Nov 16, 2020
ArticlesDan Clements of Welsh Rugby Union explains how appreciative inquiry leverages the strengths of individuals, organisations and cultures to drive and sustain change with the ultimate aim of enhanced performance.
I will take a bet that amongst some other things, at some point they nurtured you, recognised your strengths and made you feel valued. Strengths-based thinking has had a lift in modern times within sport as more and more people seek to learn and find an edge in their practice or their organisation as a whole.
The exploits of world class coaches have been extensively documented and have offered a small window into the potential of such an approach. World class leaders such as Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs, British & Irish Lions Head Coach Warren Gatland and Richmond Tigers supremo Damian Hardwick have offered an insight into the possibilities within coaching when your starting point in a relationship with a player or a group of individuals is their strengths and what they can do, not what they can’t.
Delving deeper, October’s National Rugby League Grand Final in Australia between perennial powerhouse Melbourne Storm and 2020’s highfliers the Penrith Panthers highlighted the potential for strengths-based thinking.
The modern coach is no doubt used to the pre-game interview, they are part and parcel of the territory and give the avid viewer a sneak peek into mindset and the thrill of the occasion. It was interesting to listen to master coach Craig Bellamy of the Melbourne Storm that weekend when 20 minutes prior to kick off he was asked ‘what will your final message to your team be?’. With the watching millions no doubt expecting a small insight into a rousing Churchillian speech, it was interesting to watch the multi-championship winning coach answer simply and clearly that he would remind his team of who they are representing, what they do well and what got them there.
Now just consider that for a second, what they do well and what got them there. It might only seem small, but when you consider the narrative in performance sport in the main is about negating the opposition or working out how to solve problems you start to become intrigued about the differences between a strengths-based approach or a deficit finding lens.
Strengths-based coaching or thinking is clearly not a new thing, however what this article and lifts the lid on is the subject of strengths-based change through the medium of coach learning.
It is a topic covered in even greater detail with my colleagues Kevin Morgan and Kerry Harris in our research paper titled Adopting an Appreciative Inquiry Approach to Propose Change within a National Talent Development System, which was published in September.
Performance leaders are acutely aware that coaches play a vital role in the change process within any organisation. Now this alone might jump out as an interesting point when you consider change. The old adage ‘the only constant is change’ may resonate, as time and time again leaders in any aspect of performance sport seek to find a way to enhance performance, but they must do it in a way that engages and collaborates with their people.
Appreciative inquiry leverages on the strengths of individuals, organisations and cultures to drive and sustain change with an ultimate aim of enhanced performance
Change and people development has traditionally been approached as a top down ‘leader knows best’ scenario that leads to mixed results and ironically sometimes leads to even more change. What this article investigates is the potential for strengths-based change within performance sport, through the process of appreciative inquiry. Appreciative inquiry is an unashamedly positive change process borne out of the work of David Cooperrider, who sought to seek an alternative approach to the traditional ideas of change management.
Appreciative inquiry leverages on the strengths of individuals, organisations and cultures to drive and sustain change with an ultimate aim of enhanced performance. When you consider this in relation to performance sport, it paints quite a compelling picture for organisations that are constantly looking to improve to stay ahead of their competition whilst working in a collaborative manner. Why is this any different to traditional change you may ask? Well, it has been suggested that society has many years of experience in problem solving and have gotten very good at it. On the flipside though, we have very little experience in looking for what works and finding new and innovative ways of doing more of the same.
What our recent research paper uncovers is that the power of positivity within appreciative inquiry could play an integral role in designing change interventions within sport. Working with 12 talent coaches, we sought to discover what they do well and what gives vitality to the group through a series of personal and collaborative tasks. Why do they coach, why here, and what gives them the most satisfaction as a group? This built into an investigation of strengths, what they do well, and what gives them pride.
Interestingly, by allowing them to start from a position of strength it encouraged the participants to be more open to change as well as the identification of areas for personal development. Positive thoughts and positive thinking led to critical dialogue that fostered collaboration. An important element of appreciative inquiry then asks the group to imagine a preferred ‘vision of the future’ or simply put, what would great look like for you? Asking participants to articulate and share this vision drove creativity and engagement, as the group were eager to share.
