Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches

by Carlo Ancelotti

  As such, when the player comes to the end of his playing career, his education as a potential manager has been almost entirely experiential, which need not be a bad thing. Management educator Henry Mintzberg has argued that experiential learning followed by traditional learning is actually the best trajectory; unfortunately, we have created an educational system that is the reverse of this.

  At the world’s current number one business school, INSEAD, they have a Learning to Lead programme which identifies that:

  the transition from being a great individual contributor to being a leader of others is one of the most important and challenging career stages. The Learning to Lead programme is designed to help participants understand the nature of this transition, develop critical people skills and equip them with a whole new skillset that will lead to a smoother transition and, ultimately, career success. (http://executive-education.insead.edu/learning_to_lead)

  Footballers rarely, if ever, get the opportunity to engage with such high-powered programmes and instead have to rely on their own personal learning skills.

  Experiential learning tends to be described in one of two ways: first, as learning achieved as a result of applying knowledge, intuition and skills in a task-directed setting; second, as learning that occurs as a consequence of simply encountering life, with participants reflecting on the activities in which they engage and internalizing that reflection.

  Football managers only have the latter to fall back on. As Dr Steve Kempster of Lancaster University has argued, leaders without any formal leadership training must become informal learners themselves; they must actually address leadership as a phenomenon to be studied in its own right. That way, he argues, they ‘will begin to see it everywhere, on television, [in] films, with customers and suppliers, fellow directors and managers and many of the employees’. As a consequence, they will develop the style of leadership that is distinctively their own. This is crucial to the authenticity that is commonly held to be essential to great leadership. ‘To thine own self be true’ may sound clichéd, but if you are not, you will surely be found out.

  The research into this type of learning tends to define it as ‘situated learning’ – what is more commonly known as learning on the job. Apprenticeships, currently seeing a resurgence in popularity, are another form of situated learning. The key elements of this type of learning are seen as being:

  the expert knowledge and skill that can be gained from everyday experiences at work and in the community or family; domain-specific knowledge is necessary for the development of expertise (i.e. much of expertise relies on detailed local knowledge of a workplace, locality or industry); learning is a social process; and, knowledge is embedded in practice and transformed through goal-directed behaviour. (M. Tennant, Psychology and Adult Learning, 2nd edn, Routledge, 1999)

  Warren Bennis, in his book Learning to Lead (Basic Books, 2010), has argued that the old command-and-control approach is no longer appropriate to modern business. Modern businesses, he contends, need skills of orchestration, counselling, collaboration through self-examination, introspection, soul-searching, learning from failure and the cultivation of innate gifts. While all this may be true, in moments of crisis, command-and-control is precisely the leadership style required – and football management is a continual crisis-management profession. Like many theses on leadership, Bennis misses the point of the necessity of being able to employ a range of leadership techniques appropriate to the demands of the business and the owners. Carlo Ancelotti has that ability, and it has been learned in an entirely experiential and situated way. He is the archetypal informal learner and the epitome of what can be achieved under these conditions. It is a common misperception that footballers are not intelligent. Nothing could be further from the truth: footballers may rarely be educated, but that does not preclude high levels of intelligence.

  Another increasingly common topic in leadership literature is the necessity for leaders to learn to ‘switch off’ and be able to walk away from the continual crises in their work. Most leaders will tell you how difficult this is, but it is one of Carlo’s greatest strengths.

  A recent survey by the Institute of Leadership and Management revealed that stress over mounting workload meant that one in eight (13 per cent) people in leadership roles question whether holidays are actually ‘worth it’. Over half of managers work while on annual leave; seven in ten feel more stressed in the run-up to a holiday; and almost a fifth return from holiday more stressed than when they left.

  The report goes on to argue that we take annual leave with the intention of relaxing, unwinding and recharging the batteries, but holidays aren’t as relaxing as we would hope them to be. Over half of all employees feel compelled to work while on annual leave. Worries over mounting workload were revealed as the biggest barrier to rest and relaxation. With technology making us contactable anytime and anywhere, an overwhelming 80 per cent of managers reported that they check their Black-Berry or smartphone on holiday.

  This is not good business and there are good reasons why it is essential to take time off:

  No one is indispensable.

  Getting away enables reflection that can identify gaps in your management structure and operations.

  It gives others the opportunity to step up.

  Regular breaks allow leaders to recharge, rest, pursue other interests and come back energized.

  It prevents burn-out and illness.

  Carlo Ancelotti intrinsically understands the importance of switching off (see Chapter 10). For example before starting at Bayern Munich in July 2016, he will spend time at home in Vancouver – cooking, reading, spending time with family. But simultaneously he was watching games from around the world, talking to key contacts – quietly learning, quietly influencing.

