The Myth of the Myth of Leadership (2): Leadership Lessons from Liverpool versus Borussia Dortmund, Europa Cup 2016.
Part 2: Shit Happens. True Leaders fail properly, recover strongly.
"Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker.
Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary
detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we
can avoid only by saying nothing, doing
nothing and being nothing."
-Denis Waitley
Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary
detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we
can avoid only by saying nothing, doing
nothing and being nothing."
-Denis Waitley
Thomas
Tuchel. Never met him. Heard of him.
He became unmissable. When he
said, “Shit happens…” after an uncommon failure. It was a Thursday
night.
April 14, 2016. At Anfield. The home ground of Liverpool Football
Club.
It was the night after the night, Golden State
Warriors ended season with record 73 wins, nudging the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls
off the perch. The Bulls, nuclear powered by a certain Michael Jordan held the
winningest record for 20 years. On the same night, the late Kobe Bryant scored
60 for his final game, inspiring the Lakers’ win over the Utah Jazz 101-96.
On the same night of Tuchel’s torment, Hillary
was slugging it out with Bernie in New York City. Their last debate.
Tuchel
was the manager of Borussia Dortmund, or BVB, vying for the German
League title. They were at Bayern Munich’s heels.
Munich’s goalkeeper, Manuel Neuer reckoned that
BVB was a top five team in world football (soccer for the
Americans.) Jurgen Klopp, Tuchel’s predecessor at BVB, and the man who
orchestrated the shit
agreed.
Klopp is still the manager for Liverpool
Football Club. Tuchel has since left to helm Paris Saint Germaine. The team is leading
the French Ligue 1. Klopp seems to be a sensible guy. Apt at hiding the ego.
Anyway, it was sweet shit. Sweet, sweet shit. For both sides of the divide.
This is not meant as a smart ass remark. It was good for the chest beating
Reds. It was even better for the down trodden Yellow and Black. No shit… oops, sorry.
Liverpool were battling BVB for a place in the
semi-finals of the UEFA Europa League. These games are decided over two legs,
home and away. Liverpool
came home from Germany with a 1-1 draw. An away goal was useful but 1-1 is a leaves no margin for error in their home
match at Anfield. The comfort
was the familiar home ground and the pressure
cooker energy of home fans.
Many
football elites had said, Anfield is the toughest place to play. The Reds’ high
octave loyalty seemed intimidating.
If BVB had been confident, it was deserving.
BVB needed to score one and ‘park the bus.’ And, BVB was one of the five top
teams in the world. They had players to die for. Like Hummel, Reus, Aubameyang
and Mkhitaryan.
Tuchel was not a Mourinho. He did not want to
win’ parking the bus.’ “I don’t care too much about the result in the first
leg. I don’t think it will be decisive,” said the Dortmund boss in a pre-match
interview. He continued, “We are here to attack, we are here to score goals, to
take risks and to enjoy the game. We are not here to feel our boundaries. We
are here to feel our potential.
We are clear we will have to play our best and
we feel ready for it. We don’t want to score one, we want to score two or even
more. I am proud to be the coach in this situation.” Street fighter words from a cultured leader.
Lucidly sharing the vision. A
leadership position expressed clearly.
Key leadership traits shone through from this
short statement of intent, a shared vision (WE are here to attack…score two or
even more goals),empowerment (WE are here to feel our potential…play our
best…ready for it) accountability (I don’t care too much about the result of
the first leg…) and team spirit, pride of association (I am proud to be the
coach in this situation.) This was not from a speech writer. This did not feel
canned. This was from the ‘leadership heart.’
You know Warren Bennis, a giant in the leadership
circuit, said in 1985 that it is a myth that leaders must be born as. Leaders
can be made, he asserted. Yes and no. If it is a position, many skills of a
leader can be developed. Communications. Strategic Planning process. Business
analysis. Organizational development. Every act of leadership can be made. But
not the leadership heart.
A pro speech writer delivers a tool for
stirring a following. Given by an excellently made leader, followers carry out
the plan of the leader. Delivered by a natural leader, followers carry out as
leaders of the plan. The sense of ownership for specific parts the plan is
different from if everyone feel they own the plan with specific roles and
responsibilities.
