Why I really enjoyed reading “Leading” by Sir Alex Ferguson

Sir Alex Ferguson was a legendary manager who managed East Stirlingshire, St Mirren, Aberdeen, Scotland, and Manchester United. He’s considered one of the best football managers of all times, if not the best of all of them.

In 2015, together with Michael Moritz, he published his inspiring book “Leading” which, from my point of view, shows not only what a unique manager and character he was, but also allows us to learn from his experience on the pitch.

I would like to share with you what I take from reading this book. I personally take the knowledge that he shares in his book into my own career. It has really influenced me.
It’s not a book summary, it is fresh distilled knowledge taken right from this brilliant book.

Appetite for youthful enthusiasm

Over the years as a Manchester United manager, he involved many talented youngsters that became great football players over the years (Paul Scholes, Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, and much more). You could see right on the pitch how he just loved to produce and develop young lads.

In his book, he writes “As the years have gone by, I have found that my appetite for, and appreciation of youthful enthusiasm has only grown. Young people will always manage to achieve the impossible — whether that is on the football field or inside a company or other big organization. If I were running a company, I would always want to listen to the thoughts of its most talented youngsters, because they are the people most in touch with the realities of today and the prospects of tomorrow”.

Later in the book, he writes — “The full impact of our youth programme became apparent at the start of the 1995–96 season, when six of the 13 players I used during the game against Aston Villa — which we lost — had come through our system. Alan Hansen, the television pundit, surveyed the result and concluded, as he announced to the British public that night ‘You can’t win anything with kids.’ I have always thought the opposite — you will never win anything without kids.

Youngsters can inject a fantastic spirit into an organization and a youngster never forgets the person or organization that gave him his first big chance. He will repay it with a loyalty that lasts a lifetime. For young players, nothing is impossible, and they will try and run through a barbed-wire fence, while older players will try to find the gate”.

Know who you are leading and listen

One of his most important and famous dressing room talks happened just before the kick-off of the Champions League final against Chelsea, 2008, Moscow. It has been described well by the former Manchester United player Patrice Evra:

“We were in the dressing room when the boss came in.
As usual, the music stopped.
You could hear a pin drop.
Then Ferguson said: ‘I’ve already won.…’
We looked at each other.
He said: ’I’ve already won. We don’t even need to play this game.’
We were like: ‘What is he talking about? The game hasn’t even started.’
Then Ferguson turned to me: ‘Look at Patrice,’ he said. ‘He’s got 24 brothers and sisters. Imagine what his mother had to do to put food on the table.…’
Then he turned to Wayne Rooney. ‘Look at Wayne. He grew up in one of the toughest parts of Liverpool .…’
Then he turned to Park Ji-sung: ‘Look at Ji, he’s come all the way from South Korea.…’
As the boss talked about our stories, we began to realize that he was referring to a fellowship.
We were not just a football team — we were people from every corner of the world, from all kinds of cultures and races and religions. And now we were there, together in a dressing room in Moscow, fighting for a common cause. Through football, we had become brothers.

‘THIS is my victory!’ Ferguson said.

We all got goosebumps. Then we went out and won the Champions League. That’s Manchester United. That’s why I love this game.”

He knew everything about his players. And he writes in his book “If you are leading people, it helps to have a sense of who they are — the circumstances in which they were raised, the actions that will draw out the best in them, and the remarks that will cause them to be spooked. The only way to figure this out is by two underrated activities: listening and watching”.

“Before we signed players, especially youngsters, I always tried to understand the circumstances in which they had been raised. The first ten or 12 years of anyone’s life have such a profound influence on the way they act as adults”.

Watching

How important is it to step back and watch things from the sidelines? You can be very surprised by things you didn’t see when you were watching from the middle of the training ground — “When you are a step removed from the fray, you see things that come as surprises — and it is important to allow yourself to be surprised. If you are in the middle of a training session with the whistle in your mouth, your entire focus is on the ball. When I stepped back and watched from the sidelines, my field of view was widened and I could absorb the whole session, as well as pick up on players’ mood, energy, and habits”.

