On sports, leadership and ‘otherness’

This weekend’s Sunday Times carried an article that caught my eye. Written by Martin Hemming it headlined ‘putting thought into sport’. Deeper investigation revealed that it was a kind of promotion piece for the University of Buckingham’s Institute of Sports Humanities. It is there that a new Masters is to be launched, an MA Leadership in Sport. Anyone intrigued by the notion of ‘thought and sport’ should be aware that if they have anything less impressive than a 2:1 degree already, they are deemed not to have done enough thinking to qualify for studying it. That is unless you are a former sportsman with enough ‘experiential learning’ to compensate.

The syllabus was written over the past year by England cricket selection head, Ed Smith, a Cambridge graduate, short-lived Test match batsman, and journalist of some talent. Teachers will include Mike Brearley, perhaps the very personification of thought in sport. Brearley is a psychoanalyst. He is one of my heroes. I have often regarded cricket as ‘chess on legs’ and his manipulation of his pieces in 1981 to wrest control of the Ashes from Australian grasp is the stuff of legend. He seemed constantly to be moves ahead of the opponent.

I have had the good fortune to meet Brearley a few times. He kindly invited me into his home and gave me advice to consider the challenges of changing careers and some of the attractions of Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and writing. He introduced me to the Institute of Psychoanalysis. His reputation is still dominated by the England cricket captaincy period, but his other professional roles have been as distinguished. In his book “On Form” he writes about the elusive nature of ‘form’. He references his life as a sportsman, but the most interesting pieces are when he taps into his knowledge as a philosopher (he was a lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle University), and as a psychoanalyst. For someone like me, his presence is a great advert for the University.

The other headline figures whose presence is likely to attract students are Wall Street trader, Howard Marks and former Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King. Now, it gets more interesting to me. A fusion of my interests in finance, sport and people. Many of my former City colleagues will, like me, have attended inspirational ‘workshops’ on motivation and leadership led by former sportsmen. They are usually advertised, breathlessly and mysteriously, as having a soon-to-be-announced Olympian as speaker. When one arrives, the Olympian will be someone of great distinction, but the audience is disappointed because they learn that the bank or fund has decided that affording Sir Steve Redgrave or Sir Matthew Pinsent or Dame Kelly Holmes or rugby’s finest like Martin Johnson or Johnny Wilkinson was just too much for the budget. After several years the ‘what sports can teach business’ pitch, starts to lose its sense of value

This is not meant to demean the efforts of one discipline to learn from another. I am one of Sir Alex Ferguson’s greatest admirers, and I took a good deal from his paternalistic style and decisive decision making, as a base for my managerial career. I was not very surprised when academia drew him in and utilised him for his post-Old Trafford life. I suspect, though, that sports has done too little to learn from other disciplines and that Smith, with such an impressive roster of teachers is on to something. Given my attraction to the worlds of finance, behavioural economics, and sport, I am persuaded that this will help leaders in the sports industries, become more effective. In the Sunday Times article, I was reminded that Warren Gatland was a school teacher before becoming the giant in rugby coaching that he now is.

Smith is very good on the need for fresh perspectives. He is fascinated by how what was once consensus thinking is now upended. He cites the effectiveness of spin bowling in short form 20/20 cricket, and how football left physical power behind to embrace the technical mastery of small midfield players like Iniesta, Xavi and Silva. I like Smith’s point about the multiplicity of options a midfielder has to embrace and then discard when he is given possession in a tight space on the pitch. How these options need to be refined to one good outcome in a remarkably short space of time. A Grand Prix driver will be going through similar processes when deciding when and where to overtake. Former table tennis international, Matthew Syed is now a journalist, motivational speaker and broadcaster, and he has long advocated using learning from beyond sport to excel within sport. He is among the finest writers at expressing how what goes on in the mind defines sporting outcomes. He is very honest about times when his mental apparatus inhibited his playing ability.

Much of this will cause a wry expression on the face of my one-time professional sport playing brother. He knows Smith and Brearley, and he shares many of their views. Indeed, he may have got there sometime earlier. In the past fifteen years, since he left the game, he has been developing a second innings as a coach and mentor. He was always interested in what made the very best players different from the merely excellent. Playing with Steve Waugh, the nuggety Australian captain, who seemed to get more from his base of natural talent and from his players than anyone else in the modern era, may have started this thought process. What he discovered, though, was often the critical ingredient is openness to fresh ideas. He has worked with many cricketers and footballers, some golfers too. He talks about creating ‘leaders in life’. Focus, and near obsession, is frequently a feature for successful sportsmen, but those at the summit seem to be broader of mind.

