Alex Ferguson is one of the few leaders in football who has endured beyond a few seasons. And his genius was his ability to regenerate the team. He regularly surprised people as he moved on through Eric Cantona, Paul Ince, Bryan Robson, David Beckham, Roy Keane, Jaap Stam, Christiano Ronaldo who were all at one time considered indispensable and yet they went and success continued.

What were the characteristics that kept the Ferguson magic going within Manchester United? The Ferguson Way is well documented: you accept someone for what they are, develop them into what you want them to be or move them on. It is as simple as that and businesses when they talent manage should be thinking in the same way accept, train or fire.

Ferguson’s success did not come instantly he had a vision which he stuck to. He mixed youth with experience with the Scholes, Neville brothers, Beckham and Butt  which he nurtured he threw  experience and leadership with the purchase of  Eric Cantona and Steve Bruce. He  also knew when players needed to move on.

Alex Ferguson from the off developed his own brand, he was entirely his own man and whilst the temper came to the fore occassionally  he will be remembered by those who played for him as a compassionate man, a father figure who set the standards and abided by them, whose values were firmly pinned to his sleeve. Business leaders could learn a lot from that too!

Overall business could learn a great deal from  Sir Alex’s success and it was great to see Harvard recognise that when he went to lecture there recently. The real challenge that now faces Manchester United is replacing such a great man. a great visionary and an amazing leader. I wonder if they really have an effective succession strategy in place?

The Rugby World Cup brings us a fine example of how not to lead and how a team can be successful despite its leader. Leadership has to exist at every level within a team if that team is going to perform consistently well. Leadership will influence and inspire team members to ever greater deeds. But leadership is about ownership and responsibility as well as empathy and understanding

Imanol Harinordoquy summed it up when he said the French team ignored coach Marc Lievremont at the World Cup because he was “lost”. After Lievremont called some of his squad ” spoiled brats” because they went against his instructions not to celebrate their Welsh victory.

“He was lost, I will not miss him,” said number eight Harinordoquy. ”It was our adventure. It was meant to be the nice experience of 30 men. We had to free ourselves from his supervision. He cast the stone at us too often. When something goes wrong, we’re all in the same boat. There are no good or bad guys.”

Great teamwork requires leadership to be inclusive rather than autocratic, developing a feeling of us rather than me and them. To do that trust has to be earned on both sides. Trust is earned more easily during testing, difficult and fallow times than it is when things are easy. Just look at the UK’s national cohesion delivered by Hitler through the Second World War. Trust is hard earned but can be lost very quickly if empathy and understanding are missing.

The human phenomenon that is the catalyst of trust is effective communication.  Effective communication is open honest and not in any way ambiguous. And communication is about the effect on the receiver rather than the intended message of the sender. So again Empathy and understanding of the receiver’s position is key to effective communication.

Teams are made up of individuals who are entrusted by the team to carry out the roles and duties they are responsible for. So individual responsibility for performance is vital to performance, yet there is also a corporate responsibility held by the team. This is particularly so in professional sport where fan bases and even nations are watching expectantly. Professional sportsmen are no different from businessmen in terms of responsibility. It is here where modern society has a good deal to answer for in terms of allowing the derogation of responsibility. Responsibility is about accepting blame and accepting feedback and using both to foster improvement; all too often responsibility is offloaded like a hospital pass to the nearest source of external influence attributable to the action or behaviour. Externalising protects the weak but also prevents individuals from the identification and self realisation of the key areas requiring development. Sportsmen need to shoulder both individual and corporate responsibility.

Sports teams must be held accountable for all their results, not just the good ones. Sir Clive Woodward is a fine example of someone who built a team around him to deliver success and in that delivery every individual knew their role and owned their individual and the corporate result good or bad. An outstanding team is results oriented and every individual owns their contribution to that performance and owns the whole performance; leaders just as much as any other direct contributor. For that to happen leaders need not blame and carry out retribution but instead they need to honestly identify failure and weakness and coach and develop to influence improvement.

Leadership is all about ownership and responsibility wherever that leadership may be exercised. Self leadership through to corporate leadership entail responsibility and ownership.

It seems incredible that a nation of only 4 million people can become the Rugby World Cup winners against teams with national populations of  England 50,000,000, France 65,000,000, South Africa 50,000,000  and Australia 22,000,000. How can such a small nation be so dominant and produce such a great team even without their top two game shapers- their fly halves. Some basics are required such as skill, brawn and athleticism but those are available throughout the professional rugby world. Discipline is key in terms of self discipline but again with the exception of England most world cup sides seemed to possess that.

I believe there are four areas that professional sport ignores at its peril and they are Vision, Leadership and Trust. With these three nurtured and developed over a considerable time comes global success and even dominance if they are maintained in a spirit and ethos of continuous improvement. All too often sport, like business, is so entwined in the engrenage of the here and now and not in the continuation of  a sporting cultural ethos. Just look at the way the media drives us to focus on the players within a  particular team rather than the genre of the sport as a whole. Players come and players go. Most successful sporting organisations focus on the future continuously and not on the here and now. New Zealand Rugby identifies its All Blacks early and nurtures them within the all black Culture. Manchester United do the same where possible. Look at the story of British. In 2001 British cycling set out to improve its standing in world track cycling and  it is now considered the dominant force in world cycling. At the Athens Olympics Great Britain came third in the cycling medal table. From 2004 to 2009, it came top of the medals tally for three out of six World Championships The team has vision which cascades through all its activities from equipment to performance and that success has naturally emigrated to road racing and downhill mountain biking.

