Okay, thanks once again to COVID-19, my wife and I binge-watched another television series this past week! We just happened to be watching the Golden Globes for a brief hot minute last weekend when actor Jason Sudeikis won the Golden Globe Award for Lead Actor in a Comedy or Musical Series. We decided to give the show a watch, and exactly one week later, we are eagerly anticipating the hopeful release of season two!
Sudeikis plays the lead role in the Apple TV + television series, Ted Lasso. Lasso is an American football coach (who recently won the Division II NCAA College Football National Championship for the Wichita State Shockers) who is hired to coach for AFC Richmond, an English Premier League football team. The key point here is that while he was a successful coach of American football, he knows absolutely nothing about what those of us in the United States call soccer (and what everyone else in the world calls football). The idea for the series came out of a series of television promos for NBC Sports' coverage of the English Premier League.
What's interesting to me is that Lasso actually exhibits several key characteristics of great leadership. Now I will admit, there is probably zero chance that an American football coach who knows nothing about soccer could be successful in the English Premier League. At the end of the day, domain-specific or technical expertise is fairly important. However, just as important to the success of any leader are the soft skills of leadership. I have commented on this topic a few times in the past (see, for example, "Cool Runnings" or "My shoes are brown and those are wings of gold on my chest").
It's actually a question that comes up a lot. For example, Amanda Goodall and colleagues published results that suggest that the best hospitals are managed by doctors. Goodall has also published a study ("Why do leaders matter? A study of expert knowledge in a superstar setting") that suggested that NBA teams who are coached by former NBA players are more successful than the ones who are not coached by former players. More importantly, Goodall and her colleagues also found that NBA teams who are coached by former NBA All-Stars are particularly successful. Dr. Goodall has also published the results of a study ("Do economics departments improve after they appoint a top scholar as chairperson?") suggesting that academic departments (in this case, economics departments) do better when the chair of the department is a successful academician (in terms of research productivity, as measured by grant funding and number of publications). Collectively, these studies, which in fact are only a few examples (there are several more examples here), strongly advocate that technical expertise is very important for success in a leadership position. In other words, Dr. Goodall and her colleagues would argue that Ted Lasso would be a terrible football coach!
So does this mean that someone without technical expertise is doomed to fail? As it turns out, not necessarily. Michael Roberto, a former faculty member at the Harvard Business School and currently at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island would argue that technical expertise is not as important. In a 2017 blog post ("Are technical experts better leaders?") argued that most NBA championships have been won either by non-players or players who never made the NBA All-Star team). He followed that post up with a similar analysis ("Do technical experts make better leaders part 2") conducted with NFL head coaches. At the time of this analysis, the overwhelming majority of Super Bowls had been won by either coaches who were not superstar players. As a matter of fact, in a more recent post ("Super Bowl coaches, the curse of expertise, and the importance of perspective taking"), he argues the exact opposite - success as a player may, in fact, lead to failure as a NFL head coach.
Clearly, this is an argument that is far from over. Ted Lasso is, after all, a fictional character, so we can't make any definitive conclusions about his success or failure as a soccer coach. What is important to recognize, however, is that the "soft skills" of leadership are just as important! If you don't put the needs of your team above your own, you are probably not going to be a successful leader. One of my favorite scenes in Ted Lasso occurs when one of his players makes a mistake on the field. Coach Lasso recognizes this moment for what it is - a teaching moment. He pulls the player aside and asks, "You know what the happiest animal in the world is? It's a goldfish. It's got a ten second memory. Be a goldfish."
Coach Lasso recognizes that there is more to life than football (regardless of what one of his players, Dani Rojas says all the time, "Football is life!"). He tells a reporter, “For me, success is not about the wins and losses. It’s about helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.” By doing that, he is successful in the end.
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