Re­gard­ed as one of the best coach­es in all sports, Sir Alex Fer­gu­son is the most cel­e­brat­ed coach in the Eng­lish Pre­mier League (EPL). Dur­ing his reign at Man­ches­ter Unit­ed- 1986-2013- he won the league 13 times and 25 oth­er do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al ti­tles. He had at his dis­pos­al a high­ly skilled and tal­ent­ed squad but the team’s con­sis­tent suc­cess re­quired the in­fu­sion of his ideas and man­age­r­i­al skills.

In an in­ter­view with Ani­ta El­berse (2012), “Fer­gu­son’s For­mu­la,” Fer­gu­son stat­ed 8 lead­er­ship prin­ci­ples that formed the core of his strat­e­gy in mak­ing Man­ches­ter Unit­ed a suc­cess­ful club.

Last week we pub­lished the first four (4) of Sir Alex Fer­gu­son’s eight [8] lead­er­ship prin­ci­ples - ‘Foun­da­tion,’ ‘Re­build­ing,’ ‘Stan­dards,’ and ‘Con­trol’- here are the re­main­ing 4 prin­ci­ples.

5. Ef­fec­tive Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the Mo­ment

In any or­gan­i­sa­tion, ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion is a key com­po­nent to­ward achiev­ing set goals, ob­jec­tives and tar­gets. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion is equal­ly im­por­tant when tough tac­ti­cal de­ci­sions are to be made. Dur­ing his tenure, Fer­gu­son de­vel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion in the me­dia as be­ing very tough and de­mand­ing. How­ev­er, Fer­gu­son notes that “few peo­ple get bet­ter with crit­i­cism; most re­spond to en­cour­age­ment in­stead…for a play­er-for any hu­man be­ing- there is noth­ing bet­ter than hear­ing “Well done.”

At the same time, he be­lieved that “rep­ri­mand was im­por­tant” and it took place im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the match in the dress­ing room. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he did not be­lieve in “crit­i­ciz­ing a play­er for­ev­er.”

His pre-match talk fo­cused on build­ing self-con­fi­dence in each play­er and as a col­lec­tive unit. “I would tell them that hav­ing a work eth­ic is very im­por­tant…I would re­mind them that it is trust in one an­oth­er, not let­ting their mates down, that helps build the char­ac­ter of a team.” In oth­er words, the adage, all for one and one for all is po­tent to­ward build­ing any team whether in sports, work or life in gen­er­al.

Dur­ing half­time, the con­ver­sa­tion var­ied ac­cord­ing to the state of the game. “When you are win­ning… [the fo­cus is on] con­cen­trat­ing, not get­ting com­pla­cent and the small things you can ad­dress.” How­ev­er, when the team was be­hind or not per­form­ing to ex­pec­ta­tions he notes, “you have to make an im­pact…I liked to fo­cus on our team and our strengths, but you have to cor­rect why you are los­ing [not play­ing to stan­dard].”

His per­fec­tion­ist at­ti­tude did not es­cape train­ing ses­sions for he be­lieved what hap­pened on the train­ing ground was played out on match days. “If you are too soft in your ap­proach, you would not be able to achieve that [play­ers who were tac­ti­cal­ly sound], fear has to come in­to it.” How­ev­er, he notes that “as I have got­ten old­er, I have come to see that show­ing your anger all the time does not work, you have to pick your mo­ments.” “As a man­ag­er, you play dif­fer­ent roles at dif­fer­ent times…some­times you have to be a doc­tor, or a teacher, or a fa­ther.”

6. Pre­pare to Win

Fer­gu­son’s mantra was pos­i­tive ad­ven­tur­ous play and win­ning. “I ex­pect­ed to win every time we went out there. Even if five of the most im­por­tant play­ers were in­jured, I ex­pect­ed to win... once we stepped on­to the pitch be­fore a game, I was con­fi­dent that the play­ers were pre­pared and ready to play, be­cause every­thing had been done be­fore they walked out on­to the pitch.” He de­scribed him­self as a ‘risk tak­er,’ he pre­ferred “to lose 1-3 if it meant we’d giv­en our­selves a good chance to draw or to win.” There­fore, “in the last 15 min­utes, we’d go for it…we’d put an ex­tra at­tack­ing play­er and wor­ry less about de­fence. We knew if we end­ed up win­ning 3-2, it would be a fan­tas­tic feel­ing and if we lost 1-3, we’d been los­ing any­way.”

It is ev­i­dent that his risk-tak­ing was not ran­dom but pred­i­cat­ed up­on the ex­e­cu­tion of his oth­er lead­er­ship prin­ci­ples.

7. Ob­ser­va­tion and Del­e­ga­tion

Trust, del­e­ga­tion and ob­ser­va­tion are im­por­tant at­trib­ut­es of lead­er­ship across all or­gan­i­sa­tions: sports, busi­ness, gov­ern­ment, etc.

Once at Ab­erdeen dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion, his as­sis­tant man­ag­er said, “I don’t why you brought me here” … “I don’t do any­thing. I work with the youth team, but I am here to as­sist you with the train­ing and with pick­ing the team. That is the as­sis­tant man­ag­er’s job.” An­oth­er coach re­marked, “I think he is right boss,” and point­ed out that I can ben­e­fit from not al­ways hav­ing to lead the train­ing. At first, I said. “no, no, no,” but I thought it over for a few days and then said “I’ll give it a try. No promis­es. Deep down I knew that he was right. So, I del­e­gat­ed the train­ing to him, and it was the best thing I ever did.”

He not­ed that “It did not take away my con­trol. My pres­ence and abil­i­ty to su­per­vise were al­ways there, and what you can pick up by watch­ing is in­cred­i­bly valu­able. Once I stepped out of the bub­ble, I be­came more aware of a range of de­tails, and my per­for­mance lev­el jumped. See­ing a change in a play­er’s habits or a sud­den dip in his en­thu­si­asm al­lowed me to go fur­ther with him.” “I do not think many peo­ple ful­ly un­der­stand the val­ue of ob­ser­va­tion as a crit­i­cal part of my man­age­ment skills. The abil­i­ty to see things is key-or, more specif­i­cal­ly, the abil­i­ty to see things you do not ex­pect to see.”

8. Adapt­ing

In an ever-dy­nam­ic world, change is in­evitable. Suc­ces­sor fail­ure is de­pen­dent on how lead­ers re­spond to changes. For Fer­gu­son “you con­trol change by ac­cept­ing it.” It in­volves “hav­ing con­fi­dence in the peo­ple you hire. The minute staff mem­bers are em­ployed you have to trust that they are go­ing to do their jobs. If you mi­cro­man­age and tell peo­ple what to do, there is no point in hir­ing them. The most im­por­tant thing is not to stag­nate. I [once] said to David Gill [for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive, Man­ches­ter Utd], “the on­ly way we can keep play­ers at Man­ches­ter Unit­ed is if we have the best train­ing ground in Eu­rope.” That is when we kick-start­ed the med­ical cen­tre. We can’t sit still.”

“I al­ways felt I could not af­ford not to change. We had to be suc­cess­ful-there was no oth­er op­tion for me and I would ex­plore any means of im­prov­ing. I con­tin­ued to work hard. I treat­ed every suc­cess as my first. My job was to give us the best pos­si­ble chance of win­ning. That is what drove me.”