated success.
1. Preparation:
By focusing relentlessly, day in day out, on the basics of the work, the leader does away with any need for pre-match hype. In a healthy organisation, teams encounter major hurdles with a mindset of ‘all in a day’s work’.
2. Training:
By dry-running scenarios, football leaders foster team spirit, character and a winning mindset – as well as honing skills.
3. Team selection:
Choosing the right people for the task is of critical importance. It must be done objectively, protected from the distractions of personal bias, preference and allegiance. For the leader, it involves knowing your own mind, having a clear rationale and communicating your choices.
4. Half-time:
Most great football leaders use the mid-point check-in first to listen, then to speak. There is no formula for this: in the heat of the battle, they choose carefully how to inspire.
5. Tactical change:
In the heat of the moment, great leaders can think clearly enough to make tactical changes – standing down one team member, introducing another, switching roles, and refining responsibilities. Preconceptions are dangerous. The game belongs to the leader who is bold enough to respond to reality.
6. Fallout:
How the leader deals with the immediate aftermath of the big moment will contribute significantly to his organisation’s chances of ongoing success. He must put the result into context, and with a cool head choose how much emotion to show, how much significance to attribute to events that may seem disproportionately good or bad and how and where to deal one-to-one with his people.
Above all of these, though, is an understanding of the problem. Does the challenge require management, leadership or command? There is something inspirational about Mancini. He is a commander in turnaround, a leader with conviction. He is a man who does not seek the approval of others, yet is genuinely concerned with the feelings of the players he has to leave out of the team. He is also a serial winner.
Success inspires – people follow winning leaders. Mancini knows full well that the more he wins, the easier it becomes to lead. But he also knows he has been given a gift: ‘To be a top player means you have been given a gift. I had a gift from my Father. Then after, I need to work hard.’ The world’s most successful leaders all have gifts that set them apart from their peers – gifts of ability, strength, insight or just plain circumstance. The leader who recognises this adds to his qualities humility – and that is inspirational indeed.
CHAPTER SIX
HANDLING OUTRAGEOUS TALENT
THE BIG IDEA
Genius is a mystery. Why could Mozart compose at the age of five? Why could Albert Einstein see beyond the scientific horizon of his day? The debate may continue forever around what we are born with, what we are born into and what we are taught, but there is no doubt that in every possible field there is truly exceptional talent.
Leaders at the top of their game will meet genius. Market forces left unhindered will ensure that the best talent rises to the top. When we do meet it, it is thrilling, captivating – and almost always unpredictable.
Genius brings challenge. People – especially young people – endowed with huge ability need careful, thoughtful and strong leadership if they are to realise their potential without negatively affecting themselves and others. Perhaps nowhere is this played out more visibly than in the world of top-flight football.
THE MANAGER
José Mourinho can reasonably lay claim to being one of the best coaches in world football. The jury of his peers would agree: both Pep Guardiola and Diego Maradona have gone on record as naming him the world’s best coach, while Arrigo Sacchi of Italy has called him ‘phenomenal’.
Famously nicknamed ‘The Special One’, Mourinho came to English public attention as the architect of Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea, moving to Stamford Bridge in 2004 following Primeira Liga and Champions League success with Porto. With Chelsea he won the Barclays Premier League in his first two seasons and the FA Cup in his third, but Champions League success eluded him and he moved in 2008 to Internazionale in Milan. There he won his second Champions League title during his second season, sweeping all before him to achieve the outstanding treble of domestic league, domestic cup and European league. In 2010 he moved once more – to Real Madrid, where he won the Copa del Rey in his first season and La Liga in his second. This title success was record-breaking in that Real Madrid reached 100 points, scoring 121 goals in the process. June 2013 saw him return for a second spell in charge at Chelsea.
Mourinho has arguably encountered, encouraged and managed more varied and outrageous football talent than any other coach. He strides across the landscape of modern football in its new, global era, recruiting the best and motivating them to deliver on their excellent potential, and has led the greatest footballing talents in the world.
His Philosophy
Mourinho is convinced that great leadership is founded first on great knowledge. He is flattered by the suggestion that if you can lead at the top of professional football, you can lead anywhere – but does not necessarily believe it. ‘I think one of the most important qualities in someone that leads is that the ones that you lead recognise in you a big knowledge of the situation. So you have to know a lot about the area you are working in. I’m not saying that if you know a lot about football you can automatically be a leader in football. I am saying if you don’t know a lot about football you cannot lead. That’s the main point for me.’ Hot on the heels of knowledge though comes a profound understanding of people. ‘I have to say we are speaking about men. We are speaking about human beings and human sciences. So is football a sports science? I think it is probably a human science and not a sports science.’
