Day one set the bar high and we looked to carry that energy and momentum into day two. We began with a deep dive into the performing arts, looking at talent development at the Royal Ballet School and Royal College of Music before exploring the theme of diversity, equality and inclusion with Brentford FC and British department store Selfridges. We then checked in with performance coach Owen Eastwood before turning our attention to extreme adventurer Adrian Hayes in the afternoon. Aspetar then had the honour of bringing down the curtain with a fascinating look at rehabilitation and recovery.
A big thank you from the Leaders Performance Institute team and our main partners Keiser, Abu Dhabi Sports Council and Aspetar, for joining us for two days of total high performance.
For those of you who couldn’t make it – or those wishing you refresh your memories – here are the key takeaways from day two.
Full Day 2 programme:
Talent Factories: How the Performing Arts Develops & Nurtures World Class Talent
Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness
Diverse & Inclusive Leadership: Exploring How Diverse Workplaces Positively Influence Organisational Performance
Lessons from Extreme Adventuring: Adaptability & Resilience in Adversity
Rehabilitation & Recovery: The Latest Thinking to Support your Performance Strategy
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.