Finally, with a vision laid out the group designed a route map to get there. Leveraging their strengths, the coaches identified areas of practice that they could tangibly develop in a quest to achieve the identified goal. This process highlighted the capacity within strengths-based change for innovation and collaboration as coaches worked together to build a framework for development.
The positivity principle that lives at the core of the process is something that cannot be ignored. It led to a heightened state of collaboration amongst the coaches which is often seen as utopia in performance sport both on and off the pitch. Australian coaching legend Ric Charlesworth highlighted this in his book World’s Best when he shared that as a team ethos starts to become embedded within any culture it becomes infectious and redoubles itself when evident and drives team members on to ‘do more’. The results highlighted that the positivity within the process allowed the coaches to collaborate and uncover new ways of working, or quite simply, achieve the holy grail of ownership and buy in to the change process.
This process highlighted the capacity within strengths-based change for innovation and collaboration as coaches worked together to build a framework for development.
Now anyone that is responsible for people development or learning within their organisation would know that things are never that straightforward. Learning and specifically coach learning remains a complex endeavour as organisations seek methods that make it a meaningful and worthwhile process for the coach. Results here showed that this scenario was no different, with coaches getting lost in rhetoric and semantics within parts.
What appreciative inquiry and a strengths-based approach did show though, was that a positive lens within the process encouraged participants to ‘break through’ stumbling blocks that stalled the progression and identification of areas to concentrate efforts on. This positive lens asked the group to imagine ‘what next?’ and encouraged the design of a ‘route map’ for change.
More and more in high performing organisations we are seeking the next advantage or area of innovation. Could that answer lie internally, within our people? The final point to consider relates directly to strengths-based change, as we will all go through or lead a change process as some point within sport. Have you considered where your strengths may lie? Are you an expert who will lead from the front and struggle to capture learning or innovation? Or is there a way where we can collaborate with our people and innovate and learn along the way? Perhaps starting with a positive focus will encourage this.
Dan Clements is the Performance Coach Manager at Welsh Rugby Union.
Click here for access to Adopting an Appreciative Inquiry Approach to Propose Change within a National Talent Development System by Dan Clements, Kevin Morgan and Kerry Harris.
Apr 03, 2020
ArticlesDenise Shull of The ReThink Group explains why a systematic assessment of the convictions at play in that risk vs. reward process could be your competitive edge.
This is the view of Denise Shull, who first delves into the parallels. “At a hedge fund, chief investment officers oversee portfolio managers, who report to them on the performance of various stocks, currencies or options,” she tells the Leaders Performance Institute. “The relationship is akin to that between a head coach and their position coaches or coordinators.”
“These portfolio managers then take their assets and try to manage their relative strengths and how they fit together in much the same way as an offensive coordinator might work with his staff and the team’s offensive players.”
Shull is a Performance Coach who serves as the Principal of the ReThink Group, a New York-based human capital consultancy that leverages the neuroscience and psychoanalytical research into creating new levels of human performance.
“An NFL coach told me that the most important part of his job was picking the coaches that report to you him,” she adds.
“It’s like the process of picking stocks. Human coaches and financial instruments have characteristics and have historically behaved in a certain way. You’re predicting that they will behave in that same way when they blend into a coherent portfolio of strengths and weaknesses with the other people or stocks that you picked. If they are successful, then their success is your cumulative success.”
However, there tends to be a fundamental difference in the decision-making process as she sees it and therein lies the lesson for sport. “Someone who works for a hedge fund is always thinking: ‘what’s the risk of this choice versus the possible reward?’,” says Shull. “I don’t think too many head coaches are doing that when it comes to hiring their staff but I think it is something they could adopt. It’s an offsetting of strengths but maybe more importantly of weaknesses. Portfolio managers look at individual risk/reward and portfolio-level risk reward. “In sport, we tend to think positive. The assumption tends to be that everything will work out well. They don’t necessarily think about what the real risks are. They just focus on the reward. Or if they do think about the risk then they seldom talk about it.”