Discipline for long-run success

I really like how he described his courage for discipline in order to reach long-run success with the team — “I placed discipline above all else and it might have cost us several titles … In the long run, principles are just more important than expediency”.

About Cristiano Ronaldo he writes — “Cristiano Ronaldo never chose to deface his body. It said a lot about his self-discipline”.

The importance of hard work & drive

By his standards, talent is just not enough. You must work very hard in order to reach your goals — “It was no accident that players like Ronaldo, Beckham, the Neville brothers, Cantona, Scholes, Giggs, and Rooney would all have to be dragged off the training ground”.

He also writes the same not only for individuals but also for a team & organizational culture — “The minute that we don’t work harder than the other team, we’ll not be Manchester United”.

Later, he wonders why some people possess greater drive than others, and he defines perfectly in my point of view what drive is — “For years I’ve tried to fathom out why some people possess greater drive than others. I’m not sure I am any closer to solving that riddle today than I was 30 years ago, but I did learn how to harness that power and as I said, I do know that if I had to pick drive or talent as the most potent fuel, it would be the former. For me, drive means a combination of a willingness to work hard, emotional fortitude, enormous powers of concentration, and a refusal to admit defeat”.

Another great paragraph I loved is about preparation — “Whatever happens on a Saturday afternoon has already occurred on the training ground. If I was starting again as a manager, the thing I would focus on the most is a player’s attitude during training sessions. If they take it seriously and have the necessary talent and determination, good things will happen”.

Captains

Some people don’t get the relevance and importance of captains in football teams. Sir Alex explains it well — “As hard as I worked on my own leadership skills, and as much as I tried to influence every aspect of United’s success on the field, at kick-off on match day things moved beyond my control.
For football managers, the club captain is the equivalent of what a business unit leader or a country manager might be in a company. He is the person responsible for making sure the agenda of the organization is pursued”.

“When I selected the captain I was looking for four principal virtues. The first was a desire to lead on the field. The second attribute I wanted was someone I could trust to convey my desires, and the third was a person whom the other players would respect as a leader and whose instructions they would follow. Not every creative person is born to be a leader.

I also wanted captains capable of adapting to changing circumstances”.

Excellence

Sir Alex has won 49 trophies in his management career. When talking about developing excellence in an organization, he’s very careful when it comes to setting goals — “Part of the way you develop excellence in an organization is to be careful about the way you define success. I was always careful about setting specific, long-range targets. I would never say ‘We expect to win the League and two pieces of silverware this season.’ First, it conveys the wrong message, because it sounds cocky and arrogant. Second, it applies a lot of additional pressure on everyone without any real benefit. Third, it sets everyone up for disappointment. It was much easier to say ‘At United, we expect to win every game,’ because that was the case from about 1993 and it also conveyed the spirit of the club.
Making sure everyone understood that we expected to triumph in every game set an agenda of excellence and allowed me to regularly administer booster-shots of intensity.
There’s a balance that needs to be weighed when conveying a sense of what’s possible with the reality of the circumstances”.

He gives a great example here — “That happened to us in 2001 when we were 3–0 down to Tottenham at half-time. At the break, I was realistic with the players and told them we were in a royal mess. There was deathly quiet in the dressing room and all I said was ‘Score the next goal and let’s see where that takes us.’ I didn’t say something like ‘We’ve got forty-five minutes to score four times.’ That would have seemed impossible”.

United won 5–3.

Inspiring

Sir Alex Ferguson is one of the most inspiring managers of all time. As a manager and a leader, you need to care about your people and take care of them 360 degrees. They need to know you care about them and that you will help them in anything needed.
You are here for them. Not the opposite. As a leader, you are here to serve them, and not the opposite.