Mervyn King’s teaching is designed to bring the appreciation of big decision taking and risk assessment from the world off the sports field. I think there is a good deal to be said for this approach and I wonder if John Major was asked too. He understood decision making, he held three of our four great offices of state, and is an unabashed sports fan. What struck me too was the ‘otherness’ of people who transformed sport. Michael Johnson transformed running, but was once decried for ‘running like a duck’. Subsequent biomechanical studies revealed that what came naturally to him, (he called it the piston style) was the most efficient way to deploy the body. Perhaps the best example is Dick Fosbury, who transformed high jumping for ever. In cricket, it would have to be Muttiah Muralitharan, whose remarkable physical gifts allowed him to impart ‘unnatural’ spin. He still had to learn to control what the gods had given him, but he changed bowling and became the greatest Test match wicket taker.

I hope ‘otherness’ extends to what is learned off the pitch too, by this next generation of leaders. After the abhorrent racist behaviour of the Motenegro ‘fans’ this week, I was hugely impressed by the conduct of England players Raheem Sterling and Callum Hudson-Odoi. Sterling has gone from maligned, often reviled, back page figure to a poster child of sporting grace. After he displayed remarkable calm and magnanimity dealing with a racist fan in a match against Chelsea, he seemed to grow in confidence and to woo the public with dignified twitter comments and TV appearances. He is a force for good and I very much hope his team wins the Champions League because that would make him irresistible as the choice for this season’s Player of the Year. In my opinion, he is already, but I know a few Liverpool fans think it should be Virgil van Dijk.

Sport is affected by society, it can be a mirror to it and it can lead society. I have been thinking about the impact that sportsmen have had on our societal perspective. I think about Cassius Clay changing faith and risking his career for a principle. I think about the way the Aryan master race ideal was undermined so gloriously by Jesse Owens. Perhaps too, of the decision of prisoner of war Bert Trautmann not to be repatriated, but to settle in Lancashire and become a footballing hero at Manchester City. I think he may have softened post war views of what Germans were truly like. At the time (arguably the peak) of the Cold War, the world was charmed by the gymnast Olga Korbut, and then subsequently by the perfection achieved by Nadia Comaneci. Their joyful humanity made it harder to despise Eastern Europeans. More recently, as the great faiths demonise each other through the madnesses of extremist followers, we were lit up by the footballing excellence of Mohammad Salah. Fans on the Kop could be heard singing “if he scores another few, then I’ll be Moslem too”. That is sport leading society.

In conclusion, what I am trying to convey is that sport truly is a place for thinking and thinkers. Smith responded to the criticism that sportspeople, notably footballers, are regarded as a bit thick. He responded, “English culture, for historical reasons, has tended to pigeonhole sport into something that’s anti-intellectual. I just don’t think it’s appropriate.” I am really impressed by what this Masters could offer and whilst I think we have some really distinguished leaders in sport currently, step forward Gatland, Southgate, Sangakkara, and Smith himself, I think the next generation may be still more impressive and truly, what my brother calls ‘leaders in life’. If I over-think it, I can at least return to a child like state of spectating and hero-worship.

On Failure

I never lose. I either win or learn – Nelson Mandela

In an apposite article in Saturday’s Weekend FT, Janan Ganesh wrote about failure after watching Can You Ever Forgive Me? The film is based on the life of Lee Israel, who has seen a promising writing career dry up. She resorts to literary forgeries to enable her to make her rent payments. Failure, writes Ganesh, “is the natural order of life”. It left me wondering. First, is that true? Second, if it is, why are we so driven by the need to succeed?

All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure – Enoch Powell

Perhaps Powell did not need the qualifying word ‘political’. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines failure as ‘the fact of someone or something not succeeding’. So, it is the inverse of success. Is success important? Ganesh writes about marital failures, business failures, about books and films. I thought first about businesses. Take the example of a local retail business that runs out of cash flow. It closes. It has ‘failed’.

However, that same business has provided services and pleasure to its customers, possibly for many years. Were the efforts of its owners and employees really failures? In the years when its cash flows exceeded its cash costs, it was commercially successful, and it was a successful contributor to a community. After closure, would its former customers regard it as a failure, or nostalgically, as a success albeit for a limited duration?

