The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders

by Carson, Mike

  McCarthy rejects the description of his being unflappable, but agrees he’s ‘fairly stable’. ‘I stood 3-0 down against Blackburn, last game of the season in 2011 and everybody was going mental. [Wolves needed to reduce the deficit to two goals in order to avoid relegation to the Championship.] I said we’ll get a goal; we’ll score. I’ve got to believe it. If I stop believing I don’t think anybody else will believe. As long as the referee hasn’t blown his whistle, we have got a chance. I said something will happen, either we’ll get a goal or Spurs will score – we are staying up. They were looking at me as if to say he’s off his head! We scored with three minutes to go. I thought there was about 15 minutes to go. Does that make me unflappable? Does it show I have belief? Bloody-mindedness? I don’t know, but I always think we can win, always, no matter who we are playing against.’ McCarthy’s dogged optimism is his way of banishing the fear of failure.

  Wherever it comes from, fear rocks the boat. Leaders must be unafraid to name their fear, put it into context; they must show self-belief and acknowledge that the outcome could be very positive. This approach calms the waters and opens a new perspective.

  Take a Step Back

  Before they can establish or regain long-term balance, leaders in any changing environment first need to understand what’s going on. They need a picture of the battle. In Richard Attenborough’s 1977 epic war film about the battle at Arnhem, A Bridge Too Far, there is a pivotal scene where four senior allied officers are standing on the balcony of their impromptu headquarters, looking out over the battle. Watching that scene, there is a palpable sense of relief after the fog of the battle: at least the leaders have a picture of what’s happening! Leadership expert Ron Heifetz from the Kennedy School of Government has written extensively on a concept that he calls ‘Adaptive Leadership’, in which he describes a set of principles that leaders in a fluid environment can use to navigate the territory. A fluid environment is one that requires constant reassessment and reworking – and professional football is such an environment. One principle Heifetz proposes is the Balcony and the Dance.

  Daily work can often feel like a dance – constantly on the go, surrounded by people, occupying one small part of a larger stage. Taking a step back is like looking down on that dance from the balcony – you suddenly have the perspective and the time to see the wider picture without the pressure to be constantly involved. A good leader needs to see things from within the dance at the same time as from the balcony. The ‘dancing’ is essential for a leader if he is to keep connection with his people and a sense of reality. It is an act of leadership to take time to experience first-hand the work you are asking your people to do. And the ‘balcony’ is the perspective he needs if he is to recognise patterns and make short- and long-term decisions. The trick is to do both at once.

  Howard Wilkinson believes the balcony enables a leader to stay in the game full time, working from his passion without it becoming an unhealthy obsession. ‘You’ve got to keep your eye on the ball and over the horizon, all the time. Some [aspiring] leaders haven’t got it, they haven’t got the intellectual ability to deal with these complexities – they are one-dimensional. Then you get the others who try to do it part time. There’s nothing wrong with picking your kids up from school, taking time for the family and so on. But in this game, you have to have a deep passion and commitment.’ And what was Wilkinson’s own balance when he was at the top of his game? ‘I don’t think it was unhealthy. My wife might say different, but then in this country it’s very difficult to get off the treadmill averaging two games a week. I have to say, my staff helped me to maintain my perspective.’

  And the principle runs a level deeper. The great leaders know how to get on to their own balconies. In other words, they know how to look at themselves, observe how they are reacting or behaving, and make the necessary changes – in the long term, but also in the moment. It’s the hardest thing to do. The players who can do it can avoid red cards. The managers who can do it command a whole new level of respect and authority.

  Walter Smith was in a tough place when he lost his job at Rangers in 1998, despite his sustained success. He now recognises he did not take enough of a step back and use the time out effectively. ‘When I got the sack at Rangers, it was the first time in my life I had been unemployed and it was a strange feeling. I’m a boy from a working-class area of Glasgow so a work ethic was always instilled in me and there was an element of guilt that I wasn’t working. So I spent the close season in a kind of void, wondering how I was going to get out – where would I get offered a job? I accepted the job at Everton, but in many ways, reflecting on it, it was a decision that I made in a little bit of haste. Everton on their own are a fantastic club, they’re a proper football club, they’ve got a fantastic support base – but the timing was wrong.’

  Everton was a tough job for Smith, who nonetheless acquitted himself well. But he learned from experience, and when he left the club three years later, he got his perspective back. ‘I remembered how I had jumped too quickly the previous time, and said to myself, “Well OK, I’ll make sure that when I do come back, if I do get the opportunity to come back, I’m more careful this time.” Taking a step back served Smith well. He took his time, spent a period with Sir Alex at Old Trafford where together they won the FA Cup in 2004, and then took over at Scotland – a move he would never regret.

  Take the Broader View

  Once perspective returns, then so can balance. But just as fear is a very personal thing, so is the recipe for achieving balance. All the great football leaders seem to have a mechanism for restoring balance – but these mechanisms can be quite varied.

