What if the keys to sporting success could be transferred to the business world? Haven’t we all dreamed of being Aimé Jacquet, Bernard Laporte, or Claude Onesta? How can managers draw inspiration from coaches’ methods to manage a team?
On the eve of the European Handball Championship, let’s focus on the management techniques of Claude Onesta, coach of the French handball team and Manager of the Year 2011.
Last year, the French handball team won a fifth world title, following their victories in 1995, 2001, 2009, and 2011. This team, known as “Les Experts,” continues to impress with its sustained performance at the highest level. “Les Experts” undoubtedly have talent. But what makes such a team strong is the orchestration of all these combined talents for the benefit of collective performance.
Managing a Team Involves Delegating and Unleashing Potential
Claude Onesta opted for a management approach that empowers individuals by giving responsibility to his players, maintaining a subtle balance between different egos, and accepting imperfections.
Players are at the heart of his approach. “The project belongs to the players. They are the ones who determine success or failure. The coach is merely a guide, but I remain convinced that by empowering the main actors, we give ourselves the means to win,” he explains.
Unlike a more traditional hierarchical management style found in many companies, he ensures that employees—in his case, players—can make their own choices that will lead them to performance, or even victory.
He no longer tells players how to play a situation but asks them how they wish to play it. The idea is to empower the team and have them discuss the same problem with a common goal: winning the match.
“In sports as in business, there are increasingly more unforeseen events to manage. Developing everyone’s adaptability is therefore necessary, and if you have accustomed your players or employees to spontaneously face unforeseen events themselves, in a creative spirit, they will more easily find the solution.”
In a company, it’s the same. Have your team work towards common goals. Let them implement their own strategy. You will see that your employees will feel more invested and will therefore do everything to achieve their objectives.
To Manage a Team, Become a Gardener
To foster employee engagement, leaders are called to be the gardeners of the ecosystem that will foster the growth and development of each member within the organization. Telling an employee how to do their job disempowers them. It is better to listen to what they have to propose and discuss it with them. This is exactly what Claude Onesta has implemented with the French handball team for several years. Like a “leader-gardener,” he provides the necessary ingredients for growth, improvement, and success. “By building together, we may face some additional pitfalls during implementation, but the commitment gained, the extra soul generated, proves to be a winning bet.”
Transmitting values, the vision of the collective project, and resisting the temptation to provide all solutions are the essential elements for managing a team, according to Claude Onesta.
“The manager’s role is to discover, harmonize, and coordinate, much like an orchestra conductor. Each instrumentalist is more competent than I am, but without harmony, the music will be dreadful.”
A coach who considers his players more relevant than himself on many subjects and therefore lets them choose their actions on the field—isn’t that the type of leadership companies need nowadays?
A company’s success is tied to the well-being of the majority. This is what the business world must consider. To manage a team, one must ask how to involve each member of that team in the journey.
Driving Performance in the Digital Age, download the guide here
Empowering is not that easy.
While Claude Onesta managed to treat the men on his team as responsible adults, this approach did not please everyone, and he had many detractors.
He confided, in an interview with L’Obs, “Everyone I met told me, ‘Yes, yes, empowering players, that’s a really good thing you’re doing,’ but I’m convinced that as soon as I turned my back, they were laughing. For many, high-level sports mean shouting, obeying, instilling fear. The coach must be a kind of guru, who knows everything, who manipulates. That’s totally reductive. But it’s a deeply ingrained belief. And a belief all the more damaging because, in my opinion, an athlete thrives when they stop being blindly obedient, when they take charge for the collective good.”
The parallel with business management is very easy to draw. Everyone agrees that empowering is a good thing, but it takes courage to let go and trust in the creative capacity of one’s teams, and that courage is often lacking. To manage a team and unleash its potential, one must be able to accept not always being in control of everything. Claude Onesta confides on this matter: “To be honest, there are times when I no longer even know what the players are doing. I say to myself, ‘Damn, what is that?’ The players have ended up owning the game, and that’s great.”
Victory Relies on the Connectors.
A leader who steps back a bit becomes an observer of the dynamics created within the group: “Not constantly having my head down allows me to gather maximum information, to pay attention to small details, so that I can focus on the essence of my task: building for the long term.”
Relieving oneself of daily tasks to focus on the team’s future allows for detailed observation of each team member’s attitude and their role in group dynamics. For Claude Onesta, a group is not solely composed of leaders and followers; there is “a third, equally important population. These are what I call the connectors or the ‘nice ones.’ These are people capable of moving from one leader to another depending on the circumstances, without seeking to compete, but clearly showing that they are not beholden to anyone.”
These are the people who will foster a sense of togetherness within a group, by moving from one “sub-group” to another, showing that it’s possible to exchange ideas with everyone.
“He’s the guy who will make coffee to create a moment of sharing, the guy who will spark laughter. He’s the nice one who constantly tempers confrontations. At times, he’ll even take one for the team and make fun of himself to ease tensions…”
Do we, too, know how to detect the “nice ones” in our team? Do we know how to recognize and value the invisible work on the collective dimension that each team member performs?
Unfortunately, this is not always the case in our internal cultures of leadership and talent recognition. But isn’t this a path forward to transform our organizations and reinvent our way of managing a team?
We must dare to dream and base our performance on the freedom and responsibility of each employee, and like the French handball team, success will be long-term.
Driving Performance in the Digital Age, download the guide here