Managers have got to Mou-ve with the times

OLD SCHOOL WAYS NO LONGER WORK WITH MILLENNIALS

JOSE Mourinho did not lose his job because Manchester United played dull football. He’s been doing that for years.

The 55-year-old, once the epitome of brash modernity, failed at Old Trafford because he was out of touch.

It is 15 years since Porto won the Champions League. Twelve since his Chelsea side laid waste to a Premier League unprepared for brutalist football.

Back then, Generation X dominated the office, the football pitch, and almost every other workplace across the globe.

Gradually, however, Millennials muscled in. And by 2015, people born between the mid-eighties and early-noughties made up the majority of the UK labour force.

Why does that matter? Though it is important not to generalise, several major studies – and a plethora of anecdotal evidence – suggest that this cohort possess a significantly different set of values and motivations when it comes to working life.

Success and financial reward are no longer the main drivers. What matters today is the culture, the environment and the capacity to make a tangible difference.

David Kurzmann is the millennial CEO of Women’s Best, a sports nutrition company that smartly leveraged Instagram to go from unknown start-up to global force within three years. “Take a deeper look into this generation,”

he said in an interview with Forbes last year. “And what you notice is that they value being appreciated. They seek a good working atmosphere even more than being financially compensated.”

Underpinning it all, he says, is a healthy lack of respect for authority. The millennial employee wants to work with, not for, a company or individual.

For any manager this presents a challenge, and sport is not immune. On the contrary, it is an industry where the vast bulk of participants are under 30.

What Mourinho’s downfall exposed was a failure to grasp the zeitgeist; to acknowledge – as Sir Alex Ferguson did – that even the most successful leaders must move with the times.

Responsibility

For all the talk of tactics and systems, England’s run to the World Cup semi-final had much to do with the light touch of Gareth Southgate, who laid off the discipline and allowed his young players to seize the responsibility for themselves. An intelligent man anyway, Southgate’s work with the England age groups ensured an intimate understanding of the millennial mindset. Similarly, Neil Warnock’s remarkable longevity can be traced to his peerless man-management skills. For all the touchline snark, the 70-year-old’s greatest asset has always been his capacity to see the person, not the player, and adjust his approach accordingly. Mourinho, by contrast, rules by force of personality, a latter day Brian Clough who brooks no argument and demands fealty from every subject. “You are either in the boat or you are off it,” was his opening gambit to the United dressing room.

As the treatment of Paul Pogba at Man United or Eva Carneiro at Chelsea demonstrated, those who fail to tow the line are ruthlessly booted overboard.

Armed with an older generation of players, those methods won trophies. Today, they simply enervate a workforce who thrive on encouragement and respect.

Mourinho’s frequent complaints about his players’ attitude and work ethic ignored his own failure to provide them with appropriate motivation. Spitting out threats and put-downs to a team in need of recognition was like putting diesel in a Ferrari and expecting it to hit 200 mph.

Scan the news pages and it is clearly a broader phenomenon. Just this week, Craig Bellamy temporarily stepped down from his role as a youth coach at Cardiff to fight claims that he bullied a young player. At Newcastle, Peter Beardsley is currently on gardening leave pending the outcome of an investigation into similar accusations.

More widely, the successful British cycling team - led by Shane Sutton - has come under fire for instilling a “culture of fear”, the same words that were used to describe conditions in the UK Para swimming set-up.

It may be the case that sportsmen have always felt this way yet only now, emboldened by the exposure of other coaching abuses and various other scandals, feel equipped to speak out or down tools.

It may be a handful of bad eggs. More likely, however, we are seeing generational friction; what an older coach sees as tough love, a millennial sportsman views as bullying.

Either way, it is a moot point. The world has changed and to keep whacking away with that big old stick is like clinging to analogue in a digital world. Unless Mourinho – and every other old school disciplinarian – changes with it, their days at the top are over.