The Challenges
Confronted with the undoubted challenges of managing outrageous talent, Mourinho simply counts his blessings: ‘The toughest thing is when you don’t have that talent! I have never had a problem with working with that special talent, never, I never had that. I never understood when people say that is a problem, or you can have a special talent but not two or three or four. I want 11 special talents! Maybe I was lucky, maybe I wasn’t, but it was never a problem.’
Mourinho has a point. Why would anyone not want to have a genius in their organisation? And yet questions can arise: is this person just too much trouble? Is he good value for effort expended? Or will managing him take too much of my focus, to the detriment of the rest of the team? Of course, Mourinho is used to leading a team full of star talent – and that provides a different landscape and subtly different challenges from the case where someone is head and shoulders above their peers. Nonetheless, he has mastered the art – and, like many other football leaders, has achieved great results with world-class talent. For sure, Mourinho has been amazingly successful in this regard – perhaps a sign of his own genius. But what does he actually do that is so successful?
Like all leaders of supreme talent, he must address – consciously or unconsciously – at least five challenges.
Imbalance in the relationship
For a leader working with true genius, a sense of imbalance can easily creep in. As Rangers manager, Wal
ter Smith brought the stunning talent of Paul Gascoigne to Ibrox. He took to heart a comment in a newspaper column made by Scottish comedian Billy Connolly after a high-profile Paul Gascoigne transgression: ‘You have to live with the genius, the genius doesn’t have to live with you.’
Add to that imbalance the risk of player arrogance. Where does self-belief end and the unpalatable begin? Cristiano Ronaldo scores a breakthrough goal for Portugal at the 2012 European Championships, runs away and stands apart, beckoning his teammates to come and pay him homage. Play acting or divisive? A leader needs to deal with any such imbalance in order to manage his team’s talent successfully on and off the field.
Capacity to damage others
If genius is not handled with extreme care, resentment and divisions can quickly appear. From Milan to Chelsea, Carlo Ancelotti is no stranger to the challenge of working with genius: ‘The behaviour of these players is very important for the team. You find a talent who is unselfish and motivated for the team. This is the key, and that’s very difficult to find – a talent who is unselfish. You have to use the relationship to give him the possibility to understand that the talent is important for the team and not for him – but this is very difficult. Rarely I have found players with talent who are unselfish. It is deep in their personality I think.’ Can he name one? ‘Kaka.’
Capacity to damage themselves
Genius is so often brittle. The notion of a ‘flawed genius’ is an all-too-common one. Stories from the artistic genius of Vincent van Gogh to the musical genius of Amy Winehouse show us that the flaw can have the direst consequences. Whether from the pressure to perform, from the intense scrutiny, or from too close an identification of the man with his talent, people of extreme talent appear to have increased capacity to damage themselves.
Living up to expectations
People pay to see genius, and are thrilled when it expresses itself. From a Rooney derby-winning bicycle kick through to the beautiful passing football of Xavi and Iniesta, genius seizes the imagination. One of the great tasks of a leader is how to provide the ideal climate for that genius to flourish. Too much expectation, and the genius can crumble. Too little expectation, and under-performance creeps in.
Maintaining stability
Every leader will recognise the value of stability. When Michael Boyd took over as artistic director of the world-famous theatre group the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2002, he observed that the growth of individual stardom and of a hire-and-fire culture had begun to erode the group’s foundations. Recalling his time with a Moscow company where a single artistic director had held a post for 20 years, he noticed how there was a ‘tremendous sense of shared language and a depth of human interchange’ between the actors. So what is the right message to supreme talent: dispensable or indispensable? Neither seems quite right: keeping genius happy and maintaining stability is not a trivial challenge.
What Imbalance?
The Mourinho approach to the imbalance question is typically robust. One senses there is no question of his feeling less talented or somehow awed by genius. Logically, why would a man of his track record and ability have a problem striking a healthy, balanced relationship with talented footballers? And nor does he see himself as in any way superior. They are professionals together: his role is to lead; theirs to play.
His skill at handling genius became apparent during his first spell at Chelsea, where he struck up a series of friendships that anchored an array of world-class talent. He arrived at Stamford Bridge aged only 41: a comparatively small age difference from his players. ‘In terms of mentality, I’m not much older than them – I think I have the ability to put myself at their level. I think it is important to understand. The more you understand them the more you can lead them – there is leadership and leadership, as you know. I never liked the leadership where the boys say, “He’s my leader, I have to respect him.” I prefer them to say, “I respect him and he’s my leader.” It is a completely different thing. They can say, “I do that because he tells me to do that and I have to.” I prefer them to say, “I believe in him so much, and trust him so much that everything he says I want to do!” I prefer much more this kind of empathy.’
