The Belgian Red Devils as inspiration for your leadership (culture)

The link between sport and business is not new, and the road to success in both sport and business has many similarities. When coach Roberto Martinez came onboard in 2016 to lead the Red Devils, many Belgians were skeptical. Did he have the experience to lead our most talented generation ever to a price? Five years later, we can say that he has done an excellent job getting the best out of the talent pool at his disposal. Roberto Martinez today is a natural leader of his troops and has earned the respect of many, including his players and the wider audience.

His view on leadership is outspoken, engaging, and relevant for all of us in business leadership roles too:

⚽️ As a leader, you want to get a group of brains thinking in the same way to achieve the same goal.

⚽️ To do so, you need to understand why each individual is there. Individually different, but all valuable. “I don’t believe in sayings like “there is no ‘I’ in team.” You need to satisfy the individual first, then create a team based on fulfilled individuals.

⚽️ Everyone in the group needs to have absolute clarity in their role. Sometimes as leaders, we decide but don’t ask if people are happy with that role and responsibility or if they can do it.

⚽️ Constant improvement is a crucial element you want to install as a leader. You can never be in a high-performance group if you don’t improve what you did yesterday. It could be at every level; it could be minimal. Being able to arrive earlier, having better communication. You don’t always need to measure the impact on the end product of your performance.

This culture of constant improvement is the foundation of new cross-company leadership. Change is everywhere and is coming to us at an unprecedented speed. Business and revenue models are changing because of digital; people must deal with all this change.

Change can feel natural for some, but most of us human beings have difficulty processing change. You want to make sure your employees embrace the new direction your company is heading towards or the new way of doing things. Big bang changes are often not a success and hard to digest.

To prepare your employees better for the constant change (let’s face it, this is the new world we live in), you might want to go for a step-by-step approach. Consider installing the ‘1% improvement ideas in your company culture:

• How can you write your e-mail 1% more impactful?
• How can we run this 45-minute meeting 1% more effectively?
• How can we make 1% better use of Microsoft Teams as a collaboration tool?

Small perpetual changes lead to big results in the end. Fingers crossed this also guides our Devils to the cup on July 11!