Glasner: Lessons in leadership and life

Sitting down to speak with students at the Business School at King’s College London, he shared some pearls of wisdom from his time in South London and beyond.

Although this was a chance for the crowd to ask the manager a question, he started with a question of his own for the students.

“What is the most important thing for a teacher?” The answers came back: confidence, the ability to listen, patience. All were correct, but Glasner was looking for something more.

“The most important thing for a teacher is that you love children, because you will work with them every day,” he explained. “So what is the most important thing for a manager?

“The most important thing for a manager is that you like and love people, because you work with people.

“Every individual is worth talking to, is worth listening to, because everybody, regardless whether old, young, which culture, which country, which religion, everybody wants to be seen. Everybody wants to be heard.

“If you don’t care about people, they feel it. Then it’s very difficult, because what you want when you lead a group is not to always have to pull them to follow you, but to walk a common pathway together. It’s important that they want to follow you. You have to show everyone is important.

“This is the headline about leadership, is to like people.”

Any working environment, particularly one as highly pressurised as top-level football, can bring about tensions, but the best way to address these are to have trust in one another.

“First of all, you have to know your players, your colleagues, your staff,” the Glasner said. “We have 25 players and a similar amount of staff with coaches, analysts, medical staff and others.

“The first thing when I arrived here in February was listening, talking, asking. Then you get information. Not just talking.

“The first meeting was laying out some non-negotiables in terms of how we treat each other. It’s always two words: respect and trust.

“Then it was about asking. To understand somebody, you have to know where they come from and their personal situation. Sometimes it was strange for the players to be open, but when they get that trust they realise that it’s not something [to be used] against them.

“For example, we would ask the players how they slept the night before. ‘Why do you want to know?’

“But we have a player with two small children, and with small children they might get their teeth or something, and so he was only sleeping three or four hours per night. This can have an impact in training or in getting injured, so we want to know.

“I say to the players, if your children are sick, stay at home, because it’s important for the family. Yes, you can be here physically but if you’re not here mentally because of troubles elsewhere it makes no sense.

“From my experience, when they then come in the next day they feel like they have to show their best and perform at their best.”

Although every manager wants to preside over non-stop success, one of the key aspects of the job is learning how to guide a squad through the more disappointing times. Glasner says looking after one’s self is as important as pushing harder on the training pitch.

“When you have tough times, it’s important to do something good for yourself,” he explained. “It’s the same as having problems, what many are doing is going into their room, close the door, blinds down.

“But you have to do the opposite. Sometimes I say to the players: we have nice weather, take your girlfriends, take your friends, go out, drink a coffee in the afternoon so you get into a good mood again.

“This is also what I try, so it’s not just working, more effort, more effort. Creativity needs space, and when you want to find ideas, you need space for it. When you're always sitting in your office, it doesn't work anymore.

“I say: ‘OK, let's go home, let's play padel tennis or an hour on the driving range playing golf’, because then you’re not thinking about it and it's easier to find the solution, to find the right words.

“It’s not always that easy, of course, but for me it’s the best way to get this turnaround from being in a tough, bad situation to get out of it.”