Ted Lasso: A Master Class in Soft Skills

Spoiler alert if you have not yet watched this Apple TV+ Emmy-winning feel-good comedy about a successful college football coach hired to lead an elite soccer team in England. Coach Ted Lasso's tenure with AFC Richmond is set up for failure by team owner Rebecca's vengeful hiring — but Lasso is not aware until near the end of season one. Soft skills or interpersonal skills are those so-called "people skills" such as leadership, teamwork, communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Hard skills are the more recognizable job experience, degrees, licenses, and technical knowledge that are objective and quantifiable. Though limited in "hard skills" in high-performance (HP), coaches and support staff learn a tremendous amount by watching the soft skills genius that is Ted Lasso.

"Lassoft" Skills

Ted Lasso is brilliant at the sports leader's secret weapon — the art of conversation. Lasso's positive body language and tone are 93% of effective communication. The extroverted Coach Lasso displays transformational charisma and builds trust with enthusiastic compliments, eye contact, constant smiles, and his tactile-communicating pats on the shoulder and fist bumps. Lasso provides the leadership required for the power of teaming which is how organizations learn by improving, changing, and innovating. Similarly, when working in high performance with new technology, buy-in with the players is vital — which requires finding motivation and developing trustful relationships while remembering, "They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." Every leadership style requires a relationship which in turn requires Lasso's strength of communication.

Coaching Frameworks

Ted Lasso could be the model coach for the soft skills-based 2018 National Team Coach Leadership Education Program (NTCLEP) for building high-performing coach-athlete relationships based on four elements of the People Dimension©: self-awareness, people acuity, interpersonal agility, and self-management. Lasso displays self-awareness and transparency throughout season one by understanding his weaknesses such as soccer inexperience while seeking feedback from others. Lasso is brilliant at people acuity by understanding differences in people with empathy — such as his attempt at keeping his locker room in one piece by sitting Jamie and Roy together to hash out their differences. Lasso displays interpersonal agility with subtle adjustments to his behavior, tone, and delivery to successfully communicate with everyone from an enraged fan to a high-level executive with his wonderful retention-improving storytelling ability.

Ted Lasso: Season One

"He is the one, coach if we are going to make an impact" states Lasso to his assistant Coach Beard about Roy — a foul-mouthed former star — as a team captain. But grumpy Roy is a reluctant captain. Also called the "glue guy," he or she is a vital component in The Captains Class book by Sam Walker that attempted to find "the hidden force that creates the world's greatest teams." Roy appears to be the ideal "anti-captain" by displaying Walker's "glue guy" traits including protecting, resolving disputes, enforcing standards, and inspiring fear when needed.

AFC Richmond's offense is to give the ball to Jamie, but Nate intervenes with a play to which Lasso empowers him by adding, "I don't listen to ideas unless the person has confidence." Lasso repeatedly gave Nate psychological safety that created a culture to take interpersonal risks with coaching creativity. Lasso states he is not concerned with wins or losses during a press conference. Lasso's seemingly long-term focus is part of the USOPC Quality Coaching Framework with athlete-centered coaching by being collaborative, empathetic, and empowering athletes through positive relationships with winning no longer the primary motivator.

Lasso demonstrates his adaptable, democratic style of situational leadership while unconventionally climbing the stadium bleachers in the middle of a big game to ask Rebecca's permission to bench the selfish Jamie Tartt. Lasso displayed strategic leadership and practical intelligence by anticipating events that may affect performance — pulling the selfish star Jamie because even viewers knew he would never make the extra pass to transcend his own self-interest for the good of the team.

An episode opens with Roy in an ice bath while watching a TV report troll his horrible play in the last game. While fatigue and recovery research now questions ice bath benefits, the placebo effect and Roy's "anti-captain" cursing are probably not worth the battle for a support staffer. Lacking that embedded HP department, the coaches do not address the holistic athlete by also considering the technical, tactical, and psychological aspects of Roy's play.

In season one's last episode, Nate becomes an official assistant coach. Despite assistants stating he is too old and slow, Lasso inserts Roy who promptly runs Jamie down on a breakaway. Coach Lasso creates "chaos" by calling a trick play with an American football formation which ends in Danny's bicycle kick and a seemingly happy ending — but situational irony occurs with Jamie making the extra pass on a breakaway for the Manchester City win.

How Important is the Coach?

Walker's research in The Captain Class stated coaches lack impact on player's performance and are not the primary influence in winning games. Yet coaches with Lasso's transformational leadership qualities were very successful — they built cultures more powerful than individuals, utilized a captain, and employed basic strategies while deferring to assistants. Professional coaches in the US have noticed Coach Lasso's soft skills brilliance with Utah Jazz Coach Quinn Snyder quoted in the Wall Street Journal: "It should be required watching for coaches." Snyder admitted using Lasso's line about "being a goldfish because it has the memory of 10 seconds" during the recent NBA playoffs.

Real-life Ted Lasso?

Countries such as Australia and England have been the world leaders in applied sports science with multiple sports scientists being hired in American professional and college sports. With a recommendation from sports scientist Jo Clubb, I recently completed a tremendous learning experience with a master's in High Performance from Australian Catholic University. Almost "life imitating art," Jo Clubb moved to a different country to work in a previously unknown sport with many similarities to Ted Lasso. Jo had been a sports scientist for over 10 years having worked in the highest level of UK soccer but took on the challenge of US hockey and football. Jo mentions needing self-awareness of how our behavior affects players — adding "personality and positivity to instill confidence are a must or you will not get anywhere with those good technical skills." Jo recommends being patient, listening, and building relationships while embracing your ignorance with humility and honesty. Clubb is the only known person to work at the highest levels in the NFL, NHL, and the British leagues.

HP Hard Skills and HP Soft Skills Development

Success in high performance includes both soft and hard skills within an embedded department with psychological safety while focusing on what is right instead of who is right. Coach Lasso unexpectedly states, "Speed is important but being able to stop, change direction quickly is like Kanye's '808 and Heartbreak' — it doesn't get near enough credit." While the players are using cones without reactive agility drills, Coach Lasso deserves credit for his knowledge in deceleration and change of direction. Coach Lasso asking Roy "How ya doin?" could be utilizing both soft and hard skills at once by assessing subjective components of internal load with an open-ended question.

Jo Clubb mentioned soft skills were the key to her success in the US, and a recent Pacey podcast stated soft skills were the focus in two-thirds of the recruiting process for employers. Jesse Wright has spent over two decades working in the NFL, NCAA, the private sector, and most recently spent 14 years with the Philadelphia 76ers. He recently wrote the book The Intent is to Grow, which follows a fictional young strength coach who builds his "soft skills" through a life-altering orientation program. In part two, we will dive deeper into this highly recommended book's six True Pro Attributes: Voice, Transformational and Servant-Based Leadership, Vision, Hustle, Versatility, and Soul.

Summary

Lasso gives us plenty of laughs with his quick wit and soccer ignorance, but he is also a master class in soft skills. Coach Lasso displays strategic and transformational leadership with a concern for the long-term success of AFC Richmond instead of the expected quick win attitude with short-term performance gains. Though HP is mostly omitted, Lasso is brilliant at creating synergy, transparency, and a psychologically safe environment for effective communication that is the focus of the HP model utilized by many professional and Olympic organizations around the world. Coach Lasso is developing a quintessential learning culture that utilizes systems thinking to combine collaboration, communication, creativity, teamwork, and adaptation into a dynamic organizational learning system greater than the sum of its parts.