It is a myth that leaders can be made, fully.
Good enough depends on who is judging.
We are mistaking managers for leaders and leaders for managers. Managers
can be trained. They dictate execution to plan. Doing things right.
Leaders should have business management skills.
They are different. Imbued in them, from development by the environment and
their experiences, are traits that cannot be planted by an external force in a
short period of time. They have to be, as the neuro scientists say, wired in.
You can train a person in using ‘humble words’ and in acting humbly. It will
take an equal amount of time as his age to make him humble. Take integrity. You
can train a person to act according to norm and conventions, when people are
watching. It is doing the right things, when no one is watching that defines
the leader.
Let’s get back to our VIP seats. The football
game between Liverpool and BVB.
Leadership Lessons from Shit Happens
“We want to score two or even more.” That was
precisely what BVB did. They hit Liverpool with two within 9 minutes. Tuchel
clearly had a good plan. He knew the potential of his attackers. And, the
flimsiness of the Liverpool defense. They did attack Liverpool ferociously.
After the ninth minute goal, Liverpool, the bleeding Reds, were left for dead.
It would be a monumental task to overturn such a deficit with a team like
Dortmund.
As a manager, Tuchel would have done a S.W.O.T.
(strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threat) type analysis or a ‘premortem.’
He would have defined the strategy, assigned the roles and responsibilities.
For BVB players to deliver that first half
result, it would take more than understanding. If BVB then, was a top 5 team in
the world Liverpool had to be at least on par. Their players were well polished
professionals too.
At the PC playing the FIFA game is different. In the arena,
you will face well drilled opponents who make split second decisions to turn
you, left or right. You must own the plan. You lead yourself. You must also
lead your opponent. To fall for your plan. Split second. Skills trained. Spirit
developed. Leadership is skills powered by the spirit.
What’s next?
It seemed that at
half time Klopp summoned the spirits. He reminded his players of Istanbul. The 2005 Champions League final. Liverpool
trailed AC Milan 0-3 at half time, pipped them to the cup. The victorious
Liverpool were not the same players then. Klopp was strengthening their pride
of association with the iconic club. He was empowering. “You are as good as the
winners of 2005. You can do it. I trust you.”
That was inspiring. A game changer.
Klopp also reached out to the human spirit. He
urged
his players to write a triumphant story for their
grandchildren.
You can’t read this from a piece of paper. It
would be mockery. If it had been prepared at all, the message had to be
delivered from the leadership heart. It had to move the most dispirited.
For that Liverpool team, after the thrashing,
to deliver a creditable performance would be a positive for Klopp’s leadership
style. For them to do what they did required self-leadership of the player.
True. For a team to do well, leadership should
not be exclusive to the person at the top of the pyramid. Everybody leads at
their level of the turf. Yet it is critical that there must be an overall
leader, influencing, gelling every effort. Looking at the full spectrum. Making
tough decisions. Balancing cost to performance.
Lower levels are leaders. Of their
responsibility and lookout for colleagues. They must deliver for the team to
deliver. However, there must be a lighthouse for everybody and a full span
course controller. Otherwise, it could be chaotic.
Yes, leadership is not exclusive at the top.
Everyone is a leader, just the angle of the span is different. For the millennial, in a team, it is hard to envisage a “you lead, I follow”
mentality.
So what happened next?
Tuchel had a plan to kill off Liverpool quickly. It was worked in the first half. The
only thingy his team was overwhelmed with, “How do you deal with a
resurrection?” How do you face whom you left for dead?
Apparently, Tuchel’s initial reaction was,
“there are no words to describe this.” In the second half, within 30 minutes,
Liverpool drew level at 3-3.
This was how it played out.
Liverpool’s Divock Origi scored at 48th.
BVB’s Reus regained the margin at 57th. The midfield wizard,
Phillipe Coutinho, narrowed the gap with a goal at the 66th minute.
Then, defender Sakho, who had not scored in almost two years, turned one in
with his head. This was the 78th minute. 3-3!
It was visible that Dortmund players were
shaken Liverpool’s fight back. They lost their composure. Facing of the risen
dead.
