Liverpool’s win at Barcelona
Don’t worry, we don’t dabble in sports reporting. This article is about CEO communication. More specifically, it’s about how managers deal with the results they achieve. Liverpool’s manager gave us a good lesson in this last week.
Last Wednesday night, FC Barcelona defeated Liverpool FC in the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals. The 3-0 scoreline spoke volumes. Barca’s Lionel Messi had once again shown everyone what he is made of. But in the post-match interview, Liverpool coach Jürgen Klopp surprised everyone with some excellent leadership. He accepted that you can do everything right and still lose. And he was full of praise for his team. Klopp: “I really enjoyed the game. Apart from the result, I thought everything went well.
For ZEIT Online columnist and philosopher Wolfram Eilenberger, this was a golden opportunity. Under the title “0:3, but everything else was great”, the author pays tribute to Klopp’s serenity: “Our entire culture would be different – and possibly much healthier – if more people in excellent leadership positions could bring themselves to make this admission of existential exposure and powerlessness in public more often, or even, as Jürgen Klopp did last Wednesday, to celebrate it with cheerful composure. This would apply all the more to the presumed willingness to set such accents even in cases of great success. (…) The web of chance is to be closed and woven ever tighter with the help of big data. But what will be the result? The tighter the reporting net, the more tiny and potentially crucial holes there are in it. In other words, the real and rather paradoxical moral of the level of analysis we have now reached may lie in an ever sharper awareness of how utterly unavailable great success in football really is in decisive situations. And not just for individual matches, but for entire seasons or even coaching careers. What big data in football reveals for all to see is not the fundamental controllability of the game, but the exact opposite. Jürgen Klopp, who is showing and saying it more and more clearly these days, has already made his peace with this insight. It was a truly great, primal and therefore absolutely title-worthy victory. Nobody can take that away from him.”
What is true in football is not much different in business. Managers have to admit that despite big data, success remains unpredictable. Therefore, successes should be celebrated with the team, and the team should be encouraged when failures occur. As a leader, failure – and success – should never be so close that it throws you off your game. After failure comes success – and vice versa. The behaviour of super-tactician Klopp also has a lot to do with what lies ahead: Just three days later, victory over Newcastle was the only way to keep their Premier League title hopes alive. And next Tuesday, Liverpool welcome Barça to Anfield for the return leg. A 3-0 win over Barça would be nothing short of miraculous. But managers are also there to create the conditions that make miracles possible in the first place. That’s why Klopp’s words after the Barcelona game were such a boost to the team’s motivation.
Transparency notice
The author bought a Reds football scarf in Liverpool when he was just 12 years old and is “not entirely neutral” when it comes to football. This may have slightly influenced this article, but hopefully not made it unpalatable.