It is a commonly held belief in many cultures that friendship precludes effective leadership. But closeness to the players has always been a defining characteristic for Mourinho. ‘Of course, many people say we can’t be friends with the players. I say exactly the opposite. If you are not friends with the players you do not reach the maximum potential of that group. You have to be friends with them, but they have to understand that between friends the answer is never the answer they are expecting, or the answer they want to hear. They have to understand that, but I think you have to be friends. I don’t understand some people that are afraid to be friends with them.’
The friendship approach involves regarding the players as peer colleagues – people who do a job every bit as important as yours. Mourinho gives an example of a symbolic action that betrays very clearly the value a manager really attaches to his players: ‘A story from the past. I think there are two ways of travelling with the players in a plane: you travel having a business class where everybody goes in business class, or if there is no space for everybody then the players go in business class and you go in economy class with your staff. If I go in business it’s because they go. If there is no space for everybody else, I go behind them. Some time ago a coach arrived in a club and they travelled to pre-season and the first thing they did was to travel executive for the manager and the staff with the players in economy. I was thinking, “Bad start” – and I was not wrong. One of the things you must remember as a leader is your people are more important than you.’
There is a compelling humility about a leader who serves his people – and inspiration when he does it with confidence, unconcerned by any imbalance.
Walter Smith and Paul Gascoigne
Walter Smith believes in doing his homework: ‘When you sit down and you say, “I’m going for a player”, the pluses and minuses are there and you have to understand the balance before you make a decision. It’s up to the manager to reduce the unexpected as much as possible.’
At Rangers, Smith chose Gazza – chose to bring him back after a time in the wilderness. ‘He’d been at Lazio for a few years and hadn’t played for maybe two and a half or even three years, mainly through injury. So it was a matter of taking a chance with him, knowing that it was going to be a managerial challenge to try and get him back to his best. Because he was a player who you knew if you were able to manage the genius, to handle it, and get the best out of him, then he would be good for your team. And the fans would love him, because genius stirs most people.
‘I spoke first and foremost to Sir Bobby Robson and Terry Venables who had had him before and both were quite straightforward. They said, “If you can get him on your side then you’ll have no problem getting him to play. You have to try and keep him on the straight and narrow all the time.” This was not the first time I’d had such a challenge in my career, and their advice was right. I believe he felt I was supporting him and sticking up for him when necessary – and he would always play for me.’
Smith was excited by Gascoigne because of his sheer talent: ‘A lot of players that are exceptional learn about football as their careers go on. Paul Gascoigne was still the same player at the end of his career as he was at the start. He was instinctive, he had a genius that allowed him to go on to the field and assess the situation and do things that other players couldn’t do.’
Both Mourinho and Smith take material steps toward their talented charges. When they do so, imbalance – real or imagined – disappears and is replaced by commitment and understanding.
Uniting, Not Damaging
If the leader gets it right, the team can flourish around a huge individual talent. Mourinho again takes a very simple approach: ‘The first objective is for the team to succeed. For this to happen, the team must recognise that the special talent is cruc
ial. Also, the special talent must understand two things: one is that the team is more important than himself, and two is that he needs the team. For him to flourish, the team need to flourish too. I think that is very important – but for me that was very automatic. It was not something that I had to work exhaustively on, absolutely not.’
Mourinho at Inter
When Mourinho arrived at Inter from Chelsea, he inherited a fascinating situation that could have spiralled downwards. ‘First of all there is the culture of the country, the culture of the football of that country, and after that is the profile of the people you are working with. When I arrived at Inter I had I think 14 players who were more than 32 years old. I had a team with 75 per cent of the guys in the last years of their careers, and with a history of frustration in European competition. This wasn’t just about not winning the Champions League – it was also not even playing quarter-finals or semi-finals – it was a story of last 16 and out. At the same time I had a team that was dominant in Italian football, so a team that had three or four consecutive titles in Italian football, but nothing outside.
‘My job was to try and create a team that was able to win the Champions League, but they had to understand that to make a team strong enough to win the Champions League (and that is 13 matches in a season), you have to be very strong in the other 47 matches. So the best way to motivate a team to win the Champions League was to keep winning domestic competitions. If we allow ourselves to be afraid of the Champions League because we are not the best team, and if we focus too much on the Champions League, then we don’t win it. And we also don’t win the Italian cup, and we also don’t win the Italian championship. And instead of the job becoming something extraordinary it becomes worse than they had before. So I had to go with the players in just one direction: improvement. And when you are speaking about players near the end of their careers it is very difficult for them to improve individually. So we have just to focus on the team improvement and let’s go and see where we can finish.’