The final goal was telling. Even when striker Sturridge
was fumbling, the BVB defender could not regain the ball. Instead, the defense,
uncharacteristically left a gap for Liverpool skipper, James
Milner to dash in for the Sturridge pass.
Milner’s cross connected
with defender Lovren’s head for a rare goal. One that destined Dejan Lovren to
fame with Liverpool players and fans for generations.
One that killed Dortmund’s Europa cup dream.
Tuchel and his team knew how
to recover. And they came back stronger. Six days after the Anfield catastrophe,
BVB went on to beat Hertha Berlin and Hamburg. Both with a 3-0 margin.
This was true leadership.
Every leader wants to win with the team every time. Not every leader can win
every time. Especially in sports. With a winner, there must be a loser. The
dilemma of the true leader is infecting the team with the ‘virus.’ The
leadership virus. Moderate the loss. Learn the lessons. Get up and get going.
For the bigger vision. A single failure is not fatal. Let’s go again. The
results after Liverpool showed that Tuchel found a way to empower his team to
win again. No team can win feeling powerless.
Huge, small, minute. You
definitely have experienced failures. Or setbacks, if you will. It is unreal, expecting
happiness despite difficult circumstances. But, even if you are experiencing a
setback, you have the power to choose. The power is present whether you are
hungry, sick or mint. This is super power that leaders are ever mindful of. You
need not recognize failure as the undertaker. Look at failure as our teacher
instead. Leaders teach what they know. Leaders learn what they don’t know. Then
they teach. To build leaders and stronger leaders in themselves. A key benefit
to teaching is raising your power to influence. A high value leader is not
about forcing nor driving, but influencing. A certain charisma would help. A
leader who is uncharismatic would have a harder time influencing and sustaining
the esprit de corp.
One of the keys to a life of
joy and happiness is not to expect that you will not experience unhappiness.
Always on happiness is unreal. In fact, a famous psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar
thinks that it’s psychopathic to expect happiness every moment. One of the
distinctions which separate people who lead (lead as in self leadership) a
happy life and those who cannot, is not if they bounce back from a setback, it
is when they bounce back. Leadership is moderating a failure, extracting the
lessons and building excitement for the next challenge.
Like Tuchel, you and the
best leaders of the world must realize that shit happens. Tuchel and BVB have
proven that you can lead back stronger, even after a major fail. You can almost
smell the scent of strong leadership at BVB, regaining success after a
blistering setback in a matter of days. What are the leadership lessons you can
learn from a failure to bounce back BVB speed?
Acknowledge
the failure. To recover from failures, you have to
acknowledge the failing. Failure is not fatal, denial is. To avail to any kind
of recuperative therapy, you have to admit the addiction, whether it is drugs
or alcohol. However, it is critical that you label it correctly. It is just an
event or an experience. It’s already happened. It has passed. It’s over. Don’t
let your brain tell you otherwise. The chatterbox that harms you most with good
intention is your brain. Drs. Jeffrey Schwartz and Rebecca Gladding, in their
book, ‘You are not your brain,’ teach you how to beat deceptive self- messaging
in four steps. Leaders know not to play the zero sum game.
Do
not give it more clout than it really has. It’s important to
keep calm. Like Tuchel. The Mirror wrote, “Plenty of managers would have been
furious in the post-match interview, but Tuchel remained calm despite their
shocking result.” Tuchel was not plenty of managers. Tuchel led by example. If
he had gone haywire, it would have sown fear and uncertainty. The true worth of
a leader is exposed during time of crisis. He is a symbol of steadfastness,
gloriously leading the team through the storm. You can have a team of leaders
at all levels, you need a leader of leaders at the top.
Keeping
calm allows you to see what it really is. An event. A result which
is below expectation. Deal with it. Case closed. Move on to the next challenge.
After victory at Hertha Berlin, Marcus Reus of BVB confirmed that the loss to
Liverpool was news read, when he said, “I don’t think Liverpool was in our
heads, really.” The Liverpool loss had been dealt with. Three days after Hertha
Berlin, Hamburg was on the receiving end of a 3-0 victory. BVB rebounded.
Liverpool was just another event in another week.
Tuchel and the players at
BVB empowered themselves from the loss at Anfield by accepting the result.