  Carlo doesn’t divide his time into ‘work’ and ‘holiday’ modes, or indeed divide his own self-perception into ‘manager’ or ‘family man’. On the contrary, he is always fully engaged in both football and the world. As Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger put it, learning to lead ‘involves the whole person; it implies not only a relation to specific activities, but a relation to social communities – it implies becoming a full participant, a member, a kind of person’.*

  In this section, Carlo will look at how, from his humble beginnings in rural Italy, he learned to become the leader that he is today.

  9. Growing

  The Seeds of Leadership

  I was born into a very poor family – my father, mother, sister, grandfather and grandmother, all living together in the same house. My father was a farmer and he and my grandfather worked on the land. My father worked very hard. Every day he started at four in the morning and worked until six, seven or even eight o’clock at night. I learned a lot about discipline and the importance of a strong work ethic – he was a good reference, my father.

  We had ten cows to make milk and Parmesan cheese. This was the only work in the area – there was no real industry, just farming. We’d earn money from the cheese and a little from making wine. We had a small vineyard for the wine, but mostly this was for our own consumption. We would sell the excess, which was not a lot. The most important part was the cheese. The problem was that it took a year before it was ready to sell and we could get some money for it, so my father needed to control our finances very carefully each year, waiting for the payment. You know when you are rich because you don’t know exactly how much is in your bank account; my father knew to the exact penny what we had. We needed to be organized.

  This time was to be my first lesson on the importance of the owner. When I was very young my father was working the land but didn’t own the property. In Italy at the time you could work on the property of one owner, but 50 per cent of what you made went to that owner. At the beginning I was upset because I didn’t understand. We would work hard in the fields and have a huge pile of grain in the front of the house, but then the owner would arrive with a piece of wood and put it down the middle of the pile and say, ‘T
his is mine.’ It was the same with the chickens. I hated this person, but they were the rules. I never saw my father angry with these people. I only saw my father happy – never nervous, never aggressive. It was a happy period for me. We didn’t have money, but I remember this time as a really happy period in my life, with plenty of laughter. When you don’t have anything, you don’t know how poor you are. But I did begin to realize then that it was important to have money, like the landowner.

  When I first went to play for Roma I went directly to the president to try to agree a contract – at that time there were no agents. I was twenty years old, had come from a team in the third division, and I asked for 100 million lire a year. He said to me, ‘You are totally crazy.’

  At that time a good job could earn maybe 10 million lire. Of course, without a contract I couldn’t play, so the president said to me, ‘Listen, it’s not so important what are you earning. It’s more important what are you saving.’

  ‘I can save a lot more with 100 million,’ I said.

  We remained at an impasse until the last day I could sign and be able to play. The president finally offered me 20 million and I accepted. I had only asked for such an amount because my friend, an older guy, who I thought must know what he’s talking about, had said that the club paid a lot of money to sign me, so I should ask for 100 million. No wonder the president thought I was crazy. You should always know what you’re talking about before you start a negotiation.

  When I signed for the academy at Parma, which was far from my family home, I tried to travel home every day after school and after training, but it was exhausting. I left my family the next year, at the age of fifteen, to go to a college in Parma close to the training ground. Because it was a religious college, for priests, I lived there but I went to a normal school outside. Living in the college was really tough, but it was a great experience for me. Away from my family for the first time, I learned that I had to organize my day by myself. I had to be self-disciplined: go to school then to training, study, clean my own clothes. It was hard in the beginning. I also learned what bad food was like. With my family the food had always been special.

  When planning my day, I had to fit in prayers at the church, in the morning and before I went to bed. Everything was regimented at the college. When I went to training I still had to get a card to sign in and out, even though they knew that I was playing for Parma. There was no flexibility.

  Of course, my mother had not wanted me to leave home, which was why I had commuted in the first year at Parma. Eventually, though, she saw how tired I was with the travelling and how it was affecting my training. She knew that I dreamed to go – I wanted to play football.

  I would go home at the weekend, after school on the Saturday, and usually we played on Sunday morning. My father would usually take me to play – sometimes my uncle – and I would come back home and stay until Monday morning, when I would travel back to school. I found it really difficult and I was very sad.

  Being away was a hard experience to adapt to for me because I was born in a little village where everyone knew each other. I had a lot of friends in my small village but I’d never been on holiday or away before – I didn’t go to the beach until I was fifteen years old. My holiday was to stay on the farm, in my house and maybe go to Parma. At that time, going to Parma was like going from London to Vancouver today. It took the whole day.

  Gradually, I learned to adapt and make friends. The four years in the college helped me overcome my shyness and timidity. Aside from two or three of us, most of the people staying there were not players, just schoolboys. They were guys who had come from outside Parma and who couldn’t go to their local schools for some reason or another. They were all from a similar background to me – farms and small villages.