“The bias in sport is towards optimism whereas in a hedge fund, for the most part, the bias is towards pessimism; ‘this is the best decision we can make but let’s assume this is not going to work out’.
Confidence in your analysis
“Human beings,” continues Shull, “always make decisions based on their feelings of confidence. They think it’s their data but it’s actually the feelings about the data. How much belief and confidence do you have in the data and its implications? That’s why confidence is something you can analyze and work with in an intentional way. You can deconstruct for example the emotion of trust or the comfort in hiring a known person and ensure the hire is happening for the best risk/reward ratio.”
She explains that hedge fund managers use conviction, an intense form of confidence, as their cornerstone. “Conviction, at the end of the day, is an emotion. It’s a bodily experience with a physical sensation that gives meaning to a set of circumstances. You do all your work, you make all your predictions, you think about what the risk is, but you believe that your prediction of the future is most accurate.
“Conviction is the central piece of what they do and I spend a lot of time coaching them back to their convictions. The environment is fluid, things don’t turn out like you think they would turn out, just like in sports. The best place to make a decision from is not to react to the fact that everything is going wrong but to step back and ask what do we believe and how did we get here and what do we still believe, how have our beliefs changed? What do we have conviction in?
“If you make a reactionary decision it won’t necessarily work out that well. You react and have to react again. You ask yourself why didn’t I stick with my conviction? That’s a worse place, psychologically, to be in than making the wrong bet in the first place. You’ve got to find something that is your rock, that is your cornerstone, something that gives you a better platform from which to make a decision.
“It sounds easy in sport because there’s good and bad players and wins and losses; but the results in any given moment don’t tell the whole story and it’s the same in the hedge fund world.”
The difference is that the hedge fund world is very systematic in establishing its conviction. “In sport, I don’t think there’s much awareness that you can work with conviction – or confidence – as an entity. That you can come to understand your own patterns and you can become more adept at recognizing your intuition – your visceral intelligence – what’s a valid gut feeling and what’s impulsive? You can gain skills in understanding the data in your feelings – if you decide to.”
This is where she believes sport is missing out. “You can be structured and analytical in what you believe, how much confidence you have, and what happens when you start to lose confidence.”
Shull, who has done research with coaches in the NFL, says that football practitioners might have an opportunity in adapting the kind of risk-reward culture found at hedge funds and other professional portfolio managers. “It’s taught in finance and is ingrained in the culture but people at hedge funds have no influence over their ‘players’; they have to sit back and wait for their stocks. In that sense, the coach has an influence that’s prevented them thinking in risk-reward terms; they can change the risk-reward parameters in a way that the hedge fund manager can’t.”
Shull cites an example of how this plays out at a hedge fund. “I bring a matrix to my clients where we develop a spectrum of confidence that’s specific to that organization. “It’s a 1-7 scale of confidence. Level 1 might be panicked or terrified and level 7 is some form of over-confidence. We take them through exercises where, as an organization, they think about levels 2-6 are, what words describe levels 2-6, then they always use that in their conversations.”
Then they have experience talking about their fears in an organizationally acceptable way. This is huge in macho-oriented cultures. It also makes it easier to say “I was a 5 and am a 2!!!” on that scale” instead of saying “I’m terrified!” After working together to develop a scale, they have a structured way of thinking about their own psychology.”
Where does a manager or coach ideally want to be on this scale of confidence? “I think level 5 is an optimal or safe place to be – you’re confident but there is still some doubt. We will have taken them through the typical fears like fear of missing out, if they don’t buy that stock right now, and then there’s also personal fears about reputation or future careers. We’ll build this organized way to understand and communicate about their level of confidence.”
Emotions as a competitive edge
Shull explains that such an approach is transferable to the world of sport, although the Leaders Performance Institute points out the probable resistance she would encounter when exploring emotions.