Leaders are able to separate the performance from the person. The performance
was below expectation, they were not. BVB would not have won so soon if the
manager and players had not believed in themselves.
Be
accountable. Tuchel and BVB dealt with the loss
resolutely. A congratulations tweet was sent to Liverpool FC. They accepted
accountability. Not a wriggly word about the refereeing, home advantage,
rowdiness or the weather. Owning up is about leadership and integrity. Rather,
Tuchel’s view was, they have lost like champions. As the leader of leaders,
Tuchel found a unique take on the event to empower his team.
At the Reds, Liverpool
players took accountability for their poor showing in the first half by turning
the table on BVB. Klopp proved as leader of leaders, rallying the upturn
despite the difficult circumstance. He demonstrated empathy, a quality to be
developed than learn or made, when he was able to press the hot button for his
team. “Do it for the grandchildren,” he coaxed.
Drs. Robert Brooks and Sam
Goldstein, in “The Power of Resilience” on dealing effectively with mistakes:
“Resilient people tend to
view mistakes as experiences for learning and growth. This does not mean they
are overjoyed with mistakes, but rather they are not easily discouraged,
instead looking for opportunities that might be a by-product of setbacks.”
Leaders are resilient
people. Tuchel, in his pre-match tee up talked about attacking and taking
risks. In the loss, he found opportunity for learning empowerment. “It’s the
small details that count, the cross-field passes, the passes into the gaps,”
Tuchel noted. He continued, “We were missing the confidence and the presence to
calm the game down after they pulled back to 3-2 and to perform against our
opponent. At certain point they (Liverpool) were completely driven by
emotion.”
Can leaders be made? Some parts of them. The true leadership
heart or spirit can be developed through time.
A long time. Environment and the experiences play a part. You would have
to pick a child, like they do in Tibet and develop him or her over time. Are
leaders exclusive at the top of the hierarchy? It depends on the span and
impact. Rightly, everyone should lead in their own sphere of influence and area
of responsibility. However, every team needs a leader of leaders. If everybody
is a leader, on equal responsibility and authority, then, nobody is a leader.
The myths about leadership. It depends on who you model
as a leader. What type of leadership are we looking at? Leadership by appointment?
Leadership as a job? Elected leaders? Embraced leaders? If Buddha is a leader,
was he trained in leadership? How about Jesus? Is Trump a leader to emulate?
After all, he leads the most advanced nation in the world in many fields? Is Xi
a model leader. He is head of the most populous nation. Are Ardern and Tsai
great modern leaders? They have proven most effective with the pandemic.
Who is an effective modern day leader? In a post on the
Hindustani Times, “Coronavirus is a stress test many world leaders are failing,”
the author writes;
“In
the age-old debate over whether leaders matter in deciding history, the answer
from the first few months of 2020 is a resounding “yes they do,” says Francois
Heisbourg, a former official in the French foreign and defense ministries who
now advises the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.
He
makes a comparison between leadership styles and outcomes;
“The
contrast between Johnson’s early counter-virus efforts and those of Germany,
led by trained chemist and Chancellor Angela Merkel, is stark. The virus was
discovered in both countries at the end of January, but by early March – a time
when Johnson was still making a show of shaking hands in crowds - Germany was
declaring a protective equipment emergency and was developing tests for mass
production. The number of Covid-19 deaths per million inhabitants is now four
times as high in the U.K. as in Germany.”
Surely,
he will not ignore Trump, “Not so Trump. Across the Atlantic, the crisis
supercharged the president’s tendency to dismiss science, politicize the most
technical of issues and institutions, and eschew international cooperation. He
also muddied any consistent federal role or messaging by imposing himself in
some areas while disclaiming responsibility in others, and by diverting
attention to other issues with as many as 126 tweets in a day.” The US is
leading the world in the number of infections and the number of deaths. It
sounds like Trump is proud of the number. He wears the numbers as a ‘badge of
honor.’
Leaders. Leadership. What are the myths? It depends on who is talking. Who you are
talking about? At the end of it, we will still come back to the first question,
“What is Leadership?” We all know some answers. The practice may be different.
It’s like comparing magicians. If you do not know anything about magic,
everything is…well, magical. If you know magic, then you’ll start looking at
the styles.