Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches

by Carlo Ancelotti

  Listen and Learn

  Listening is an often overlooked skill. Listening to what other people have to say – my staff, players, general director and those outside the game – and absorbing it, acting upon it or opening up a dialogue about it is something I very much believe is essential for those who wish to lead.

  As I’ve mentioned earlier, I have a lot of discussions with my support staff and listen to and take on their ideas and opinions. Ideas can come from anywhere, so you should always listen to people. It is very important for me to listen to the players. When preparing for some games, you can give an idea to a player and you have to listen to what they think about it. This happened when I thought of playing Sergio Ramos in midfield.

  Everyone said, ‘How? Why?’ But we had been suffering because of injuries to the team and I knew that we had been vulnerable in the air. Playing Ramos in midfield protected the back four and gave me another strong player to defend set plays, along with the centre backs Pepe and Raphaël Varane. It also meant Ramos would be able to win long balls in the air in front of the defenders. Before I implemented this idea, I spoke with Ramos. I didn’t tell anybody else except Paul Clement – nobody knew that I had the idea. I spoke with Ramos and he agreed to do it. We didn’t even practise it, so that nobody would know what was happening – I wanted it to remain a secret. The important thing was that I listened carefully to Sergio when we discussed it. If he had said he wasn’t comfortable doing it, or had suggested as much when we talked, then we would not have done it.

  With the team, it is the same. Before some games against Barcelona I would have an idea about how to play, but, before I explain my idea to the players, I want to know what they think. If we have the same idea, no problem, we can go, but if we have different ideas then I have to manage this. I would either change or adapt my idea, or explain it more clearly, emphasizing the positives. At the end, we must all be working towards the same goal. I have no problem about taking the time to explain, but if we have different ideas then I have to convince them that my idea is better than theirs. Of course, they can also convince me. It must be a two-way conversation. That is the power of listening.

  I like to think that I can listen well to what the players need. I do not pry, especially in their lives outside of the club, but I will listen. There are some players who will want to discuss their personal problems and there are those who don’t. Either way is OK – I don’t want to force anyone if they’re not comfortable. This is a personal relationship and it can only work if the player has trust. At Chelsea, I know players like John Terry and Ashley Cole confided in me about such matters because they trusted me. They felt comfortable speaking about personal things, but if the player doesn’t have trust, I don’t want to force them into it. In the case of someone like John Terry, when he did tell me about things going on in his personal life it made it easier for me to manage the situation. I don’t think there were any specific moments when I learned how best to respond in such situations. It comes gradually, with experience. Life teaches us about these things as we get older.

  This is an important idea too. As we grow and gain experience, we should never stop learning. My players, staff, family, the culture, language – there is so much around me that I can learn from, and a good leader must never stand still. In fact, we can’t afford to, especially considering how quickly the football environment can change. It is vital, too, that the players see that I am also learning. Firstly, and most importantly, you have to want to learn. I actually find I learn mostly from my own team. What can I do with my players, with our style of play? Can I change something? I will either test something out and learn in that way, or I will listen to the players and learn from their responses. A theory might look good on paper, but there are some things that you cannot learn through study – that you must learn by doing.

  Similarly, you must learn from your experiences. ‘Experiential learning’, as people like to call it. We were used to playing 4-3-3 in my first year in Madrid, but when we played against Bayern Munich I realized in the first leg, just from watching the team, that this was not the best system to beat them. We needed to do something different. So, next time, we played differently. In training I often try something new and, completely by accident, find the one new thing that will make the difference.

  Of course, you cannot be too radical during the season – it should just be fine-tuning. Preseason is different, that is the time to try new things. Above all, when you arrive and meet a new team you don’t know the characteristics of the players, but you listen, you learn, you try new things and eventually you reach a solution. I always think that 4-4-2 is the easiest system for the players to understand. It is, therefore, a good place to start with a new team – but from there, who knows?

  Preparation

  As I look forward to a new challenge at Bayern Munich in the 2016–17 season, it seems like a good moment to look at the kind of preparation I do when I start a new job. The most important thing for me with any new organization is to familiarize myself with the individual characteristics of the players and staff and to consult with as many people as possible about their personalities. Can I meet the outgoing manager? Can I speak with the senior management at the new club? Can I talk to players I know already? Any intelligence I gather that will help me before I meet the players and staff for the first time can only add value. Once I have an outline idea of the playing and coaching staff, I can then concentrate on devising the different formations and methods that will capitalize on these characteristics.

  The culture, of course, is important. At this stage I am talking about this from the outside, based upon my conversations with management, but my impression of Bayern is of a club of complete professionalism. It is well organized and run by ex-players and people who understand the game and have always lived it. At Bayern there is a wealth of knowledge of the game that may be unmatched in world football. These are all people who have achieved great things at every level of the game, as players, coaches, administrators and managers.

