Purple Patch Blog / Learning and development / The good, the bad and the ugly

The good, the bad and the ugly

Ben Buet takes a look at the lessons learnt from the World Cup.

So another World Cup goes by with another disappointing end for England. Yet again the England football team over promise and under deliver, something you will not see happening at the purple palace. Why is it every time there is a big tournament our expectations grow massively and the “world class” players all seem to fall to pieces?

There are many theories as to what it takes to be successful. And there are many different areas that need to click so that you can be a winning team. In my observation here are just a few - and it’s the same both on and off the football field:

Preparation

Whether it’s a world cup or a business meeting, preparation is vital. If the players are not fit, don’t know the system and not on top of their game they are always starting on the back foot and are catching up. Clearly England was in that bracket and apart from one half decent game against Slovenia we were poor throughout. You can go in without any prep and may get away with it one time out of ten but the other nine times you will fall flat on your face. It’s the same with work; take any business meeting or training session for example. If you go in not knowing much about the client or what they require then the chances are you won’t make the sale / reach the objective.

Leadership

With good leadership usually come good results. You can have the best players/staff and the best preparation but without a good leader you will have no direction. Good leadership not only gives you good direction but it gives you a confidence right from the top, which will trickle down onto the whole team/employees. All of the best leaders know exactly how to get the best from each individual and the way you can combine all the different traits of all staff/players and make them work together.

Perform

Above all you need to perform to the best of your ability. Even with great preparation and great leadership at the end of the day it’s how you perform. Whatever the situation you have to take control and have belief in yourself and know you can be successful at what is in front of you. A great example of this is the recent World Cup. England couldn’t have had much better preparation in topping their qualifying group and with some of our top players firing on all cylinders. Not only that but we had one of the best training facilities and also one of the world’s best managers and players. Despite all this we just didn’t perform.

We would love to hear any of your top tips of achieving top results – both on and off the football field!

12 July 2010