  I didn’t really learn about other regions or nationalities until I started to play for Nils Liedholm, my Swedish manager at Roma. He was the first person I’d met who was from another country. I thought all Swedes were like him but, after Liedholm, I had another Swede manage me at Roma, Sven-Göran Eriksson, and I soon learned that Liedholm was Liedholm, not a Swede. It was from him that I learned that it was possible to be flexible. There were no rules so strict that they had to be obeyed at all times. We could have training scheduled for eleven o’clock, but it wouldn’t start until eleven fifteen because he was late. Sometimes we would ask him why and he would always answer, ‘Because I’m working for you. I was busy doing things to make your life easier.’ I was never late but it was OK for him to be late. When we had lunch or dinner, everyone could choose what they wanted – there was always some flexibility. When you make a decision, you take into consideration the thoughts of the people involved, to understand what they are thinking. Liedholm did this. He was very smart.

  Teammates

  When I started to play in the professional team at Parma my first leaders were the older players who gave me orders. I was the kid and I would have to carry their bags everywhere, sometimes clean their boots as part of my apprenticeship. I didn’t know if it was fair or not. It was an unspoken rule that the youngest just did as they were told, so I didn’t argue. I also heard the young players at Manchester United used to have to clean the boots for the first-team players. The famous Class of ’92 – Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham and the rest – said they did this under Sir Alex when they were young, but I don’t think this happens any more.

  I wasn’t happy to take the loudest person who gave the most orders as the leader. I looked around for the real leader, the most important player in the team. I knew it would be the player who had more personality and influence, who was a real professional and an example to the rest. At Parma this player was Lucio Mongardi.

  At that time Parma were in the third division and Mongardi was one of only a few players in the team to have played in Serie A, with his previous club, Atalanta. He took care of me because I was younger and he saw the qualities in me to be a professional. Sometimes he invited me to his house to have lunch or dinner with his family. He was my reference as a man and he was also my reference as a player, because he was the playmaker in the team, the position I wanted to play.

  I realized that this was the way to lead. I knew that to just give orders did not feel correct. It was not fair, because I wanted to be treated like the others. I was young, OK, but I was a player like everyone else. If I was not worth as much as the others then why was I in the team? Maybe I did not earn as much as the others, but if I played in the team then surely I should be treated as an equal. Mongardi was the only one who thought that way. Everyone in the team should be equal.

  Mongardi was not an arrogant player. He didn’t use his power to bully the young players, and this was an important lesson for me. Maybe he was also empathetic because he had been in Serie A and come back down. He’d done it all and didn’t have anything to prove, so his ego was in the right place.

  He was the leader of the team but he was not the captain. As was traditional in Italy at the time, the captain was the player who had spent the most years at the club. I saw this, that the captain was just a senior player, and could equally see that Mongardi was what I now call the technical leader. He had the experience in Serie A, the most knowledge on the pitch, and he was a great example to the rest of the team. I followed his behaviour and, when my chance came to play in Serie A with Roma, I knew what would be expected of me there thanks to him.

  Managers

  When I arrived at Roma I didn’t need to look for the leader among the players because the leader was the manager. Agostino Di Bartolomei was the captain, born in Rome and from the Roma academy, but only appeared to be the leader to those outside the squad. He was, perhaps, the political leader. He had a strong relationship with the press, the supporters and the club, and maybe the manager saw him as a leader, but among the players he was not viewed in the same way. He was effective in his role, but inside the dressing room he was one of us.

  For me, it was the manager, Nils Liedholm, who led th
e squad, which was unusual. He was quiet but strong. When I became a manager myself later, I met him and it was a little bit uncomfortable. He was still my father. In Russian they say the boss is not always right but he is always the boss, and this is the way it was for me with Liedholm.

  Because of his natural authority he would not even answer if you challenged him; he would simply pose a question back to you and you would know what he wanted you to do. At the end of my first season at the club I decided to rent an apartment with a friend in the squad and move out of our accommodation at the training ground. We went to see Liedholm in his office and explained our plan.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ we said, ‘we are sure.’ ‘OK, no problem for me,’ he said, ‘but I think that you both need to train with the academy, not with the first team. If you want to train with the first team, you have to stay, to live at the training ground.’ We looked at each other and said, together, ‘OK, we’ll stay at the training ground.’

  Sometimes in a squad, players get unhappy and complain about the manager, but no one spoke badly about Liedholm. Everyone had complete respect for him. When the Brazilian player Falcao arrived, Liedholm gave him his blessing and the power to lead.

  Falcao was a player with great professional quality. You know immediately when you see a leader – it’s the personality, the character. It’s not the technical skills. Falcao was one of the first foreign players I had come across and it was like he was from another planet. He was not used to our style of training, so he had to adjust. In Brazil they trained with the ball a lot, while in Italy, at that time, not so much.

  Liedholm slowly began to alter our training sessions, not only to help Falcao, but also because he was learning from the player. We began to have more sessions with the ball and fewer without it. Liedholm changed our training a little and Falcao a little, so we could meet closer to the middle. When a squad contains players from several different cultures, the top managers take the best from each. What Falcao brought was an attitude of, ‘Why is the ball not here? Why are we not training with the ball more?’