Vision is key to long term sporting success for it fosters belief and drives athletes to greater performance. Seeing success and believing it is achievable is key to gaining that success. New Zealand set their sights on World Cup Success in 2011 four years earlier and delivered it. The whole nation bought into that vision and supported the team. Nacho Hernandez studied  New Zealand rugby and describes it as a “ nation-wide passion for the sport, tradition, and a very proud sense of having a legacy that has to be protected, All this combined since the early days with a population mix that seems designed on purpose to make great rugby teams. Rugby is lived more as a religion than as a game. Prayer day is Saturday, and the temples are the hundreds of rugby fields across the country, filled from the earliest hours with families sharing their passion. It is this passion, I believe, that ultimately sets New Zealand rugby apart from the rest. Ultimately, I think that any player at the top level, or any kid who starts playing, dreams of playing one day for the All Blacks. The passion for rugby, the sport, in New Zealand goes hand in hand with the passion for the All Blacks, its trademark. The All Blacks are the tip of the iceberg; below them there is a very well organized pyramidal structure with a huge base of kids who start playing rugby at around the time they learn how to walk. From there, the best continue improving and going up the ladder, until the very best crop reaches the top,” Vision and belief creates the environment of success.

Leadership in sport is strategically vital and again one has to compare the English Rugby Football Union and its current difficulties with the way that The New Zealand Rugby Union has embraced the professional rugby era. But leadership is required through all the tiers of the game and leadership needs to be exercised in a consistent and coherent way from on the pitch through the club management to the regions and the national committees. Examples need to be set and the higher the profile the more influential the example is.  For leadership behaviours generally migrate to lower levels as they cascade through an organisation. Leadership is also a tactical requirement on the field and the judgement calls and flexibility and freedom of action are critical to overall success particularly in tight games. Just look at the calmness and self belief of Richie McCaw in the final alongside the captaincy of Lewis Moody when under French pressure. Leadership is omnipresent and behaviours on and off the pitch are the ones that influence teams and team mates.

Trust is paramount to team cohesion and success and trust is key on any gladiatorial field that involves teams. Each member of a team has a part to play and each member must play that part and be trusted so to do. For it is when that trust breaks that teams break and begin to try and cover for each other. When that is happening a player cannot focus on their own role. Trust applies as much with coaches and players and coaches have to allow players to play. You don’t drive a Ferrari like a tractor so don’t try to. Let your stars perform as stars or don’t pick them. Trust has to be earned it is not a given and trust has to be developed  through effective communication. Effective communication is about honesty and it is about respect for each other. Effective communication delivers results and does not shy away from any aspect that requires debate or feedback. Once it is there in place trust comes and with trust comes cohesion and with real cohesion comes success.

England against France in the quarter finals of the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand. Expectations high after France’s dismal performance against Tonga, so what happened? I believe English sport has yet to learn some real leadership lessons that are applicable to business as much as they are sport.

The first one I call leadership and it is interesting in several perspectives when it comes to this performance. The coach was one of the best on field leaders English Rugby has produced. Martin Johnson was a true leader someone with presence who commanded respect from his players. He is still a character who is held in high regard within rugby circles and it is perhaps his presence that has had a debilitating effect on the development of pitch leadership. Leadership has to be present at every level within a team and players need to know when to follow and when to lead. There was a distinct absence of leadership on the pitch that disastrous match.

I saw a lack of passion amongst the England players that certainly was not evident amongst the French. Passion is inspired by vision; a vision of victory that drives belief and frees up players. It is key to an outstanding performance and that belief belonged to France on that day. I saw little evidence of the emotion and passion from the English team before, during and after the game which I believe was caused by their lack of belief.

For me sport is about dynamism it is about seizing the initiative and making your opponents react. For when they are reacting they are not focusing on their game and therefore not able to seize the initiative. England became predictable. England lacked that dynamism as they were constantly   reacting to the French and therefore unable to play their game. They were predictable ball out to Tuilagi and let him break through. He never did.

Pressure played its part as it caused some crucial mistakes in terms of decisions and handling errors. England lost several opportunities to score as because of such errors. Good leadership and mental toughness ensure that control is exercised in all areas of the game. I believe from the evidence in front of me that desperation came into England’s game. Players must learn to handle international pressure through experiencing similar pressure in other environments!

Selection is always going to be controversial and it is here that I believe Martin Johnson needs to learn the Alex Ferguson lesson of knowing when to let players go and when to blood new talent. I believe despite the arrival of Tuilagi, Lawes and Youngs this side was picked too much on sentiment and old allegiances. Every boss needs to know how and when to nurture talent and when to let it go. For me Wilkinson, Moody and Tindall had gone a tournament too far.

Self control comes from self awareness and self control is key to team cohesiveness and victory. If each member of a team maintains that control and awareness they maintain their role in the team at that moment, if they lose control then the team begins to disintegrate. The second French try is a perfect example three players to one French attacker leaving an unmarked player and a  gap for the try. Self awareness and team awareness in terms of what is my role for the team now are essential in international sport one error can be fatal.

My last comment is flexibility if something is not working there is no point in pursuing it. If you do what you always do you will get the result you always got. Match tactics and plans have got to be adaptable to the situation players have to understand several options if a team is to have the inherent flexibility to win major  tournaments. I thought England were one dimensional and that was the power dimension. When they came up against an equally powerful team they had nowhere to go.

So the key lessons for me for Rugby are:

Develop leadership at all levels,

Develop a winning vision,

Maintain the initiative,

Understand and minimise the impact of pressure,

Learn when to let go of players,

Develop player self awareness and role awareness

Maintain flexibility.

These are all lessons that are as applicable to business as they are sport and I believe the English Rugby Football Union needs to take a good hard look at its leadership development throughout the game. I have jsu watched the Australian team defeat South Africa and what leadership there was on the pitch from Pocock and Horwil!l