Let’s face it – the world is a messy place right now. The destruction levied by the effects of climate change, democracy is faltering all over the world, and the income gap keeps widening. All of these issues are ridiculously complex and require elegant solutions with nuance on par with the enormity of the task. As Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”
Perhaps we need a new model of leadership – it seems the millennia old hierarchical leadership models are no longer serving us, and we need to break free and find something else. A more collaborative approach to leadership that goes beyond the “one gifted visionary” and taps into the “many gifted visionaries.”
Sadly, there are few archetypes of collaborative leaders that we can model. Fortunately, we found a bright spot in an unlikely place… Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso is a touching workplace comedy about an American Football coach hired to turn around a struggling London football team (soccer for us yanks – yeah, it’s confusing).
It may seem odd that we’re talking about a fictional character, as our posts on leadership have typically analyzed real-life leaders. But our understanding of the future is shaped by the art we consume. Steven Spielberg 2002 movie “Minority Report” paved the way for the gesture-based computing. NASA hired artists to paint life in space before it even launched the first humans on the moon. We sometimes need to be able to see something before we can start aspiring towards it. Unfortunately, most media displays models of command-and-control leadership. Ted Lasso is the first recent example of a mainstream depiction of a more humanistic model leadership.
And that’s why we love Ted Lasso – he doesn’t pretend that he knows anything about soccer or even knows what to do for that matter. None of that is important in his eyes, because everyone else around him does know a lot about soccer and they know what to do. His role as a leader is to facilitate the flow of that knowledge, to ensure that everyone is valued equally, and to develop his players to become the best possible version of themselves they could be.
Five ways Ted Lasso Leads by By not Being A Leader: (Spoiler Alert)
1. Treat everyone equally, including yourself
Near the beginning of the series, Ted introduces himself to the “water guy” or assistant in the team, Nate, who is blown away that the coach would even take his time to talk to him. The next day, Ted remembers Nate’s name, which impresses Nate even more. They end up striking up a conversation; Ted asks questions and learns that Nate has an idea for a soccer play. Ted runs with the idea and gives credit to Nate, and soon enough, Nate steps into a critical role and provides crucial insight that helps the team excel. All of that transpired because Ted bothered to treat Nate, the team assistant, as an equal. It’s a sad commentary on how hierarchical our society is that when someone (on top) treats another person (below them) like a human that it stands out and is surprising to them.
And Ted is no doormat. The owner of the team, Rebecca, at first makes it very clear that Ted is below her and keeps throwing him out of the office every time he is there. But he keeps showing up. He respects the hierarchy in their relationship — he knows there are certain things he needs to check in with her — but he refuses to interact with her as if he is less than her. He persists until she has no choice but to accept their relationship, and towards the end she starts recognizing him as human as well.
2. Solicit ideas from your team rather than telling them what to do
Because Ted “owns” his ignorance, he is always trying to solicit ideas from his team on what to do. During the final game, the team realizes they need to come up with some trick plays to throw their opponents off their game. Ted facilitates the discussion and helps the team come to their own conclusion on what to do. He looks to unexpected places for new ideas as well. We’ve already mentioned Nate the assistant, but at one point, Ted even engages the team’s accountant for ideas on how the team can be more successful.
Despite how well this works in real life, the art of asking questions seems to die at the top. A recent survey of 281 managers conducted by INSEAD found that only 29% of participants asked questions as often as they could. What held the others back? The cursed desire to appear competent. The fact that someone actually needed to take the time to write an article in Knowledge, a business school magazine geared to business school graduates, that essentially said, “It’s okay to ask questions,” is a sad reflection on our current zeitgeist.
Perhaps the most critical ingredient of leadership is curiosity. When we get curious and try to approach a problem from multiple sides and seek different perspectives that we come up with more elegant and better solutions than the ones with which we walked in.
The importance of curiosity is really illustrated in one of the later episodes when Ted is trying to help Rebecca fend off a bit of an attack from her ex-husband and former owner of the team. This man challenges Ted to a game of darts, and immediately pulls out his personal dart set and proceeds to crush Ted in the beginning of the game. After pretending that he doesn’t know anything about darts for most of the game, Ted then picks up the darts for the final shots and starts wondering what if his opponent had bothered to be curious about him. What if he had asked Ted, “Have you ever played darts? Are you good at it?” before challenging him to this high stakes darts duel. If so, he may have found out that Ted used to play darts every Sunday with his dad, and in fact is quite excellent at it. That scene ends with Ted absolutely nailing every throw and knocking his opponent down a peg.
3. Take care of everyone
Since Ted makes no bones about the fact that he can’t “teach” football to anyone, he instead sees his role as ensuring the team has what they need and taking care of them. Whether it’s throwing a birthday party for a homesick player who is not from England or quietly fixing the water pressure in the shower after a player’s complaint, he makes it clear that he is here to help others succeed. His focus on his people is so thorough that he makes clear that his aim is not winning — a bold statement for the coach of a sports team – but to develop his players such that they are the best they can be both individually and collectively.
But that didn’t mean a leader is the sole source of solutions to everyone else’s problems. Ted first ensured people had everything they needed to be successful, then was very deliberate about ensuring everyone stepped up to solve their own problems for themselves.
4. Refuse to solve certain problems
In one of the scenes in the show, a player comes up to Ted to tell him that Nate is being harassed by other players and that Ted has to fix this. Ted responds, “I can’t fix that. There’s nothing I can do. If I say, ‘stop it,’ they’ll just do it more. You’ve got to fix it. We’re all in this together. We have to help each other.”
One of the traps of leadership is believing that all problems have to be fixed by you — if not, you are a ‘bad leader’ who is letting others down. But Ted recognized that the problem of the bullying of Nate is a “team problem” that requires everyone to step up and is not “Ted’s problem” to solve.
There are too many problems for a single leader to solve especially in this complex age. A competent leader may try to solve every problem, but a great leader is able to mobilize an organization or team to solve its problems. This distributed style of leadership not only reduces bottlenecking at the top (there’s no need to wait for “dear leader” to come to the rescue when we can just huddle together to solve the problem) but it also engages employees to take ownership of outcomes, instead of a checklist of tasks to do.
5. Stay rooted in your values while absorbing criticism
At one point in the show, his assistant coach angrily erupts at Ted for not prioritizing winning. Instead of saying, “I’m your boss, you have no right to talk to me that way,” Ted simply absorbs that rage and truly tries to consider where his assistant is coming from. It’s a remarkable scene in which Ted is able to stay true to his values, while incorporating the insights of his assistant coach, and chart a path forward.
In short, Ted turns his weakness – his complete ignorance about football – into his strength as a leader. His ignorance becomes, by the end, the unexpected object of our envy, but his absurdly comical situation – being hired to coach a sport he doesn’t know – is not so distant from most leaders. Despite all we pretend to know, there is still so much we do not know — perhaps it’s time to simply embrace our ignorance and to let others fill in the gaps. Maybe then the real potential of our teams and organizations will finally emerge.
What other examples have you noticed recently of a depiction of a more humanistic model leadership in the mainstream? Please share that in the comments section. We’re curious to see if this is a trend.
Stay curious,
Chris Paliani is the founder and Chair of Kinext and enjoys seeing sales become more fun, easier and faster.
Peter Laughter is committed to shaking up leadership. He lit up when leaders bring out greatness in others. He is a founding Pathfinder of True Bearing.
