I am about to talk football, but please bear with me, as the people issues involved will quickly become evident.
At the start of the current season, when Paulo Di Canio was in charge of Sunderland AFC, supporters and commentators wondered what the following months would bring. He had come in at the end of the previous season with radical ideas of how a football team should be run, along with a reputation which was probably quite terrifying to any with a slightly fragile disposition.
On the 23rd of September, with the club languishing at the bottom of the Premier League with only one point, Di Canio was sacked.
Di Canio had been the short, sharp shock that the team had needed to avoid relegation, but, as we all know, such shocks only have a brief effect before wearing off. The performances and reported discord between players and their Italian head coach suggested his ability to engage with the players and get the best from them over a sustained period was lacking.
And so, all looked lost in the club’s fight for Premier League survival by the time Gus Poyet was appointed as Di Canio’s successor. However, at the time of writing, some four months on, Sunderland are preparing for the Capital One Cup Final at Wembley, and have gone to within a point of moving out of the relegation zone, with barely a change in playing personnel.
It’s difficult to know quite what to believe from the stories you hear coming out of football clubs, but there was talk from Di Canio and players, of players being banned from consuming tomato ketchup (among other things) and from acknowledging members of the non-playing staff. Even when you are not talking about people earning tens of thousands of pounds a week, this sort of regime cannot be easy to handle.
Now, if you were to write a book on how not to do employee engagement, and based it upon many of these stories, it would fail to be taken seriously by most, because it would beggar belief.
Clearly, under Poyet, those same players are engaged by a far less radical head coach, with a management style which has got them working together – with, rather than against, their boss – and performing as a team, organised and cohesive. This hasn’t happened overnight, with the team going from losing most games, to losing less but drawing more, to the run which saw them win their third win in four league games at the start of February, with wins in the cup competitions in between.
Steadily, the new coach has engaged with the players and brought a level of success most around the club probably thought they were incapable of.
As I said, it is never easy to find the whole truth in football gossip, and Di Canio himself claims he wasn’t given enough time to get things right. However, from an HR perspective, it is an interesting case study of employee engagement. Management styles, personality traits and even reputations can play a major role in how people perform for an individual leader.
The largest part of an organisation’s, or in this case team’s, culture tends to be dictated by the leadership style of the person in the leadership position. This has a direct impact upon the climate that leader creates and, in turn the level of engagement which can be expected among those they lead.
When successful employee engagement brings with it increases in productivity and profitability, innovation and a high performance culture, with people who are proud to work for you, delivering goods or services to satisfied and loyal customers, we should learn from every example we see.
Sunderland may not go on to win the cup, or even avoid relegation, but the pride the players will take from their efforts to do so will rub off on the fans and everyone involved in the club. The on and off-field staff will be happier, more productive and the fans – or customers – will be more satisfied. Just like in any other business.
Sue Alderson is a director of Azure Consulting, a Yorkshire-based specialist in leadership development. www.azure-consulting.co.uk. 01924 385600. www.twitter.com/azureconsult