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better – Samuel Beckett

Ganesh references marriages. I am fairly recently divorced. I think a good deal about whether my marriage was a failure. In my mind it has become rationalised as a successful 25 year union. It is a shame that it is not going to be a successful 30 or 50 year union, but it had ceased to make either me or my ex-wife happy. We thought it appropriate to end it. It produced three wonderful children and a series of delightful shared experiences, before no longer satisfying each of us. It did not mean it was a failure. At least, that is what I think. Despite Beckett I doubt I will try it again, though.

There is also the elusive time element of success and failure. There are many examples of artists whose success came late, in some cases after they had died. The image of the writer starving in some inhospitable garret comes to mind. My mind is drawn to the image of Chatterton, poet, forger and suicide, by Henry Wallis Stock. Does the longevity of a writer or poet’s work mean that they were successful, merely unrecognised in their lifetime, or does a squalid living existence mean they were failures? An alternative thought: Is every life a failure, punctuated by successes? Churchill, who endured many failures, may have thought so.

Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm – W S Churchill

A few years ago a long forgotten novel, Stoner, by John Williams, first published in 1965, suddenly became a bestseller after a recommendation by Ian McEwan in a radio programme. Its initial publication had sold fewer than 2000 copies. Failure? Julian Barnes loved it and wrote an article in The Guardian in 2013 describing it as ‘the must read novel’ of the year. It became Waterstones book of that year and is now (rightly, I think) regarded as one of the finest novels in the C20 US literary canon. It covers work, marriage and passions, and all of them are profoundly disappointing to the protagonist, William Stoner. It is achingly sad and I defy any reader not to be affected by it. In a way, it is a long hymn to the effect of failure(s) on a man’s life. At times the sadnesses mean it is a painful read, but a remarkable one. Now though, it is a publishing success.

In the film which Ganesh so enjoyed it catalysed the need to write his FT article, the supporting actor is brilliantly played by Richard E Grant. He is probably still best known for his role in the film, Withnail and I, even though he won an Oscar nomination for Can You Ever Forgive Me? Withnail and I is about two unemployed actors. It reeks failure. The film itself did poorly after its 1987 launch, but subsequently acquired a cult following. In the past decade it has regularly featured in surveys of ‘Best Ever British Films’. Was it a success? It would be regarded as one now, I think. A success dwelling on failure, in keeping with Williams’s novel.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail – Confucius

So, failure remains an elusive thing, although most people will tell you they want to avoid it. We worship success, but in many cases cannot identify what it is, either. Not every person measures things alike. Is not being successful, which requires a whole new set of definitions, automatically a failure? When I was going through the county schools cricket system, I played for Essex’s U15 team alongside the precociously talented Paul Prichard, who was a calendar year younger than the rest of our team. He single handedly won us a game at Middlesex with an outstanding unbeaten century. He turned professional in his mid-teens, and went on to captain the Essex first XI after a few more years. Paul never won a Test cap, though. In his teens, it was expected that he would scale the game’s heights. Was he a success? He was certainly a fine player.

If failure is the inverse of success, does the magnitude of failure reflect how close one is to being a success? In Mike Brearley’s excellent book ‘On Form’ he discusses the sporting phenomenon of ‘choking’. He writes elegantly about Jean van de Velde’s meltdown on the 72nd hole of an Open Championship he had all but won. Choking is contagious and seems to affect teams more than individuals, and Brearley writes about the remarkable inability of the South African cricket team to win the World Cup from positions of great strength in critical matches. Being an eminent psychoanalyst allows him to bring it into the personal sphere of non-sportsmen and he references the destructive way it can impact the most intimate of relationships. People seem to be predisposed to sabotage their own happiness, their prospective success. He, himself, is almost a perfect study. He is revered as England’s finest ever captain, but regarded by many as a batsman whose batsmanship did not merit a place in the team because he was not considered Test class.

In the same edition of the Weekend FT that offered Ganesh’s thought-provoking words, was an article by Murad Ahmed about footballing genius, Zinedine Zidane. The piece had the words “An Obsessive Winner” in the title. Zidane has just accepted the offer to return as head coach to Real Madrid. After enjoying unparalleled success in leading the club to three successive UCL titles, he left. The need and inability to replicate his success has cost two men their job in a matter of months. Now he is back. His success as a coach was to deliver something unprecedented. He is also one of the most decorated players of all time. Not only was he successful, he played with balletic poise and a remarkable vision that set him apart from the other twenty one on the pitch whenever he played. Or so it seemed. So if Real do not recover next season to reach another UCL final, or deny great rivals FC Barcelona another La Liga title in Spain, will he be deemed to have failed?

