The England football team has done rather better at this World Cup than most people expected. The teamâs manager, Gareth Southgate, is credited with being the catalyst that enabled what he calls âthe collectiveâ to exceed expectations. Iâm sure there are many things that he has done that we arenât privy too but there are a few things Iâve recognised that will have made a difference and from which managers and leaders in all organisations can learn.
Southgate had two key challenges. Firstly, he needed to develop a team that could perform well. He also needed to manage his stakeholders. His stakeholder group is an extremely broad church. It includes the English football establishment, the players and managers, but critically it also includes the media and most of the English public who had become disconnected and even dismissive of the England football team.
Building Trust
What he did first is to get people to trust him. This wasnât easy. Southgate was not the first choice for the job. For many he simply was not qualified. Too young, too inexperienced, too âniceâ. His employers did not give him much of a vote of confidence, the FA offered him a little over half the salary of his predecessor. He also seemed to question his own qualifications for the job, which he didnât immediately accept.
Southgate though demonstrated the facets that lead to trust. First of these is to be authentic. His ordinariness seems to have worked well in his favour. People donât see him as putting on an act. He is very like some one you might know. He is likable and, as sales trainers will tell you, people buy from people they feel are like them.
The second quality that Southgate showed is empathy. The ability to not only listen but to show that you identify with the other person. In interviews he looked like he was listening carefully, actively. He showed a respect for the other person, what I sometimes call, âspecial attentionâ. He will no doubt have taken those listening skills onto the training ground and into the dressing room and, added to his credibility as an ex-England player, his players would have easily bonded with him. In the games he seemed to have a real and emotional connection with his players.
The final element he showed is rationality. We will be pre-disposed to trust people who are authentic and able to empathise. However, unless they show responses to situations that we perceive to be rational, we wonât fully trust them. In other words, you might be able to talk the talk but can you âwalk the walkâ. Southgate put forward a way of playing that brought results which demonstrated to many that not only was he a âgood blokeâ but he was also technically sound.
Developing a High Performing Team
Building trust was a key component to his stakeholder management strategy, as it is with any stakeholder management strategy. Developing a high performing team was his other key challenge though. The work he did around building trust between himself and the stakeholders also included the team itself but there were though other signs of the approach he was taking to building the high performing team ethos.
The basics were there. When asked how he had got the team working so well he said that âeveryone knows their jobâ and âthey all know what we are trying to do (in other words, the teamâs method)â. What Southgate also indicated though was that he had established something that has been recognised in a number of studies, the importance of âpsychological safetyâ. This means an environment where all the members feel they can makes mistakes, say what they want to say and still be supported by other members of the team.
Making mistakes is critical to learning and so critical to developing into a high performing team. This sounds simple but, in most teams, it doesnât happen. Studies show that typically our team environments, not just sport but within organisations too, are more likely to foster cultures donât support learning and development. Amy Edmondson, a Harvard professor suggested that too often people feel unable to ask questions, to admit to mistakes, to offer ideas or to critique the status quo. Chris Waddle, an ex-England footballer recounted how he prepared some thoughts about a different way of playing and presented them to his manager in his office. The manager listened, and simply said, âNo. Now get out.â! Such a culture is not confined only to football in my experience.
Creating the right culture for the team to learn and to develop is hugely important. When operating under the spotlight, where the pressure is so intense, it is vital for the coach to ensure that the teamâs energy and motivation is maintained at a high level. Everyone in the team must think positively. It looked to me that Southgate carefully chose players that would contribute positive thinking and energy to the group.
This echoes something I remember Sir Clive Woodward embracing when he coached England to the Rugby Union World Cup in 2003. He noticed that some players in the group radiated energy with their focus, or their enthusiasm or by just being upbeat all the time. He also noticed some in the group drained energy from the team. Early on in his time with England he made some important decisions about who to pick but he made perhaps some even more important decisions about who to leave out â and that sometimes included some highly skilled players.
OK, so Gareth Southgate didnât win the tournament. What he has done though is, in a relatively short space of time, change the culture of the England football team set up. He has built trust between himself and his stakeholders and he has done the groundwork in building not just a team but a culture. A culture that will help this team and we hope future teams to learn, to grow and even perhapsâŠbring football home!