  ‘Football! It’s the most important of all the small things in life.’ Carlo Ancelotti

  In some ways, that says it all. The Italian manager comes back time and again to this wonderful balancing perspective. Redknapp takes a similar view: ‘I look at my life and I think, “I’m so lucky. I should stop feeling sorry for myself because tomorrow I will go up to Victoria School and see all these little kiddies in wheelchairs ...” I see so many people that get dealt such a bad hand. I mean, what are we feeling sorry for ourselves about? We’ve lost a game of football! I need to stop feeling sorry for myself. When Bill Shankly passionately said that football was more important than life or death he could not have been more wrong.’

  Remember your goals

  While longer-term goals can help leaders handle pressure, they can also help restore balance. Hope Powell’s bigger goal is to make a real impact on and for the women’s game: ‘When you look at where women’s football is placed, when you compare men and women’s football, we are the second-class citizens. One of my responsibilities is to promote the game and raise its profile in the long term. At some level, everybody involved in women’s football has that responsibility. The game will always be here, we hope, so it isn’t about me or any one player. It’s a bigger picture and that’s really important to me.’

  This objective helps her maintain perspective. Is she obsessed with football? ‘Not even close. I’m not obsessed with the game. I’m obsessed when I’m in it and I’m working and I’ve got a job to do. But the minute I get in my house it’s forgotten.’ Nor do her goals need to be that specific to have a balancing effect. ‘I know that we want to be the leading nation in women’s football. What that looks like, how long it takes ... I just know that so long as we are making progress daily, so long as we can compete against the best and win sometimes, and develop the players coming through, I feel like we are getting one step closer.’

  Where this long-term goal helps specifically is in banishing any fear of getting things wrong. ‘I believe I am quite a good decision-maker – perhaps for that reason. I don’t have a problem making decisions. My mentor said to me, “At the time you make the decision just remember that it’s the right decision. It’s OK then to change your mind and make a different decision.” So I’m quite happy to say, “Right, we are going to do this,” hoping that it will be
OK – and if it isn’t, I’m happy to change it and say, “Well, actually that didn’t work – we are going to do this instead.” For example, I might be on the field in practice and I’m coaching and I have this session drawn out. I’m putting on a session, and it doesn’t actually work. So then I’ll tell the players right, off we go, off the pitch – I’m not happy with that and I’ll have a minute and I’ll re-jig it and I’ll do it again. Some leaders are afraid to admit that something actually doesn’t work and change it.’

  Attitude of gratitude

  One of the most important contributors to balance is thankfulness. This practice is incredibly regenerative. Redknapp puts it like this: ‘I have a good life; I am very lucky when I look at where we have come from and where we are now. We have been married 44 years, we’ve had a great marriage, we’ve got seven grandkids. I mean, life is fantastic really – we have been very lucky. I’ve been very lucky to have done the job that I’ve done and be involved in something I love. It’s just been amazing really.’

  Glenn Hoddle found that gratitude was the key to maintaining a healthy perspective as England manager. ‘When I was in the England job, my word there was a lot of pressure. It felt as if the whole country was on my shoulders. For four or five weeks I probably had more pressure than the prime minister – because even he was putting pressure on me to win! You can imagine what it was like. We took the players and their wives to the West End to go to a show to build team spirit in the weeks before we went to France, and the word got out. For about a mile before the theatre the whole of the streets were full! And it hit me just sitting in the bus with my wife: wow, these people – it was as if we’d won the World Cup already. The weight that I felt was enormous – and we were just going to the theatre! I learned then that if I could approach pressure with real gratitude, the pressure would actually shift before my eyes. It’s an amazing thing, and I wish I’d known it when I was 20. But if you can take a real pressurised situation and be grateful for this pressure – suddenly you diffuse it, it disappears. I felt like I wanted to go and start the game right then, not go to the theatre – and that’s how I wanted the players to feel. And the key is, I have to do it from within myself genuinely. It’s quite easy if things are going well to be thankful, but when there are real burdens and pressure and you are unsure, that’s the key moment. And I find if you can attack it from a different angle with that same emotion, you dismantle the pressure. If you don’t the pressure builds up, and can quickly take you to your terror zone.’

  Sir Alex is thankful when he looks back to his childhood: ‘I always look at my background and how I was brought up and I was lucky with my upbringing in Glasgow. I don’t think it’s hard because you never think it’s hard, but thinking back to my days there sustains me. There was nothing there. It was the end of the war. It was a different world. There were families with 17 kids and stuff and you just wonder how they survived. And there was rationing, of course. I can still remember that: you are brought up in an environment and an upbringing like that you can refer to all the time, that’s your reference point.’

  It’s not surprising that the act of setting football into a broader context restores perspective for its leaders. What is notable is how the great leaders do this systematically, and how effective it is.

  Take Time for Renewal

  Finally, there is the hugely important task of finding a place of renewal. Renewal is the critical need for a leader to pause, refresh and grow – to lay in for long-term, sustained performance. Again, where that place is varies considerably from person to person.

