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When you think of Sir Alex Ferguson, what are the words that come to mind? If you’re like me, you may have landed on words like these (full confession: I’m not a Manchester Utd fan):
Intense
Relentless
Ruthless
High standards
Disciplinarian
Now let me share with you Cristiano Ronaldo’s favourite story relating to his time at Manchester United, being coached by Sir Alex:
“There were so many beautiful moments that we had together. Not just winning things. But in my heart I keep the most difficult things. Probably he doesn't remember, but I will say it because it's a beautiful story.
One day, my father was in hospital, and I was so emotional, very low. And I spoke with him and he said: ‘Cristiano, go there for two or three days.’ “We had difficult games [coming up],” he continues, “and I was a key player in that moment.
He said: ‘It will be tough because we have difficult games, but I understand your situation and I’ll leave you [out] and you can go and see your father.
For me, these are the most important things
So, which is it?
Is Sir Alex intense, relentless and ruthless - a hard taskmaster”?
Or is he empathetic, compassionate and people focused - a “player-centred” coach?
Gif by manutd on Giphy
We’re often drawn into these kind of binary choices. Media narratives encourage it. Coaching debates reinforce it. Even our own identities as coaches can push us to pick a side. But research into Serial Winning Coaches (SWC’s) - those who win repeatedly, across teams and decades, suggest these binaries miss the point entirely. The research, led by Sergio Lara-Bercial and Cliff Mallett, found that what separates these coaches isn’t which side the choose. It’s that they can sit inside the contradiction.
They are both, not or.
In her latest book, Strong Ground, Brené Brown describes this as working with paradox. A paradox is a situation where two seemingly opposing ideas are both true at the same time. Central to the research into SWC’s is a paradox. Lara-Bercial and Mallett came to call it driven benevolence (they have since changed the language they use to be ‘caring determination’). Think of driven benevolence (caring determination) as:
The relentless pursuit of excellence, balanced with genuine care for people
The coaches in the study were often described as:
They caring deeply and demanding more
Being stable in values and flexible in behaviour
Chasing winning and building people
They were both, not or.
One athlete, talking about a coach from the study, described it this way:
“I think the consequences [of tough decisions] are, he feels massive pressure to get it right because it’s people’s lives. People are there, giving up their all of their twenties and some of their thirties because they love [the sport], but when you have to make selection decisions it’s people’s lives. And that’s tough especially for the Olympics.
He’s not a robot with no emotion. He understands that that affects people, but they’re decisions that have to be made and he makes them in the best interest of [national sport] and he justifies that, but it’s still tough for him"
The coach is highly empathetic. He’s deeply aware of the human impact of his decisions. Because of that, he applies tremendous rigour and care to those decisions. And yet, when the decision needs to be made, he doesn’t avoid it. The vision for the programme leads.
As Lara-Bercial and Mallet put it so eloquently, SWC’s are ruthless, but not heartless.
Once you start looking for it, paradox shows up everywhere in coaching (and leadership more broadly):
Focusing on process often leads to better outcomes
Be yourself, but adapt to the people in front of you
Be humble and open, while also inspiring confidence
Balancing the need to be decisive with the need to collaborate and be inclusive
Balancing winning today with building for the next five years
Brown captures why this is so hard:
“Humans get so uncomfortable straddling the tension and uncertainty that surfaces when two seemingly opposing ideas are both valid that we often simply give up. We let go of the tension and pick one idea, normally the one most familiar to us, and hold tightly to that”
But this is exactly the capability serial winning coaches develop. The poet John Keats called it negative capability - the ability to remain in uncertainty, doubt and ambiguity without rushing to resolution. Staying in that uncomfortable space long enough to see more clearly. And when we do, something shifts.
We realise that sometimes challenging someone to give more is an act of care, because we can see who they might become.
We realise that owning a mistake in front of a team builds trust, not authority loss.
We realise that strong relationships don’t remove hard decisions, they make them more understandable when they arrive.
So if you’re feeling a tension between two competing ideas:
Care and standards
Patience and urgency
Empathy and accountability
Resist the urge to resolve it too quickly. Stay there. Remember, we can be ‘both’, not ‘or’. You may find that the most effective way forward isn’t choosing one side at all. You might find that where you land is actually a more profound, and more impactful, approach to the situation.
Quote of the Week
“Once you bid farewell to discipline, you say goodbye to success”
Sir Alex Ferguson
“Excite me. Try a 40-metre pass. Take on a defender. I don't care if it doesn't come off... make the game quicker. Please, excite me.”
Also, Sir Alex Ferguson
An Even Deeper Dive
A deep dive into what driven benevolence looks like in action, discussed and debated by some quality coaches and leaders in performance sport:
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