Her response is ready: “That makes it a competitive edge – that’s the irony. If they have the courage to change their feelings about that. For all the searching for the infinitesimal edges that goes on in sport; all the money, resources, investment, for the tiniest edges. Here’s one that’s huge.”
Sport, as she points out, is learning to use psychologists to safeguard and maintain its athletes and staff’s mental health and wellbeing but feels that an improved understanding of emotions can take the mental aspect further. “Coaches don’t realize that they can work with their gut feeling or their confidence – or their lack thereof – in an organized and systematic way. Sport psychologists tend to take a cognitive approach to feelings also but the more you try to ignore emotions the more they’re going to come out in another, usually less productive, way.
“Everyone has to have confidence to make their risk decisions and confidence is an emotion. You can use it as an edge, to ground you, and make better decisions.
“What’s going to happen on the field next week is unknown, so if you have a grounding in what you believe and why you believe it gives you something that doesn’t change; it gives you something you can rely on; it gives you a more stable place to work from once you have honored the feeling as a source of information.
“Put simply, when hiring a coaching staff and players, there can be benefit to thinking in risk-reward terms. There’s an idea in the hedge fund world that if you manage the risk then the rewards take care of themselves.”
What is it going to take to win in 2020?
That is the focus of our latest Performance Special Report. Download The High Performance Manual: Winning in 2020, which features sports organisations as diverse as Red Bull, the Brisbane Lions and the Royal Military Academy discussing the pertinent topics across Leadership & Culture, Coaching & Development, Human Performance and Data & Innovation.
Five pearls of Wisdom from Google’s Head of Creative Capability Development.
While they may or may not share your intimate knowledge of the sport, it could be your experience, your technical expertise, that hinders your attempts to solve a performance problem.
That is the view of Kirk Vallis, Google’s Global Head of Creative Capability Development, and he shared it with the audience while speaking at the 2019 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.
Vallis, who was granted the freedom to choose his own job title, was at Twickenham Stadium to discuss the tech giant’s approach to disruption and creativity.
Far from being a wishy-washy concept, he explained that the World Economic Forum as listed ‘creativity’ as the third-most in-demand skill by 2020 (behind critical thinking and problem-solving). Creativity sat at No10 five years earlier and at No20 two years before that.
“Creativity is an underrated skill,” he suggests. “And creativity is just creating more options – with more options you can make better decisions.”
That is where your people can come in, as you are likely to already have the requisite expertise in the building. “We’re not lacking in knowledge or technology in the world,” declares Wired Founder Kevin Kelly from a presentation slide Vallis projects onto the screen, “we’re lacking the imagination for what to do with it!”
Vallis adds: “Those organisations that are most successful are those who use that expertise to do things a bit differently to everybody else – how do you outthink the pack by thinking differently?”
Here are five steps to help harness the talent in your building and, consequently, the creativity of your people.
1. Don’t be a slave to your success
While no one is questioning your knowledge, might your performance department suggest another way to think about a performance question? “We are slaves to our success,” says Vallis. “Our brilliance prevents us looking at things in a different way.” He proffers that it is about mindset, not skillset. “Technical expertise is overvalued – especially at the expense of being able to think differently.”
2. Create a positive relationship between success and failure
Vallis hits the audience with a stark fact: only one in four people feel they can be creative at work. “That’s a worry, especially for those of you who are leaders,” he tells the room. “Where are you sign-posting, role modelling, ‘big picture, little deeds’; where is it you’re giving people the ability to think differently or to fail? Where does failure live? I asked England rugby Head Coach Eddie Jones a couple of years ago and he said ‘Mondays’. ‘Mondays we’ll fail. We’ll try new stuff on Mondays – I don’t want to fail on a Friday when we’re trying to wriggle around execution – but on Mondays we fail loads.’” This is perfect: “Test the premise of your ideas, not the execution – do it fast and do it cheaply.”
3. Explore related worlds
In making this point about related worlds Vallis is speaking to the Leaders Performance Institute and our efforts to connect the great and the good of world sport. “Every challenge we face has been faced before in a different context,” he explains. His three-step process is 1) define the essence of your challenge 2) Explore a different world with the same issue and ‘steal with pride’ 3) Use as a stimulus for new ideas. “Value your loose connections.”