  Writing time

  Walter Smith is now committed to it: ‘It’s important for anybody in management to set aside a bit of time if you have a problem, whatever that problem is. It’s sometimes easier if it’s a footballing one. I can sit down on my own, watch, make up my own mind, look back on a game, look back on something. I always set aside a period in a week and I would always scribble down different notes during the week and then set aside a period where I sat down and went through them and made sure that I wasn’t missing anything – just to make my own personal assessment of what was going on. Sometimes for me it would be the office, but sometimes when you’re involved all the time, people keep knocking at the door, disrupting the train of thought. A lot of the time it would be at home in the evening. I’d just take an hour to sit down and say right, that’s it, try and clear everything away – and plot a course of action.’

  Brendan Rodgers also enjoys what he calls ‘thinking in ink’. ‘I write a lot, and I’m always thinking and I have little blocks of time to write. Reflection is important to me; it allows me to move on quicker. It’s really the lever that helps me. I wouldn’t over-analyse a big event, but I would think first, make little references to moments, use them as referrals and plant them into my story.’

  Routines

  Whatever form they take, having regular relaxation and renewal routines is an excellent route to balance. Neil Warnock had a sacred match-day wind-down routine during his time at Sheffield United: ‘When we got a good result at Bramall Lane the old guy, Derek, used to fill the bath and bring me a cup of tea as a way of warming down. I would lie in that bath thinking about when I was a kid running around with my dad, and how happy I was when we won and thinking about all of those thousands of people that I made happy. You can’t put a price on that. I’d go home and put my pyjamas on and be in bed by 7 o’clock, and everyone would be asking if we were going out! But my wife knows me – she knows how tired I get after a game, mentally and emotionally tired, absolutely drained by 7 p.m. – so the first job when I got in would be to go upstairs and get into my pyjamas.’

  Family and friends

  Putting family first may sound obvious, but it can be very hard to do. Warnock has learned this lesson the hard way: ‘I used to travel up the motorway, I used to do 18-hour days, I couldn’t let anybody else watch a player. It wasn’t a shock when my first marriage broke down. Now my marriage and the kids are everything – I have a completely different perspective. I have to employ good people and I have to trust them and I have to have my breathers and I have to have my rest. I’m not a manager that comes in at 7 a.m. and leaves at 7 p.m. like some managers do. I like reading the papers at home and making a few calls ... I very rarely come in before 10 a.m. I have days when I’m in till 10 p.m., but they are few and far between. I have been picking my son up from school the last few years at 4 p.m. One chairman said before he hired me, “I’ve heard your wife lives in Cornwall. I’d like to put in your contract that you have to be at the training ground at least five days a week.” I said, “We’ve got no reason to talk any more then because you’ve got the wrong manager.”’

  Time out

  When the season is in full swing, Redknapp says he finds this one almost impossible – but admires his colleagues who can do it. ‘I remember meeting Ron Atkinson when he was Sheffield Wednesday manager. West Ham were playing on the Sunday and Ron came to do the TV coverage. The day before they had been leading at Old Trafford in injury time, and Manchester United got two goals right at the end. It was a game when Fergie jumped on the pitch [to celebrate]. Big Ron came into my office on the Sunday before the game, and I said, “I bet you had a good night last night, Ron,” thinking he must have been feeling horrendous. He said, “Yes, we got the karaoke on and got a Chinese takeaway. A few of the lads came round, we had a great night!” And I was thinking, “I wish I could do that.” I couldn’t do that – I’d be in such a state. I wish I could do what Ron did, switch off, go home and get on with it, but I’ve never been able to do that.’

  Mick McCarthy refreshes by ‘being normal’: ‘I catch the tube, I go up into London, I jump in a cab, I chat to everybody. I tend to think I’m a normal bloke with an extraordinary job and a career behind me. Not many have got that. I go to the pub and have a pint and if someone comes and talks to me I just generally try and be me, just try and be normal. I play golf, I cycle, I try and keep myself fit. I’ve got a grea
t family – I’ve been married for 32 years to Fiona – and we’ve got three great kids. We’re a great family unit too, which helps. I’ve got great friends; I’ve got a real fabulous back-up. Fiona will say it’s the support system that we have, it’s lovely.’

  Time in

  However, there is some measure of renewal even within the game. Howard Wilkinson remembers a day when Redknapp travelled home from a Spurs match, watched the highlights on Match of the Day, flew out the next morning to Palma, watched Real Mallorca, flew home in the evening and got back in time for Match of the Day 2! Redknapp admits that has renewal value for him: ‘I love watching football – I have always been a great sports fan all round. My father was a fanatical sports fan – loved his football, good football, non-league football – he lived for football and boxing and all sports – loved his cricket, and I’ve been the same really. I loved the Olympics; I watched the cricket last week ... I really relax. But football is my main passion. It’s great for me.’ Many speak about needing time away from work. For Redknapp, the passion is so intense that he finds rest even within it. Some may consider this dangerous, but for some leaders such as Redknapp it is clearly helpful.

  The Thankful Leader

  Leaders battle with stress and fear, and football’s leaders are no exception. Success is no antidote – it is too short-lived. What is needed is perspective – the ability to step back and see the bigger picture as well as the detail. The lessons from football’s leaders are clear.

  1. Arrest the fear:

  Leaders don’t often admit to having fears, but pretty much everyone has them. When fear surfaces, strong leaders can see it for what it is and take action to arrest it. Helpful techniques are to ask what’s the worst that can happen and what’s the best.