You don’t get the best out of people by hitting them with an iron rod. You do so by gaining their respect, getting them accustomed to triumphs and convincing them that they are capable of improving their performance. I cannot think of any manager who succeeded for any length of time by presiding over a reign of terror. It turns out that the two most powerful words in the English language are, ‘Well done’. Much of leadership is about extracting that extra 5 percent of performance that individuals did not know they possessed.
It was always important that the players erased the memory of the previous season, whether we had won or lost. If we had done well in the previous year, it did not guarantee that we would automatically do so again. And, if we had lost, I had no interest in prolonging any hangover of defeatism. The coaching staff, in particular the sports science crew, would come to me with new ideas before or during the pre-season, but I would never conduct any big post-mortem with the players. I used to gather them around me in a semi-circle at the training ground and re-emphasise my desire to win and use it as an opportunity to set expectations. I used to ask the mature players, who had begun to acquire a taste for United’s victory habits, how many medals they had won. I told them that they could not consider themselves to be a United player until they had won ten medals. I remember saying to Rio Ferdinand that he could never think of himself as a United player until he attained the level of Ryan Giggs. Of course, that was mission impossible.
It is much easier to do difficult things if others like you. Though I have never tried to court popularity, I always tried to pay particular attention to people at United—or at the other clubs I was involved with—who worked behind the scenes and were our unsung heroes. It wasn’t a false front; it just seemed like the right thing to do. These people weren’t getting the multimillion-pound salaries or public acclaim, and didn’t wear Patek Philippe watches or drive Bentleys.
Some of them--the laundry team, the groundsmen, the hospitality waitresses—took the bus to work. They were the mainstays of the club. At United, some of them have been there even longer than Ryan Giggs. In a way, they are the club’s equivalent of the Civil Service—they outlast the governments and, at United, they provided continuity and a connection with our heritage. It was very easy for me to feel affinity towards them, since most had backgrounds much like my own.
Some managers try to be popular with the players and become one of the boys. It never works. As a leader, you don’t need to be loved, though it is useful, on occasion, to be feared. But, most of all, you need to be respected. There are just some natural boundaries, and when those get crossed it makes life harder. When I was playing at Rangers, they hired a new manager, David White. He was young and a good man but just out of his depth. He was overawed by the club, while at the same time he was living in the shadow of Jock Stein over at Celtic. The players didn’t have much respect for him, and part of the reason was because he was too close to them. The same thing happened at United when Wilf McGuinness succeeded Sir Matt Busby in 1969. Wilf had several things going against him. He was succeeding a legend; he was only 31 years old and had no management experience. But, worst of all, he was managing a group of men with whom he had played. It was an impossible position for him. My immediate predecessor at United, Ron Atkinson, had a similar issue. He had enjoyed much more success as a manager than Wilf, but he too chose to fraternise with the players. It just doesn’t work. A leader is not one of the boys.
It is vital to keep some sort of distance. This could be expressed in small but significant ways. For example, I generally rode at the front of the team bus. The players understood the distance, and at the end of the season when they had their parties, I was never invited. They’d invite all the management staff, but they wouldn’t invite me. I wasn’t off ended by this. It was the right thing for them to do. With one exception in Aberdeen, I never attended any of the players’ weddings. There was a line that they were not prepared to cross and they respected my position. It also makes things easier because, as a manager, you can’t be sentimental about them. Jock Stein told me once, ‘Don’t fall in love with the players because they’ll two-time you.’ That may be a bit harsh, but Jock was right that you cannot get too attached to people who work for you. The one time you must have that attachment is when they are in trouble—when they need your advice. 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 and 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. Even to this day, many former players still come to me for advice; this is a reflection of the trust that underpinned our relationship.
When players got too old I couldn’t afford to be kind to them at the expense of the club. All the evidence is on the football field. It just doesn’t lie. I had to make a lot of horrible decisions and I had to be ruthless. I never expected the players to love me, but neither did I want them to hate me, because that would have made it impossible to extract the most from them. All I wanted was for them to respect me and follow my instructions.
Unless you understand people, it’s very hard to motivate them. I learned this years ago in Scotland when I was handed a lesson by a young lad. While I managed Aberdeen, we used to travel down to Glasgow every Thursday night to coach young kids on an AstroTurf field so that we could identify the best young talent. I was down there one night, dressed in my tracksuit emblazoned with its ‘AF’ initials, when I saw this kid, who was about eight, smoking a cigarette. I said, ‘Put that cigarette out, son. What would your dad think if he saw you smoking?’ The boy looked at me and he said, ‘F*** off!’ and walked away. My assistant manager, Archie Knox, who was with me, burst out laughing at the way this kid had chopped my legs off. But when I started thinking about the incident, I realised that I knew nothing about that boy. I had no idea where he came from, what his parents were like, whether he was taunted by his pals and why he harboured such anger. Unless you know those sorts of things and have an understanding of someone’s personality, it is impossible to get the best out of them. 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.
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. There is a phrase in football about players ‘not playing for the manager’, which I have seen happen a thousand times. Once that happens, the manager is as good as dead, because he has failed in his major undertaking—which is to motivate the players to follow him. The time to be inconsistent is when changes need to be made because the world is changing around you. There was always the temptation when things weren’t going well to change or to leap to a new lily pad. That doesn’t work. Sometimes, if we lost some games, we’d hear that the players thought that our training should be more lighthearted; that our results would improve if, instead of concentrating our training sessions around technical skills, we played mock games. I always refused to bow to those suggestions. Any field on a Sunday is full of people playing park games, work games or pub games, but that doesn’t make these people better footballers. I just believe that continual devotion to improving technical skills, and the enhancement of tactics, lead to better results, and I wasn’t about to change just to temporarily please others.
Hachette Books Hardcover. Copyright © 2015 Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Michael Moritz. Used with Permission.