Jose Mourinho recently made revealing comment indirectly admitting the unsustainability of his leadership style in the current dispensation. He wants to put happiness ahead of winning trophies and is also open to managing a national team since no top club is coming for him. The decision of the Chelsea Football Club to snub Jose Mourinho with his experience and profile for Frank Lampard, a one-season tested coach, is instructive for leaders who achieve results in ways detrimental to the culture of their organisations.
One would have expected Chelsea FC would to be the saving grace for Jose whose experience could help the club before the end of her ban in the transfer market. His greatest admirers, the fans of the club have turned their back on the Special One and would instead take the risk of allowing the club’s legend, Lampard to fail or succeed.
Is it that Chelsea FC is no longer hungry for trophies or they would rather be a club with a peaceful dressing room atmosphere and low exposure to negative press than having the Special One back? Clubs like Juventus, Paris Saint- Germain, Real Madrid and even the little rated Newcastle snubbed Jose because they put their core values and brand above the likely trophies Mourinho could bring to them.
I once referred to Jose as an artisan who treats his work tools with disdain and expects the best performance from the tools. He wants to achieve results at all cost to meet his psychological needs as the best coach, but many times creates environments not in line with the culture of the clubs he is trying to make great. This is significant conflict in the objective of the manager and the way the clubs might want to be seen in the social media dispensation.
I guess Mourinho’s laxity in the area of managing his players and the workplace cost him more than he ever envisaged at this time of his career. He’s noted to have said that he’s such a good and respected coach and he can get another job within two weeks if Chelsea FC sacked him in 2008. And truth be told, he was offered the job to manage Inter-Milan within a few weeks of his exit from Chelsea. He won the Champion leagues for Inter on 22nd May 2010 leaving Italy for Real Madrid in Spain as the most controversial coach in the Italian league within two years.
What has changed for José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Félix? Why are the clubs snubbing this great tactician for other coaches with fewer records of job-related performance but with little or no history of negative press and conflicts in the dressing rooms?
Football is leaving Jose Mourinho not because his skills as a coach are entirely out-dated. I have questioned the relevance of tactical periodisation, Jose Mourinho’s favourite style in my article Parking the bus workplace. The players of today, unlike the days of John Terry and Claude Makelele at Chelsea, prefer to be under pressure as an offensive team, not a defensive team as practiced by Jose. However, Jose is still a good coach.
What organisations like Juventus, Inter-Milan, Real Madrid, Chelsea and other clubs that have snubbed Jose recently did was to put their core values and organisations’ culture above the glory of winning laurels. The clubs want to achieve results decently and respect the goose laying the golden eggs. They want to spend less time resolving avoidable conflicts and do less of public relation management where what is presented to the public space is better than what is experienced by the internal stakeholders of the club.
It is not only the football clubs that need to be conscious of the way they treat their staff. Business owners and leaders must also stop the celebration of leaders who achieved results violating the staff and enjoyed the benefits of indefensible behaviours. We are no longer in the machine age where people can be treated without recourse to their emotions. All companies should be mindful of how their leaders treat people, including the internal customers who are labouring to create value for the other stakeholders.
One of my clients was surprised when I insisted that a top-performing staff not living the core values of the company in terms of respect for others must be shown the exit door. I explained to the business owner that it is better to lose a performing staff than to corrupt the entire system and damage the brand of the company.
Some of the indicators of workplace where results are achieved in ways devoid of respect for people include but not limited to having a strong key man board member that encourages sycophancy. The value of the strong key man is ultimately the culture of the company. Other indicators are companies that chase their peers in the industry without a strategy to win in the market place but through undue pressure and abuse of their workforce.
Such an environment is where the performance outcomes and rewards benefit leaders at the expense of the staff that made it happen, a place where loyal staff are eased out without reason other than short-term financial returns, and many other unwholesome practices, including high budget for managing the media and killing negative news about the company.
In places where unruly leaders are tolerated for profits, the results are often unsustainable, and the system will also benefit the leaders at the detriment of the staff who are the best assets of the company.
For our society to succeed, we must create sustainable institutions. We must respect the people and know that we are not in the age where slavery can produce results without side effects.
Babs Olugbemi