If the definition of success, especially sustained success, is so impossibly demanding, should we really aspire to be successful? Top performers demonstrate obsessive will. Federer’s tennis, Woods’s golf at his peak, top team coaches like Warren Gatland and dance’s prima ballerinas, the great opera voices, the outstanding jazz virtuosi. Yet there is a remarkable correlation between these elite performers, athletic and artistic (and also large business CEOs) and psychopathy. Is that what we want in our lives? Zidane and peers often demonstrate the power of being an outsider. He is Kabyle, a Berber ethnic group and classifies his identity as Kabyle first, Algerian second and French third. Do we desire the solitariness that frequently accompanies not being a failure? He reminds me of Martina Navratilova, who had national and sexual ‘outsider’ identity to both handle, but to use as a motivator. Generally society prizes sociability and networking skills. In the Big 5 personality traits we appreciate agreeableness. There is no use for or appreciation of, ‘single mindedness’. Perhaps what society prizes is incompatible with success. Perhaps we are unconsciously promoting failure?

Studies have shown that achievement is a relatively straightforward composition of ability, environmental factors and effort. Yet we compare people’s achievements as though all have equal opportunity. We do not celebrate someone of apparently lower ability, but who may have been constrained by environmental factors like quality of teaching and/or facilities. We make a false comparison. It may be why there is so much strain on the university selection procedures, especially for elite universities. As the US is now embarrassingly proving, even when the environmental factors are good, the need to be seen to succeed and then benefit from the leverage a best in class education can offer, leads to cheating and larceny on a grand scale. Perhaps the only way we can truly decide on success and failure is to measure effort. All other qualities are too loaded with immeasurable advantages.

The musician known as Plan B gave a wonderful interview last year to journalist James O’ Brien for his podcast series ‘Unfiltered’. In it, he described the challenges of his educational environment and introduced me to the term PRUs. A Pupil Referral Unit is a sort of crowd control exercise for kids who are too inattentive and disruptive in a traditional school. He and his cohort would definitely have been tagged ‘failures’, or at least as ‘failing’. He has gone on to make a huge success of his career, but has continued to devote time and money to PRUs, mainly through supporting the provision of music teaching. That, to me, is real success. Music is a great release for those who find themselves inarticulate in a traditional school environment. I am a big admirer of Plan B, and he is definitely someone who merits the tag, success, but clearly that was not always the case, and highly unlikely at one time in his life. My point is that failure does not endure, just as success is fleeting. I regard myself as a ‘half-empty’ man much of the time, but this is a message of optimism.

I have come to think of ‘failure’ as an opportunity to consider what it is about ourselves that may have contributed to not being a success. Not getting that job. Did you really want it? Not winning that tennis match. Do you really want to invest time on practising that backhand? Not speaking up in a room of debaters at work. Do you really care enough about the company’s policies? In my early career I managed to bring one phase, when I was a trader, to a swift halt by using an expletive to describe my boss, when I was attending a social event. Unfortunately, he was in earshot. Or was it unfortunate? I had little respect for him and I was frustrated that he had a cohort of favourites and sycophants. My career took a fresh turn, which subsequently earned me promotions that I doubt he would have ever awarded. Later, I seemed adept at driving over career pot holes and undermining my own progress with a little too much attitude, but I earned an income, and achieved a level of responsibility, that exceeded my early ambition. It allowed me to realise my ambitions for my family. I had a few failures, but I think my City career was a success.

What do I think of failure now? I think it is less frightening than I would have imagined when I started work in the City in my teens. In those early 1980’s days I was very anxious not to fail, and to try to be a success. Thatcherism and yuppiedom were celebrators of individualism and success. I was going to be a success. Now I am an unperformed playwright and a trainee psychotherapist, but I do not feel like a failure. Change is normal in our lives and success is fleeting. Failure may be more about sins of omission. Failure to take good advice. (Guilty). And failure to grow by being complacent, and operating in a comfort zone. My children are of an age where they have fine, mature minds. They also have a little of my stubbornness. They may not feel they need much advice, but if I were giving some, and believing that it was being listened to, I would highlight Mandela’s view of learning, and Churchill’s retention of enthusiasm. They will have many rich experiences ahead, some which will be uncomfortable. But all will be well. In other Churchillian words, “keep buggering on”.