Luis Aragonés, the resilience of a leader

The vision of leadership that I have been most attracted to throughout my professional career is the one that has to do with “creating value through people”. This is the central issue, the real difference between a leader and a manager. When you are also the leader of a group, the core issue is how you build a high-performing team and how you achieve exceptional results by making all members give their best in achieving the team’s vision and objectives. Leadership and innovation must be a job in which everyone participates.

This is precisely what Luis Aragonés has achieved with the Spanish national team. So much so that I couldn’t resist the temptation to open this dialogue about his work as a leader. Let’s look at some of our coach’s skills:

• Shared vision. Luis Aragonés has managed to spread optimism to the team and the country. He has given us the feeling that “we can”, that success is possible today and now. After beating Italy, world champions, Cesc said it clearly: “We have not come here to get past the quarter-finals. We have come to win”. The whole country is convinced that “we can win”.

• The leader is the team. The team does not depend exclusively on any of its members. It is much more than the sum of individuals. In the semi-final match, Villa, the striker on a roll and top scorer in the championship, was injured, but the football team continued to function without problems, and was able to score the winning goals without one of its flagship players. In Luis’ words: “I took a national team; what I try to leave is a team”. Today you just have to watch them play: they are a real unit.

• There are no hierarchies. The old internal structures, what is known in organizations as “legacy”, have disappeared. Luis’ national team has grown as a collective by losing some of its “references”, including its hitherto untouchable “sacred cows”. It is true that Iker Casillas wears the captain’s armband – someone has to wear it – but he is still just another player. A particularly brilliant player, yes, but one more of the group. Luis has managed to overcome personalism, encouraging complicity between the players and neutralizing the “antibodies” of the team.

• Climate and motivation. The players of the national team form a real group and are overflowing with motivation. That is seen and, above all, it is noticeable on the pitch. And in this facet Luis Aragonés has played a fundamental leadership role. Despite having been in question all the time, he has been able to protect the players by taking all the responsibility and all the media controversies on him. He has received very hard blows in successive crises, but the team has never received them or has suffered them.

• Talent management. The good leader knows how to choose the most suitable people according to the mission to be fulfilled; he knows how to attract and retain the talent that the organization needs to achieve its objectives, and he knows how to create the necessary environment so that people can stay and develop successfully. Today, the coach has to be more of a team developer than a “command and command” executive with a tie. Luis has selected his players not only technically, but also taking into account the impact and treatment with the other teammates in the dressing room and weighing, in short, their impact on the general climate. The result, in addition to taking the team to a level unthinkable just a few months ago, is summed up very well by Puyol in a statement in which he was asked about the subject: “Here we are all leaders. Each one, in his own way”.

• Discipline and transparency. Luis’ message to his players is clear and unequivocal. Everyone has been able to see him making corrections in training. If a player with exceptional quality, such as Fernando Torres, makes a bad face when he leaves the field to bring on another teammate (as happened before the match against Russia) Luis talks to him the next day and reminds him of the rules of the game and the values that guide the team. Everyone knows what the message is. Luis Aragonés showed in the TVE programme in which he submitted to the questions of the fans that he has made a laudable effort to make the real Luis known, and to correct the wrong image that the media have tried to convey of him.

• Expectation management. We must recognize that Luis has been a master when it comes to managing the expectations of the team and the country at each stage of the European Championship. That is to say: first we were happy to have overcome the fateful quarterfinals; then, we have been happy to overcome the semi-final; and now, we are happy to face a whole final of the European Championship. Aragonés has known how to manage the ways and times to excite people by avoiding the triumphalism and excesses of euphoria typical of these situations.

• Transformative leadership. Despite his seventy years of age – or perhaps we should say, thanks to his experience – Luis Aragonés has brought a new way of managing the team. As we have seen in the previous points, he has been able to innovate in an organization with a very complicated legacy and especially negative internal dynamics. He has taken advantage of the opportunity, and has had enough courage to make decisions that can be considered risky, such as leaving Raúl or Guti out of the national team, despite the pressure of some media and a large – although dispersed – group of fans.

• Diversity management. In Luis Aragonés’ Spain there is room for everyone. It is a team where the captain (Iker) is from Móstoles but has a Basque name; there is an Asturian striker (Villa); a Catalan-speaking defender (Puyol); a Brazilian (Senna) a naturalized immigrant, who commands in the middle of the field; an Andalusian from Jerez (Güiza) solves the impossible for us; a Canarian (Silva) who scored a television record goal, followed by 17 million Spaniards; and a Fuenlabrada based in Liverpool (Torres) who creates danger every time he approaches the opponent’s area. And that’s all: an exceptional miscegenation. Luis has managed to integrate a team of human groups with diverse profiles, working as a team and, starting from a mosaic of “prima donnas” and “superstars” he has been able to build the national team of all Spaniards.

• Humility and wisdom. Luis Aragonés has defined himself as “a normal person, who gets angry little – he sometimes manages to hide this very well – who is a little vehement but who is polite enough to respect everyone and everyone’s opinions, and never insults”. He does not seem to be shocked by criticism, although he is bothered by the insult and that he is not respected as a coach or as a person. Valdivieso gave him the nickname “Zapatones” – despite the fact that he only wears a 42 – and later, when he won an International Cup, he nicknamed him the “Wise”. He has always preferred the first nickname although, today more than ever, many consider him a true sage.

• Talk to the results. All of the above is all well and good, but without results on the pitch, the Spanish National Team would be nothing more than a group of friends who are well matched. The fact is that Luis Aragonés is leading the national team successfully and has led them to win the European Championship after 24 years of trying. He has innovated, he has taken risks and has been able to motivate the team. The recipe can be used for other occasions and other teams: “Nobody is more important than the team”.

But if there is one characteristic with which I think Luis has become an international reference of leadership, it has been his resilience and his ability to overcome. They have organized smear campaigns against him, adverse polls, manipulated polls, talk shows that demanded his resignation on a daily basis, and even the most sophisticated voodoo. All attempts that have proven useless in the face of his capacity for resistance as a born fighter.

Resilience is the quintessential capacity of every good leader; the ability to overcome difficulties, to overcome destruction, to learn from our mistakes, to overcome obstacles and to emerge stronger and transformed from our own experiences. The ability to build and rebuild the reality we dream of despite adversity.

Faced with these campaigns to the limit, Luis knew how to win over the team, create against everyone’s opinion a different Spanish team, a reflection of the new generation of athletes who have been triumphing for years in handball, tennis, hockey, water polo, etc. And he has been able to convince an entire country that, for the first time in many years, there was a Spanish team that could win again by playing exceptionally good football. I don’t need to wait for the outcome of the final to publish this post, because the important thing has already happened: all Spaniards know that “we can win”. Whatever happens tonight, Luis Aragonés will go down in history as an example of a unique leader who knew how to restore the illusion to millions of Spaniards, and knew how to create, against the opinion of many, an exceptional team. For this reason,

I’m sure we will also remember him as the coach who won the second European Championship in our sporting history. Of course we can!