Two important lessons entrepreneurs can learn from top football coaches.
In this article, I want to share two important lessons that entrepreneurs (and everyone else) can learn from top football managers.
I like to watch football, that is no secret. People get surprised that I have such an “ordinary” hobby because, as a spiritual guide and life coach, people expect me to do nothing else than drink tea in silence under a tree.
Quick side note, when I talk about football, I speak of European football (Soccer).
I support Liverpool for many reasons — I like the club, I love the manager and the team, and I love the way they play — it’s aggressive, offensive, never boring.
As the season is drawing closer to the end, Liverpool is 6 points behind Manchester City, one of the biggest (and richest) clubs in Europe. We are one game behind, which makes the title race really close.
People (me included) are getting excited. The premier league (The English top league) is the most challenging and competitive league in world football. Football is the most competitive sport in the world.
To win the league, you have to make very few mistakes. You play 38 league games in the season (excluding cup games and European games). Each win is 3 points, a draw is 1 point, and a loss is zero points. That means that the maximum number of points you can get over the whole season (August to end of May the following year) is 114 points. Winning teams in the past years have had to flirt with 100 points to win the league. This is crazy.
Even if you had 100 points, a team with 101 points would take the title. There are no consolation prizes.
So as you see, it is very competitive, very tight, and exhilarating. There are thousands of factors that make the great teams great and the lesser teams not as good. But as we passed the middle of the season recently, although there are more than 40 points still to take, there has been a pattern that I have seen that was striking.
The managers of the best teams do not seem to care about winning the titles. The only thing they care about is winning the game in front of them. Have a look on youtube for interviews, both the Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp and Man City’s manager Pep Guardiola. Journalists and fans are super excited and constantly ask them about the title race. The answer they get is stoic: I don’t know, I need to focus on the next game and do the best we can to win it.
In a recent interview, I remember Klopp saying something along the lines of: “I understand that the fans and you (journalists) are getting excited, but that is your job. My job is to focus on winning the game in front of me, and then we will see. Inside the club, we are not thinking about the title, we are focused on what we can do to win the next 90 minutes on the field.”
Another pattern is critical to take with us: they do not care or look at the opponents. Of course, if they have to play against them, they will analyze their set-pieces, their strategies, their players, etc. But they will not focus on their results.
In a recent interview, Klopp was asked if he watched his main rival’s games, hoping that they would lose points here and there. His answer was clinical: no. They watch their games to analyze and strategize when they play against them. But they do not focus on anyone else’s path to the title. They focus on themselves and only on themselves. They focus on improving each game. Inside each game, they focus on each play, each set piece on each press, and counter-press, on each pass. They focus on their own standard.
Conclusion:
Two lessons are crucial to take away while watching these competitive supermen.
The first, as we saw, is that thinking about winning a title and thinking about the end of the race is a mental and emotional distraction. You don’t focus on what can or might happen at the end of the season; you focus on what is here at hand. In other words, you focus on the PROCESS, not on the OUTCOMES. You always have control over the process, never over the outcomes.
Do that too. Put your enegery where it matters. Don’t focus on the results, on your goals; focus on your WINs → What’s Important NOW.
Second, focus on yourself, not on your competitors. In that context, this means that you need to focus on your process and not worry about what others are doing. For example, when you play against a competitor, don’t hope for them to lose; that is a waste of time and energy. Do your best to win. You cannot control other people. Also, wishing for someone to make a mistake or, worst, to get hurt, is dishonorable and will rot your Soul.
Instead, focus on your form, focus on your standards. Train, learn, improve, perform, repeat.
Focus on your own work. The results might come, or they might not, that is of little significance. But, if you want to put all chances to succeed on your side, you’ll focus on the process.
