Lessons about Leadership from Pep Guardiola

I don’t know how closely you follow football (soccer), but something astounding has been happening in the English Premier League (EPL). Manchester City are the reigning champions. They are the team of this Century. They have the most money, the best players, and the world’s greatest coach – Pep Guardiola. If you don’t follow the EPL, Pep made a cameo appearance on Ted Lasso.

Allow me to list some of Man City’s achievements under Pep. Prior to 2016 when he joined, Man City had won 10 titles in their 136-year history. Since then, they have won 16. They have just won the EPL four times in a row – the first team ever to do so. In 2017/18 they won by the largest margin ever, scoring the most points ever. Their current striker last year scored the most goals ever in one season. Pep has overseen the greatest turn-around in a club, and is widely recognised as the greatest current coach of the world game.

Australian Ange Postecoglou has just said being a football coach is the hardest job in the world. It’s harder than being the Prime Minister because you have an election every weekend. The EPL has 20 clubs. On average, 16.2 coaches were stood down per season over the past 10 years. If you are going poorly, sack the coach. If you are winning, it’s a sure sign of good leadership - and Pep is the best. That is how we interpret and explain the data.

In the past 12 games, Man City have lost eight, drawn three, and won once. On current form, they rank bottom of the EPL. How do we explain this? Is it a failure of leadership? Could Pep have fallen from being the best coach of his generation to the worst coach in the past three months?

This is a fascinating case study in the attribution of leadership as the one causal factor. Tolstoy makes this observation: “… the impulse to seek causes is innate in the soul of man …. (who) snatches and the first and most easy explanation, and says here is the cause.”[1] We are drawn to mono-causal explanations when the reality is far more complex and even beyond our comprehension.

In explaining the success of an organisation, we tend to attribute leadership as the underlying causal factor that influences all others. We appreciate there are several factors to winning, but it is the ‘leader’ who drives all of these. Even the leaders themselves believe they are the primary cause. Again, to quote Tolstoy, “Napoleon… was like a child, sitting in the carriage, pulling the straps within it, and fancying he is moving it along.”[2]

The fall of Assad and the rise of Ahmed al-Sharaa in Syria is a case in point. Ahmed’s rise to power is not best explained by his leadership prowess. Rather it is events in Russia, Israel, Iran and Gaza, to name but a few. For Tolstoy, reality is always more complex and multi-factorial than we appreciate, and we are carried along by its ebbs and flows.  

It's also possible to read Scripture and attribute leadership as the causal factor to success. When a good king sits on the throne, things go well for Israel. When a bad king reigns, things go backwards. Jesus invested heavily in the 12 disciples. Paul was concerned about raising Timothy and Titus as protégés, and encouraged them to do the same.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to Pep – he has been a successful leader as a captain and coach for 20-plus years. How do we explain the radical downturn? One explanation is injuries and an aging squad. But contingency and succession planning are all part of good leadership. He still has a healthy squad of brilliant players and world class substitutes.

Commentators are talking about how there is something wrong with the confidence and culture at Man City. I agree. But here is the thing – we attribute winning culture to the leader. If there is a cultural problem at Man City, the problem and solution remain a function of leadership, or so we imagine.

Let’s return to Scripture. I do not read the book of 2 Kings as a failure of leadership as the causal factor. Israel and Judah’s kings are a reflection of national decline – not the cause. There is a correlation between the two. You get the leader you deserve. Leaders are a product of your culture, more so than the cause of it.

Jesus invests in the 12, but all deny him, and one betrays him. Paul’s letters are mostly written to churches, not individuals. Paul stays the longest at Ephesus (perhaps because he is imprisoned there), and the second longest at Corinth. Yet Corinth is the most dysfunctional of the NT churches. The Church at Thessalonica appears to have the least problems, yet Paul is there only briefly, and there is no mention of another leader-type figure being present.

What then can we say of leadership, and the causes of organisational health and growth? I am not suggesting leadership is nothing. If anything, I am suggesting leadership is but one factor, with perhaps organisational culture, social historical movements, and fitting your context being more critical.

Historians are often asked a similar question but in a different way. Would there have been Marxism without Marx, The Reformation without Luther, or the Beatles without John Lennon? In other words, does history turn around a ‘great man’[3], or was Marx/Luther/Lennon just the right person at the right place at the right time, and if not them, someone else would have emerged into the moment? Most historians lean to the latter. They highlight the social-historical moment as the context in which the actions of any individual become possible and even probable.    

That we attribute success to individual leaders tells you more about us than it does about leadership and success. One factor, cause-and-effect explanations that focus on individual human agency intuitively make sense for 20/21st Century Westerners. We are drawn to them. We feel good about them because they allow us to think we understand things, and can control them. Pep is a reminder that life is more complex.

The next time your church is winning or losing, think a little more widely than just the coach. Most churches grew in Australia in the 1950s and most are now shrinking. Most churches in the West are experiencing decline, whereas many churches in Sub-Saharan Africa are growing. To suggest we had good leaders in the 1950s but they all forgot how to lead from the 1960s onwards seems flawed. To suggest we have few leaders whereas Africa has many seems unlikely.

Leadership is important – get the best coach you can, and then invest and train them to be better. But ‘leadership’ does not explain everything that is happening in church life at present.  

 [1] Tolstoy, War and Peace, XIII.1.

[2] War, XIII.10.

[3] ‘Great man’ is a popular theory of leadership that originated in the 19th Century.