When I am critical of my players (Brighton 3 – Man Utd 2)

A weekend away in Brighton and Mourinho fails to find the spark in his relationship with Manchester United.

It is a story of mistakes for Mourinho.

“We were punished by the mistakes. Sometimes players and teams make mistakes and you are not immediately punished. We were always punished by every mistake we made – and the third goal is too hard.”

“At half-time we tried and the team in the second-half tried, but from the mental point of view the accumulation of mistakes and the punishment by the goals was step-by-step giving confidence and happiness to a good team like Brighton. ”

Given the opportunity to exorcise his players in publc Mourinho ensures the criticism is publicly shared amongst all of the players.

“When I am critical of my players you don’t accept it. The press and pundits are very critical of me when I go in that direction. Please do not ask me to go in that direction, because it is not good for me.”

“I will be very, very happy to analyse my players performance when it is very good. It is a great thing to stand in front of the cameras and say player A, player B, player C, they were fantastic, they had a fantastic performance. ”

“When I cannot do that, do not push me to the other side, because I cannot go to the other side. ”

In praising no-one, Mourinho criticises everyone.

Leadership communication lesson

Communication is never simple and one way in which leaders are often confounded is by failing to appreciate the meaning listeners can take from things which are not said. In his interview Mourniho plays with this quite deliberately and leaders that aspire to be good communicators need also to control for this variable. All good communicators will share large-scale communications with intended audience members to test for undertstanding. Excellent communicators will also test for any meaning the audience could infer from content that is not contained in the communication.

 

Guardiola and maintaining success (Arsenal 0, Man City 2)

A new season and the same narrative for both clubs.

Post-match, the statements from the interviewer to Guardiola seek to elicit praise.

Interviewer : “From start to finish the pace was there.”

“Yes, except the first 10 to 15 minutes of the second half. They push and we miss some balls and after it is a little more complicated, but in general we make an excellent performance.”

Guardiola then draws attention to the context of the match.

“Considering where we are in the season – a lot of players lacking in terms of physicality.”

Asked about Mahrez’s perfromance, Guardiola again qualifies his praise alongside an expectation of improvement.

“Quite well. In the first half he created a lot of chances. The space was there – his full back did not push up – but he is going to grow. Seeing and trainining and learning the way we want to play.”

Improvement is the dominant theme of his interview.

“Without the ball and with the ball – we were like we were last season and that is the principles to come back to the patterns, to the routines, to our football fundamentals and after we try to improve day-by-day and we will be better.”

Leadership communication lesson

The challenge of sustaining success is one any good leader will need to face in their career. Guardiola’s approach in qualifying praise, in stressing the fundamentals that underpin past successes and in highlighting the need and expectation to improve every day, is an excellent approach to this challenge. Qualifying praise should help keep ego’s in check, stressing the fundamentals reminds everyone why they have been successful and the expectation of improvement should help guard against the danger of complacency. It is not only in the football world that results can change quickly and every leader would do well to remember this.