It’s no surprise that Manchester United is my son Luke’s favorite English soccer club. He likes them because they win games and that, according to a 13-year-old, is what it’s all about. But after many years of driving Luke to participate in his own practices and games with school and community-based teams, I’ve learned that what makes for a great soccer team is really more about the coach.
Fortunately for Manchester United, they seem to have had both a winning record and a great coach, Sir Alex Ferguson, who retired recently after 26 years with the club. Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse took note of Ferguson’s management approach and developed it into eight leadership principles. They strike me as useful for Christian institutional leaders to ponder:
1. Start with the foundation - Early in his leadership, Ferguson turned his attention to players as young as 9 and established two centers of excellence for them. He knew that to build a solid club, he needed to build it from the ground up. Ferguson recognized the importance of what Leadership Education at Duke Divinity senior strategist L. Gregory Jones calls overinvesting in the young.
2. Dare to rebuild your team – Ferguson was always building and rebuilding his team, focusing on cycles of player development and evolution, moving young players in when they were ready.
3. Set high standards and hold everyone to them – “Everything we did was about maintaining the standards we had set as a football club,” says Ferguson. Every training session, motivational talk, or team preparation was about the high standard of excellence and focus that Ferguson expected in a game.
4. Never, ever cede control – Ferguson believed that in order to control 30 talented millionaires, he had to be stronger and tougher than all of them. While only a few Christian leaders have that particular problem, knowing that you are responsible when trouble hits and when tough decisions have to be made is crucial for all leaders.
5. Match the message to the moment – Despite his reputation for being tough, Ferguson always tried to encourage when he could and to give bad news only in private. “As a manager, you play different roles at different times,” he says. “Sometimes you have to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a father.”
6. Prepare to win – Ferguson’s teams regularly practiced how to play if they needed a goal “with 10, five, or three minutes remaining.” For that reason, they had the best record for winning when they were tied at the half, or down with 15 minutes to go. They had practiced winning so much that their habits matched their attitudes.
7. Rely on the power of observation – Ferguson began to delegate training to his assistant coaches, so he could step “out of the bubble” and observe a broader range of details during practices, a feature of adaptive leadership that Ron Heifetz calls being “on the balcony.” Observation became a critical key to Ferguson’s management skills. “The ability to see things is key – or, more specifically, the ability to see things you don’t expect to see,” he says.
8. Never stop adapting – Perhaps Ferguson’s most important quality for Christian leaders is his attitude toward change and his modeling of adaptive leadership. Ferguson never stopped adapting to a game that continued to change during his 26 years with Manchester. “One of the things I’ve done well over the years is manage change,” he says. “I believe you control change by accepting it.”
