A significant portion of Managing My Life described Sir Alex Ferguson’s approach to man management. Although these skills rarely capture the public’s attention in the same manner of a manager’s on-field antics or tactical acumen, it seems that most managers who maintain long-term success excel in this particular aspect of the role. This is likely because a manager’s ability to interact effective with team members depends greatly on whether he or she understands the personalities in the team.
One of Ferguson’s main beliefs was to favor encouragement ahead of almost all other methods, particularly for error-prone or slumping players. He felt that unless a player had an unusually high self-opinion, dwelling on mistakes or shortcomings could only diminish rather than improve the player. He also took similar care when it came time to inform certain players of bad news (such as not being picked to play in an important game) choosing to speak with individuals privately before revealing the news in a public setting. This method had little to do with trying to make the individual feel better – rather, the idea was that the player was more likely to maintain pride and dignity in public if the news was known to the player in advance.
One thing I perceived as a strength was Ferguson’s intuition about how players received and responded to feedback. As noted above, Ferguson took great care with any negative feedback but he took a less structued approach with positive reinforcement. For the most part, he felt that ‘well done’ or ‘good job’ was more than enough because players were usually the first to know when they had done well. He also recognized the power of the crowd and would find ways to leverage its energy to help his players. One specific tactic I liked was how he would encourage struggling strikers to shoot early and often during home games because the crowd tends to applaud these types of first half efforts regardless whether it resulted in a goal. Ferguson thought hearing the crowd cheer or applaud would spur the player on and help elevate the level of his performance.
Of course, the most important man Ferguson needed to manage was himself. He understood, for example, that he would never have quiet moments for thinking if he didn’t actively carve out such time for himself. His self-awareness is unsurprising (this is an autobiography, after all) because his obvious understanding of others was sure to come first from a deep understanding of himself. One example of such reflection comes when he notes that leaders should only intently observe two or three team members at a time. He felt that focusing on any more people would overextend attention and lead managers to miss key signals that they would otherwise notice when focusing on just a couple players. Although I’m not sure whether the exact number given here applies to everyone, I think it’s important for leaders to know exactly how far their attention can stretch before it comprises their powers of observation.