  It is some of these people with whom I will be ‘managing up’, of course, and part of starting any job is seeing how the hierarchy operates in the organization and meeting those you will be working with. Thanks to my experience with Berlusconi, Abramovich and Pérez, I have served an apprenticeship, so there is very little that can surprise me at any club. At Bayern, they are experienced football people and, as they have chosen me, they know how I work.

  The single most exciting aspect of starting any new job for me is meeting the players, and Bayern will certainly be no exception. How will they respond to me after having such great managers before me? How will my ideas be accepted or challenged? The building of individual and group relationships is at the heart of the job, and luckily for me it is a part of the job that I enjoy.

  An important thing to address before starting work is to look at the support staff and see if the existing infrastructure is complete, or whether I will need to augment it with some of my own staff. As I’ve mentioned, after Chelsea I have learned the importance of working with the existing staff and building new loyalties. At Bayern, I will work with their staff and possibly bring some of my own. Integrating these people may be a challenge, but they are all professionals and I don’t predict problems.

  When starting at a new club, I look at the team’s current identity on the pitch, their style of play, and work out if it is allied to my own, or if I will need to adapt to fit with the club. In some jobs in the past there has been a brief to change the style, to make it closer to the club’s traditions. Currently Bayern’s identity is closely aligned to Guardiola’s style – controlling the match through possession. This is not my personal obsession, but I must be careful not to destabilize a winning structure and style. This is another challenge that I am excited to accept. I came to Madrid after Mourinho and he too had a different style from me, but I think I made it work. I feel sure I can do the same at Bayern.

  RESPONSIBILITY: THE QUIET WAY

>   A member of your organization being engaged is not enough; they have to be aligned with your wider goals as well. Neither is sufficient by itself.

  Patience is not always a virtue; don’t wait too long to make a difficult decision.

  Encourage a learning culture; make it two-way, listen and learn.

  Soft power is the most effective. Dictatorships don’t last.

  Try not to get angry very often; it works best if it rarely happens. Pick your moments for maximum effect and then quickly return to calmness.

  You cannot allow setbacks to be the end; recalibrate and start again. Embrace setbacks and your flexibility to adapt as a competitive advantage.

  Get angry only for the things that really matter: lack of work ethic / application and violation of the culture and values of the group.

  With great talent and Gen Y talent the use of power has to be measured. All top talent wants to be told the direction they are heading but they want to be active in driving the vehicle that gets everyone there.

  In Their Own Words … The Lieutenant

  Paul Clement on Carlo

  I’m sometimes asked whether there are any non-negotiables with Carlo and it’s a hard question: he builds such strong relationships with people that almost everything feels like it’s negotiable. He has such a fantastic relationship with the players, built on total respect. He puts himself on the same level as them, wanting feedback from them and wanting to help them and guide them. However, one of the things he is very strong about is what he calls ‘bad attitude’ – being unprofessional.

  He always wanted things done to a high standard, from the way we travelled to the way we played, trained and conducted ourselves. Everything had to be done correctly and everyone had to behave correctly. Oddly enough, he wasn’t as worried about how they behaved outside the club as I would have been; he was quite tolerant about that because he used to say that he had no control over it.

  Another thing that annoyed him was if any of the players were disrespectful to the backroom staff. On the day before one away game, Carlo wanted to do a brief bit of tactical work. He had already announced the team for the game and he had organized an eleven-a-side practice session with the team against the rest of the squad – the substitutes and those who were going to be left out. He was leading the exercise, I was in the middle of the pitch with the balls, ready to keep the session moving, and Ray Wilkins was on the far side of the field.

  José Bosingwa was playing right back for effectively the ‘second’ team. Ashley Cole and, I think, Florent Malouda were on the left side for the first team and they were able to skip past Bosingwa like he wasn’t even there. He just wasn’t carrying out his job properly, clearly showing that he was disappointed not to be playing the next day. He had effectively downed tools. I reminded him about the importance of being professional, saying, ‘We have a game tomorrow that everyone has to prepare properly for, whether you’re starting or not,’ and he came back at me quite strongly and disrespectfully. I continued talking to him and in the end a couple of people had to jump in between us, including Didier Drogba and Carlo. Not to stop a physical confrontation, you understand, but certainly a verbal one.

  Carlo defused the situation and the practice continued, with Bosingwa’s attitude not much better. I was fuming afterwards. How could a player react like that when he hadn’t been doing his job properly? Later that evening at the team hotel Carlo spoke about the incident to the group, telling them that it was unacceptable. He said that he would not allow that kind of thing to occur again and he very publicly made sure Bosingwa was aware of it. We moved forward from that.

