5 Leadership Lessons for Contractors From ‘Ted Lasso’

My wife recently introduced me to the delightful streaming series ‘Ted Lasso.’ I thought it's going to be some overly sweet thing. But, despite myself, I actually liked it—and noticed a variety of leadership lessons.  

Ted Lasso is a successful American football coach hired to move to England to run a struggling European football team (what we’d call soccer) in the English Premier League. There's great conflict between the previous owner of the team and his ex-wife, the current owner. She's trying to bankrupt him and generally make his life miserable, and so she hired Lasso, an American who knew nothing about soccer and was set up to fail from the start.  

But instead, Lasso became a remarkable success. Similarly, the show started off in 2020 with little fanfare and became a cultural phenomenon.  

Here are six leadership lessons that a contractor should take away from ‘Ted Lasso’: 

1 | Lean into optimism.

When Lasso meets the soccer team for the first time, he put up a large, hand-lettered sign over the door that read, "Believe." He was all about optimism—about himself, his team, his coaches and his organization—and had an abundance mindset. The team was struggling, but he wasn't going to settle for that because he believed they could succeed.  

Contractors are usually fiercely motivated, and they don’t like to settle for mediocrity. Lean into optimism when your business is struggling and believe you can succeed. 

2 | Practice resilience.  

In one of the episodes, a coach had been verbally abused by an unkind player, and Lasso said, "You know what? The happiest animal on earth is a goldfish because a goldfish has a 10-second memory. After that, it can't remember a thing."  

It’s critical as a contractor to be able to live through and learn from making mistakes and tough times. There will always be more, but dwelling on them helps no one.  

3 | Define success.  

Ted Lasso measured success by the improvement of his team, the improvement in the attitudes of his players, the camaraderie in the locker room and the scoreboard and standings.  

You would, of course, measure success differently in business.  

You define your mission, vision and values. Are you being true to them at all times? What are your targets? What are your goalposts? What do you want your volume to be? What do you want your gross profit to be? How many new people do you want to hire?  

Business lends itself to targets, goals and numbers; it is exceedingly quantifiable. Set your goals, set your targets and define your success.  

4 | Stick to the truth and do the right thing. 

Lasso said, "Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing. Tell the truth." That is so fundamental in business. It's quite difficult to do at times because people don't like to hear bad things. They don't like to hear negative truths. There are no real shortcuts in life, and doing the right thing is sometimes very hard. It doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do, however.  

5 | Surround yourself with knowledgeable people. 

Lasso didn't know anything about soccer. His lack of technical knowledge seemed like a great barrier to his success, but it turned out not to be a barrier at all because he surrounded himself with people who knew the game. And so, Lasso’s lack of technical skills didn't matter. He let his staff inform decisions and let them help guide the team.  

If you don't have perfect technical knowledge, surround yourself with people who do, and you'll get there.