4. Break the rules
The instructions could not be simpler here: 1) List the roles or conventions 2) Choose one and break it 3) Use that as a stimulus for finding the best ideas.
5. Find expansive options for reductive decision-making
A greater variety of creative options is great – Vallis is staking his reputation on that very notion – but a decision must still be made. “Expansive options are good but not if nothing gets done,” he says. “We need to be reductive, analyse, judge and make decisions. How do we know we’ve got the best idea? You never will but you will gain confidence from the number of options considered.”
What is it going to take to win in 2020?
That is the focus of our latest Performance Special Report. Download The High Performance Manual: Winning in 2020, which features sports organisations as diverse as Red Bull, the Brisbane Lions and the Royal Military Academy discussing the pertinent topics across Leadership & Culture, Coaching & Development, Human Performance and Data & Innovation.
The former Arsenal and Monaco manager on developing talent, science and data, leadership and the demands of the modern sporting landscape.
The Leaders Performance Institute has asked the former Manager of English Premier League side Arsenal about his management style. Many observers have drawn their own conclusions during the Frenchman’s three-decade coaching career but he has seldom been asked himself.
This is clearly a state of affairs that suits the man but, with his customary graciousness, Wenger delivers a candid response: “I am a person who is highly motivated but is also always unsatisfied; a bit of a perfectionist. That means I am an unhappy person who suffers a lot every day. A manager has an easy life when his team wins and has a nightmare when his team doesn’t win.” The wry smile that accompanies his reply, a trait familiar to many who have enjoyed the pleasure of Wenger’s company, befits a man who has experienced triumph and defeat across more than 1,700 matches as a manager in French, Japanese and English football. It also hints at his drive, determination and even his need to return to the dugout as soon as possible. Even as he faces more suffering he seeks the next challenge, and so Wenger, who left Arsenal in May, is poised to find fresh work, with a litany of potential suitors waiting in the wings.
All will be seeking to tap into the wisdom and intelligence of a genteel character, dubbed ‘Le Professeur’ for his calm and cerebral approach to management. In press conferences he will field all questions about the game and is equally at ease discussing current affairs, philosophy and fiscal policy – he read politics and economics at the University of Strasbourg’s Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences while still playing in the French lower leagues. Wenger also had an influential role in the design and construction of Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, which opened in 2006. If this sets Wenger apart from most of his counterparts, his 22 years at the helm of Arsenal are unlikely to be superseded in the modern era. When Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013 after 26 years at Manchester United, Wenger was described as football’s last ‘legacy manager’; a throwback to a bygone age. With Ferguson gone, Wenger’s tenure exceeded the other 19 Premier League coaches’ combined for those next five years; the average managerial tenure remains closer to 18 months in England.
Success helped to explain his staying power – there were three Premier League titles and seven FA Cups accrued during that time – but it was also the fluid attacking style of his best teams, playing a brand of football that wowed Arsenal fans and rivals alike, and his consistent ability to help young players reach their potential. Beyond France and Japan, it was a much more insular time for the English game, when the tabloid press led the enquiries of ‘Arsène who?’ and even the players Wenger inherited got in on the act. Memorably, Arsenal’s right-back at the time, Lee Dixon, soon to be a Wenger convert, commented that the bespectacled manager looked like a geography teacher, i.e. as far removed from the traditional image of the manager as could be. Most English onlookers were oblivious to his achievements, particularly those with AS Monaco, but were made to take notice as Wenger’s novel approach to nutrition, sports science and scouting helped to deliver a Premier League and FA Cup double in his first full season at Arsenal.
That was then, and now, during Wenger’s career hiatus, the Leaders Performance Institute presents his reflections – gleaned from three separate interviews in the past three years, including most recently at November’s Leaders P8 Summit in London – on a sport that has evolved around him. “I started to manage a football team at the top level at the age of 33 [AS Nancy in 1984]; then it was just me and the players,” he recalls. “Today, you have at least ten members of staff and you can’t do everything alone.”
