Football coach Pal Dardai’s advice on leadership and teamwork
I want to talk about coach Pal Dardai, the up and coming Hungarian football coach. No worries, this is not a post about football. Frankly, I have close to zero interest in the game. Sorry.
What I’m interested in instead is the psychology of teamwork and leadership. And that’s why we’re talking about Dardai today. He’s already a bit of a sensation in football circles, but the business world has yet to pick up on him. Although a few months ago Forbes’s Hungarian edition published a great interview with him.
With this post, I want to explore some of the ideas and values he’s game is built on! Before we find out what they are, let me put his new come fame into context.
Do you remember what happened this summer? Held every four years, the European Football Championship happened. You know when the Hungarian National Football Team last made it to the Championship? In 1972. It took us a whole 44!!! years to make it again. Not only did we make it, we got into the best sixteen, before being beaten by Belgium 4:0. Which was OK, they were that much better.
It was a big deal, a big feat. Had the team not fired it’s previous trainer to put Dardai in charge in September 2014, this would not have happened. What makes his tenure even more special, is that less than 10 months later, in June 2015, he left the team. What he achieved, he achieved in that short timeframe. (His successor, Bernd Storck built on that work to eventually take the team all the way to the Championship.)
Dardai is such a honey badger, that while coaching the Hungarian National team, he was also the acting lead coach of Hertha BSC, a team in the Bundesliga, Germany’s primary football competition. Yes, he was coaching two major teams at once, one in Berlin, the other in Hungary. That’s a bit like Steve Jobs running Pixar and Apple at the same time.
Did he crack under the double load? No. Guess what?! Both teams rose super high in super short time under his reign compared to where they were before him. Just read this news snippet: ”Footballers playing in the Bundesliga have voted Hungarian Pál Dárdai, whose Berlin club Hertha BSC finished in seventh place in the 18-member league, best lead coach of the 2015–2016 season. A total of 235 players who took part in the vote, organised by well-known German sports magazine Kicker, with the Hungarian trainer collecting 17.5 per cent of votes. The Berlin-based club was a major surprise of the season, struggling for survival in 2014–15 but securing seventh place — and participation in the Europa League — in the subsequent season.”
Like Steve Jobs had to let go of Pixar, so did Dardai have to say good bye to the Hungarian team, and return to his long time club, Hertha. The owners of the club could no longer support his divided attention. And they were right. Dardai was on loan of sorts to Hungary, and although he didn’t crack under the load, the risk of him burning out, and Hertha to loose it’s traction was too big. (In hindsight, he agrees with Hertha’s decision.)
So once again: this guy shows up. Takes over two hopelessly lost teams. And within six months, levels up their game significantly. That’s more than luck.
I felt the best I can do is to just collect a list of quotes from his book on leadership and teamwork, translate and share them with you. They are quite powerful on their own. Translate them to your industry or situation, and you’ll get the point.
1. “In my view, the most important thing is: to enjoy football. People who talk about pressure… I’d like to laugh them in the face. Do you know who can’t stand pressure? The uneducated. Because they constantly fear they make errors. You can’t play football living in fear. Or if you can, there’s no fun in it. And then what’s the point?”
2. “I think a coach has two big chances to stand his team beside him. The first team discussion, and the first training session. It is quickly decided if you engage the team or not.”
3. “The only way to dig our football out of the rut is to pull together. We need fans, coaches, managers and uncompromising players for that. It was obvious that as long as we don’t all pull in the same direction, dreaming is useless.”
4. “I don’t ask footballers to do something they can’t execute. What goes well, that’s what has to be relied upon.”
5. “I can give my team humanity, organization and passion.”
6. “I am just as possessed as when I was a kid kicking the ball against the firewall.”
7. “I am able to achieve that we all live and die for football.”
8. “To this day I still think with a player’s head (Dardai used to play for Hertha, the team he now coaches), so it takes me less than two minutes to be on the same wavelength with them.”
10. I have mutual respect with players, but I’m not friends with them. I keep my three steps of distance.
12. “Wanna know why I’m successful? Because I have never been jealous of anyone.”
13. “By then, I no longer wanted to win the match alone. I realized this is a team game, and nothing beats the feeling of belonging to a real team.”
Bonus: meet the ever smiling man himself, and listen to a childhood story of how obtaining a ping-pong set shaped him to become an enduring, persistent player later.
Dardai often invites Hungarian coaches to go and visit him and Hertha in Berlin to “learn from the west”, and develop. I only wish this invitation was extended to business and team leaders too.
