Business leaders offer advice to England football team

The most important learning from Fabio Capello’s failure to bring the England football team to victory during the World Cup was the value to be gained from creating strategies and tactics that played to the strengths of both individuals and the team.

 
According to a survey of business managers, coaches, HR and learning and development experts undertaken during the football tournament by providers of the World of Learning Conference & Exhibition, the second key insight was the importance of bringing a disparate group of individuals together as a united, cohesive team, a factor cited by one in five respondents.
 
Andrew Gee, a senior project manager at the conference company, said: “It seemed to become apparent during our World Cup campaign that there was an overall lack of cohesion and unity in the England team. Many pundits commented on numerous occasions that our team of ‘star players’ didn’t seem to gel and play as a team.”
 
But this was a challenge faced by both sports coaches and businesses alike, which meant that it was important to focus on what prevented success in South Africa and what could have been improved upon in order to boost performance, he added.
 
Other key learnings included ensuring that individuals performed at maximum capacity to ensure the overall success of the team (15% of respondents) and the need to bring the team to peak performance despite external demands (13%).
 
Some 9% of those questioned felt it was necessary for individuals to develop empathy and awareness of each other’s strengths and weaknesses, while the same number believed it was crucial to build up team spirit and morale.
 
A further 6% pointed to the need to keep individuals fully motivated over an extended period, while 1% said it was important to understand rivals’ strengths and weaknesses.