The demands placed on young players today
The game evolved but so has Wenger. Another aspect of his longevity is what he calls the ‘stamina’ of his motivation. It is a point he has touched upon several times with the Leaders Performance Institute. He asks: “We are all motivated by different things but how big is our motivation to maintain a high level? We can produce ten out of ten on a Monday; can we do it again on Tuesday? Can we do it in six months? The stamina of motivation is a very overrated quality for all people who are successful in life. For me, and I might be wrong, in any job the first quality is the high level of stamina in motivation.” Wenger can see the motivation in himself, and says the modern manager has any number of psychological analysis tools at his disposal when assessing players, but the ‘little details in real life’ remain the most significant in his eyes. “I’ll always have an interview with the player and the parents; and the mother tells me more about the boy than any psychological analyses. When you have talented boy and I ask him: ‘When you’re on holiday do you play football?’ If he says ‘no, not so much’ I think to myself, my friend, you’ll never be a top level football player. But the mother complains he’s always out there with the ball after school, comes home too late, you think, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ So these kind of details in everyday life are very important.”
Every major sport has become a world sport and selection is worldwide. When I grew up, you need to be best player in your area. Today, if you want to go to a big club, you need to be one of the best players in the world. I think that demands a special personality.
When Wenger talks about young players his tone remains positive, even as he cites the unique challenges presented by the elite European football landscape: the sport has never been more visible and accessible, with players routinely scrutinised across all forms of media in a manner that exceeds their predecessors. As well as the increasing physical demands, Wenger argues that it requires different personality traits too. “Maybe the demands on the personality are much higher today because the players are under so much stress and scrutiny,” he observes. “They cannot hide anywhere and everyone has an opinion about every player. The modern player must be resistant to that stress and be capable of dealing with the demands.” He continues: “Every major sport has become a world sport and selection is worldwide. When I grew up, you need to be best player in your area. Today, if you want to go to a big club, you need to be one of the best players in the world. I think that demands a special personality.” Wenger has broadly identified three types of personality within modern players: the perfectionist, the competitor, and those who seek approval. He runs us through each in turn, starting with the perfectionist – the character he sees most obviously reflected in himself: “This is the easiest to deal with for a manager – the guy who has to battle with himself. That means he has an interior demand to be as good as he can be. He’s an unsatisfied person who doesn’t care what you think about him. He has an idea of the game and wants to be as close as possible to perfection. This is the champion, the real champion. This is the guy who gives an interview 20 years later and still remembers that he should have headed a cross rather than volleying it. This is the ideal champion.”
Next is the competitor, which is a tougher proposition for the manager. “This is the guy who goes into the dressing room and says in a subconscious language, ‘My friends, I am better than all of you.’ It is the guy who needs to be better than others, everywhere he goes and in everything that he does. Once he’s the best and acknowledged as the best he can lose motivation, although the perfectionist never does.” These players differ from those who seek approval from their peers. “These people walk into the dressing room and want to be acknowledged that they are people of quality. They look for recognition from their teammates and want them to say, ‘Yes, we know you are a good player.’ They retain their motivation because the perceptions of others fluctuate.” How does Wenger decide which type of personality he is dealing with in each case? “Watching a player is the best revelation of character. We can hide our true intentions and I can be very polite and educated but when I go out onto the pitch and it matters to me I become who I really am.” He believes that personality is tied to position on the field. “We are made up of those who love to win and those who hate to lose, but there is a dominance in all of us. Those that hate to lose are more defenders, those that love to win tend to be creative. We’ve seen normal players who, when you put them in the right position, they become top players.” Examples in Wenger’s career are manifold: turning Emmanuel Petit, whom he worked with at Monaco and then signed for Arsenal, from a left-back into a dominant midfielder; he worked a similar trick with Thierry Henry, who Wenger, as Monaco Manager, debuted as a left winger – a position Henry maintained for the best part of the next five years – before the duo reunited at Arsenal. There Wenger indulged his earlier instinct to play Henry as a forward and he became one of the world’s deadliest marksmen. Also at Arsenal, but moving in the opposite direction, were Lauren and Kolo Touré, who were moved back from midfield to defensive roles with profound results. Wenger says: “There’s no better detector of personality than to watch a player who says, ‘Let me show you that I can win’ with his actions and you look how he plays. He becomes who he really is and not what he has learnt to be.”