“I couldn’t count the number of times where I helped players with personal matters, and I’m proud of the fact they trusted me that they knew that discussion would stay private. In these situations, I acted as a priest, father, or lawyer — whatever it took to make the problem go away.
Another crucial ingredient of motivation is consistency. As a leader, you can’t run from one side of the ship to the other.
People need to feel that you have unshakeable confidence in a particular approach. If you can’t show this, you’ll lose the team very quickly.”

Complacency

We all heard stories about complacency and how it destroys success. But still, it happens to too many people around us every day. It is exactly what Jeff Bezos talks about when he says that when an organization has moved to day 2 he’s kind of dead. You see organizations that stand in their day 2 too frequently. It is also referring to another blog post I wrote (Play like you’re one-nil down).

As leaders, we can’t allow ourselves any type of complacency. Sir Alex knows that well, and he admits in his books that it cost United losses:

“Complacency is a disease, especially for individuals and organizations that have enjoyed success”.

“We were not always successful at doing so, but I was always eager to stamp out the slightest trace of complacency”.

“While I took great pleasure and satisfaction in seeing what we had done for others, I cannot say that I felt as happy. I always felt I had to be in the vanguard of tomorrow. I’d immediately start to think about ways in which we could improve, and players who were coming to the end of their best days. For me, the questions going through the back of my mind during any celebration were, ‘How do we top this? How do we get another triumph?’ I never wanted us to be torpedoed by complacency”.

Time

Personally, I really feel the same as Sir Alex writes in this paragraph, no words need to be added here.

“My father always said, ‘Don’t lie, don’t steal, and always be early.’ I cannot stand being late. I’ve always been early for meetings. I was always the first into work It just came naturally.”

“When you become a manager you discover three things. There is an endless set of tasks to complete and people demanding attention; the day does not stop and there is never enough time”.

Failing

Failures are an inseparable part of success. We need to understand that failures are just a part of the process, and if we are talking from a perspective of an organization, we must make sure our culture allows people to fail, and share it with each other.

“When you look at a successful person, you cannot imagine that they’ve ever failed or had a brush with failure”.

“But we are all haunted by failure. It paralyzed some and motivates others. It was my own inner determination to avoid failure that always provided me with an extra personal incentive to succeed”.

“For me, the only time to give up is when you are dead”.

Delegation & decisions-making

I am really inspired by the book ‘Turn the ship around’ by David Marquet and one of the things I took from it was that on the ship, as a leader and manager you just can’t be everywhere, physically. The circumstances teach you the lesson that you can’t do everything by yourself and delegation is the key to success as a manager.

“Control and delegation are two sides of the same coin, and in my younger years, my instinct was to try and control everything. I gradually began to understand that this is the difference between management and leadership”.

“When you’re a manager, it’s vital to care about the details but it’s equally important to understand that there isn’t enough time in the day to check on everything”.

“Effective delegation depends on the ability of others to make decisions. Some people can make decisions, others cannot. It just doesn’t work if you are congenitally hesitant and allow things to linger in a state of suspension”.

Recruiting

Many people hate the job of selling. So do I, I don’t like it. And still, as leaders, and not only as leaders — as people who want to successfully convey a message or convince someone to do something — you need to sell.
So even though we don’t like it — it’s a skill we must learn and practice.

Sir Alex Ferguson refers to selling when recruiting — “A big part of running a successful organization is being able to convince people to join you, even if they can earn more money elsewhere”.

“Any leader is a salesman — and he has to sell to the inside of his organization and to the outside. Anyone who aspires to be a great leader needs to excel at selling his ideas and aspirations to others. Sometimes you have to persuade people to do things they don’t want to do, or to sell them on the idea that they can achieve something they had not dreamed about”.

Read the book!

Although I tried here to convey the main messages from the book, and I hope I did it successfully, there is nothing like reading the book itself. Especially if you’re a football person.