  Carlo could be strong when he believed that someone had acted incorrectly. In the six years I worked with him he maintained a very controlled demeanour, and he dealt with the facts and gave solutions. He was excellent at mastering his emotions, though there was one game, when we were at Paris Saint-Germain, where he did go to a level that I’d not seen before. We were playing Evian away and we were really poor. In the dressing room after the game Carlo struck the door so hard as he entered that I was concerned about his arm, not the door, as I followed him in and the players looked up. There was a box on the floor in the middle of the room and he struck it and it hit Ibra on the head. I thought, ‘Oh, no,’ but to be fair to Zlatan, he just took it, with the straightest face ever. Carlo then went into a rant at the players, very strong and emotional. That was the only time in six years that I saw him like that.

  I saw him launch into Italian a few times, which was always a sign that he was angry. Usually everybody would just be quiet and keep their heads down because they didn’t have a clue what he was on about. In Paris there were some Italian speakers in the dressing room, so it would make some sense to them. I think saying it in Italian helped him to get the emotion across, as it’s very difficult to do this in your second or third language. I don’t remember him doing this as much at Chelsea as he did in Paris.

  Carlo was excellent at half-time. The dressing room can be a highly charged place then, especially if the game is close or if you’re losing. He would use the period to help the players. A few times he was so angry he felt he needed to have an immediate impact. But usually he would initially move into another area to collect his thoughts. During that period the players would be coming down a bit, getting some recovery and talking among themselves. He would listen to me and the other assistants, take that in, and maybe there would be a bit of a dialogue between us.

  Carlo would then go back into the main dressing room and deal with the facts. ‘All right, they’re doing that, we need to do this,’ he might say, and he would put it up on the tactics board to make it visual. He would make it clear, with just two or three points, no more than that. There was no waffle, no clichés like, ‘Come on, we’ve got to get stuck in more!’ It was all to do with the tactics. Altering the positioning of players or exploiting something he had seen in the opposition, or maybe pointing out what had been working well for us and emphasizing the need to keep that going.

  Carlo saw the dressing room as a combination of a sanctuary for the players and the place where he did his work. He would take himself away from it when necessary and he would think, ‘I’ve done my bit now – the training, the video analysis, the team talk, the tactics – now I’m going to step away from it.’ When the players were getting changed and ready to go out to warm up he would often just go off and be on his own, maybe play a game like solitaire on his phone. Now that I’ve been a manager myself, I can see that he did that to disengage. He would leave me and the assistants in the dressing room to do little one-on-ones with the players about things we had discussed earlier. He might say, ‘Paul, have a quiet word with this player and make sure they understand their job today.’

  When the team sheets were exchanged we’d get together again with the opposition’s line-up. We would discuss who was playing, the formation they were likely to use, and work out who would mark whom at set plays. I’d go and put that up on the board and then he would go back to what he was doing, just whiling away the time until the final minutes before the match. We would come back in from the warm-up and he would have a presence again. He would be giving reminders to people and we’d have a huddle, then out we’d go. I think he got that balance right, of taking himself out of it all, both for himself and for the players, and then getting back into it at the right time.

  Carlo was committed to shielding the players from the ‘presidential noise’ above him. Instead he used the staff as a sounding board – he would tell me what was going on upstairs all the time. That’s why he puts such store in being able to trust you. If he can, he will be totally loyal.

  He wouldn’t allow that noise anywhere near the players. Even when the suits wanted to speak to the players, which was usually because they weren’t happy about something, he would be there for it and then afterwards he would gather the players together and say, ‘This is about us. This is what we need to do – we stay together.’

  Carlo’s
biggest strength is his ability to deal with pressure. At Derby County there are 33,000 fans at home games and you certainly feel the heat as a number one – not only from the fans, but from the media, from ownership and the pressure that you put yourself under. You feel the pressure to win, all the time.

  Now, Carlo was dealing with all this at the very highest level – the biggest clubs in the world where the media spotlight, the intensity and the expectation are in another stratosphere. His ability to handle it all is amazing. When you’re a number two, you’re helping the manager, you don’t feel it in the same way because he’s the one making the big decisions, he’s the one who’s accountable. You help him the best you can and you try to show empathy for his position.

  As the years went by, Carlo and I became closer and he became more confident in me and trusted me more. It was one of the reasons I enjoyed working with him so much. He made you feel involved, and that’s a big thing about human nature, isn’t it? You want to feel your contribution is valued. He gave that to me.

  He would involve all the assistants; it was just done naturally. He’d ask, ‘What do you think about training today. Have you got ideas?’ Or, ‘What would your team be for the weekend?’ Or he’d tell me his idea and ask me whether I agreed, or whether I would go with something else. These kinds of conversations were happening every day, so everybody felt part of the process. You never felt that things were imposed.

  My favourite story about this side of Carlo was prior to the FA Cup final against Portsmouth. He put the responsibility to come up with the tactics totally on the team. I wrote it up on the board as the players were saying it and – Bam! – That was the team talk and we went and won the FA Cup.