“You do not see many smiles”
Our chat about personality types lends itself nicely to an exploration of player motivations at a time when, according to Wenger, the responsibility for performance increasingly falls on the club. “This is because of the quantity of investment,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute. “Football is so important these days and when a player doesn’t perform, the club has to answer ‘why?’ and therefore has to do more for the player.” That is not to say players are absolved of responsibility, if anything, their burden is greater than ever. “We can help people who want to be successful, a guy who has the right level of motivation,” says Wenger. “But even when a guy has the right level of motivation he can be handicapped by other things. More than ever, young players today are under high pressure from their families, their agents and their environment; the pressure is very high. I personally feel that in the academies, when a boy signs today at 16 years of age, he has to be successful; and something has been taken away because he comes home every day and his father asks ‘did you practise well? Were you good? What did the coach say?’ When I was 16 football was the reward for coming out of school but, for these kids, football is what school was before. It is the job. At 16 the pressure is there already and they do not feel the same happiness – you do not see many smiles.”
One of the problems is the inefficiency of the academy system in European football – the attrition rates would shame any other business sector and this problem is not unique to football. “In every academy perhaps 1% of people will play in the Premier League,” says Wenger, adding, “when we have 1% we are happy. This also means we produce unemployed people in big quantities at an early age and I think we have to rethink the whole process and redress the balance.” Wenger fears early specialisation and his time at Arsenal the club went to lengths to ensure a more rounded education and development programme for their undergraduates. “It is not better that this boy has a normal life but still gets the requisite hours of training?” he asks. “[Arsenal have] an agreement with the school, for example, and the player is in touch with those who play basketball, hockey or rugby; and he’s in touch with people who have a normal life.
I think the game is about winning, of course, but it’s also about something deeper; that shared vision of the game. [It’s about] the values the game brings to people, the emotions you can share at the top level. When the game is played, respect can be bigger than anything else.
The father figure
In April 2018, when Wenger announced his imminent departure from Arsenal, Cesc Fàbregas, who played for the Frenchman between 2003 and 2011, took to Instagram to praise his former coach. He wrote: “He had faith in me from day one and I owe him a lot, he was like a father figure to me who always pushed me to be the best. Arsène, you deserve all the respect and happiness in the world. #classact.” Fàbregas is not a lone voice in labelling Wenger a father figure and the man’s approach to leadership goes someway to explaining why. “I have an influence on the immediate result of the team but I also have a fantastic opportunity to influence people’s lives,” Wenger tells the Leaders Performance Institute. “When you think that a guy can come from nowhere, with a good attitude, and you help him to become somebody; I think it’s one of the proudest moments for any human being to help people become somebody.”
Wenger has long been known as one of the finest developers of talent in Europe. Liberian forward George Weah came to Europe on Wenger’s watch, and would go on to become Africa’s first Ballon d’Or winner [he now serves as President of his nation], while the Frenchman also gave career debuts to Lillian Thuram, David Trezeguet and the aforementioned Henry, all of whom went on to win the Fifa World Cup and Uefa European Championships with France. This record continued at Arsenal. A 21-year-old Patrick Vieira came to north London on Wenger’s recommendation in September 1996, just weeks before his compatriot joined as Manager. After a season treading water at AC Milan in Italy, Vieira was set on the path to greatness and shared in France’s success at the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Championships. Henry also reunited with Wenger in 1999, after his own short spell in Italy at Juventus, and he would go on to become Arsenal’s record goalscorer. Wenger also gave a career debut to Ashley Cole, the finest English left-back of his generation.
Wenger put this process eloquently in his native French during a 2015 interview with L’Équipe. “I am only a guide,” he began, adding: “I enable others to express what they have within them. I didn’t create anything. I am a facilitator of what is beautiful in man. I define myself as an optimist. My never-ending struggle in this business is to release what is beautiful in man. I can be described as naïve in that sense, but it allows me to believe; and I am often proven right.” Not always, as Wenger freely admits, but he tells the Leaders Performance Institute there is something greater at play. He says: “I think the game is about winning, of course, but it’s also about something deeper; that shared vision of the game. [It’s about] the values the game brings to people, the emotions you can share at the top level. When the game is played, respect can be bigger than anything else.” This serves to create those lasting bonds with his players. “I could meet a player 20 years later and we can still be on the same wavelength because we have a memory of something we shared together that was both sincere and of high quality. Daily training also has to be built on the pleasure of sharing the collective game.” In further comments that resonate given his recent departure from Arsenal, Wenger adds: “You also have the responsibility to make sure the clubs grows so that when you leave you can say, ‘Look, I’ve made a little way with this club. Today it’s much stronger than when I arrived.’”
Knowing when a young player is ready to play
For such results in developing talent and for his former charges to speak so highly of him, Wenger has gone to great lengths to earn their trust. In part this is due to the emphasis he places on co-creating values with his teams. “We are a group of people who create the culture,” he explains. “Before the start of the season we sit together and my coaching staff and I will ask the players ‘What do you think is important in the way we live together?’ and we then put that on paper. The values we think are important, which will include respect, communication, being on time, proper behaviour on the football pitch; we take those, put them together, and we create our own culture. Then it allows me to say: ‘Look guys, that’s us; that’s our identity’. If you don’t behave properly then I can say: ‘Look, you decided that. That’s not right; we’re not behaving like we decided to.” Wenger will hold players accountable but he won’t overburden them. “I must first show that I trust him, and one of the ways of doing that is not to talk too much and to just hand him the shirt on the Friday before the game. Then I must be brave enough to walk out there in front of 60,000 people and say: ‘Yes guys, I believe in this person and he’ll be strong enough to play.’” Picking a player when they are ready is the ultimate demonstration of trust. “Sometimes, more than any speech, if I say to a player: ‘I believe you’re a great player’ and he replies: ‘Yes, but why don’t you play me?’ The simplest way to give trust and confidence to somebody is to select them for big games.” How can he be certain that a young player is ready? “When he plays in training and the other players give them the ball.”
The loneliness of the decision-maker
The Leaders Performance Institute often asks general managers, coaches and team managers what their biggest mistakes were and invariably their response is rooted in the ego of their youth and inexperience. As Wenger tells us, he is no different in this regard: “When you’re 20 years old you think you possess all the necessary qualities to succeed in life but I’m in a position today where my ego doesn’t interfere; my pride doesn’t interfere in communication any more. Experience helps you to understand what is important and get rid of all the rubbish. That means I can tell a player his haircut is not so important when it comes to being a great football player and then I can give him what he really misses in his game; what will be important for him to have the chance to be successful. We have the tools and the experience to tell him what will be important.” That includes sports science, even if Wenger feels that the modern head coach can feel ‘invaded’ at times by reams and reams of data. “Every morning at Arsenal we’d have a staff meeting where you have medical people, mental people, fitness people and you prepare the day as everyone expresses an opinion; but it’s always the same. At the end of the day, you have to make a decision. The manager is the decision-maker.”
This is why the right staff are so important. “Science and data can bring more knowledge and precision about how to perform,” he adds. “As well I believe that the last word is the quality of the observation, the instinct, to knowing people individually and, therefore, I believe that artificial intelligence is an important tool. The modern manager has to pragmatically select the four or five most important datasets that can help produce success on the pitch.” For now, Wenger doesn’t know his next move but there will certainly be a move in 2019. “Life is moving, competition is moving, so don’t stand still. You always have to question yourself; what is the next step? Where do I go from here? Success can encourage you to stand still; you think it worked so you continue to do that. That is the best way to get lost.”
Something tells us that Wenger will find his way.
