Jim White at the Daily Telegraph has a good piece about the recent unjust – in my view – sacking of Newcastle Utd manager Chris Hughton. Apparently, Hughton’s “mistake” was that he was a “nice” person: straight-talking, honourable, considerate towards his players and unwilling to suck up to the owners of the club. White points out that it is silly to suggest that “nice guys” cannot do well in sports management or sports more generally, and cites examples such as Andrew Strauss, the England cricket captain, whom I have met and thought was a very likeable person; tennis gods Rafal Nadal and Roger Federer, two gents who are brilliant players, and for that matter, the late Sir Bobby Robson, football management great and all-round fine man. I hear stories that Sir Alex Ferguson, the gruff-appearing Scotsman who manages Manchester United, takes a fatherly concern for his players, especially the younger ones. Another example of a nice guy doing well in sports management is Harry Redknapp, currently doing great things at Spurs and presiding over a very entertaining team.
I think the same point about decent people able to achieve greatness because, not despite, their niceness applies in the realms of business, too. Generally speaking, some of the best business people in my experience are certainly hardworking and committed, even aggressive, but they are not nasty pieces of work. That is how anti-businesspeople imagine business people should be. Alan Sugar, the front man for The Apprentice TV show, hams it up by coming across as a total monster, which is presumably what the TV producers want. In reality, any businessman who behaved like that would lose a lot of talented staff. Being a tosser is not a great business strategy, as far as I can see, but there obviously exceptions.
In politics and sport, I can, of course, see why aggression, even nastiness, can be a winning strategy given that politics and sports are, in some ways, zero-sum. If politician A achieves office, he or she does so by pushing B out of the way. And that sort of eye-gouging gets worse the greater the stakes are, such as in totalitarian systems. Hence FA Hayek’s point, in the Road To Serfdom, about why “the worst get on top”.
Anyway, I hope Hughton gets another job in football management from a club that values his qualities. No wonder Newcastle Utd fans are steamed.
Jonathan. I’d just like to add re your politics-vs-business point, that whenever you see a successful businessman who is not a good guy, chances are his success is due to cozying up to the right politicians, or taking advantage of the right regulations. Not long ago I ran into a nasty piece of work who happens to own one of those companies dealing in carbon credits. Anecdotal, I know, but still food for thought.
High ranking military men are usually far more genial than one would expect from their stereotype. That said, the ones I have met have been those who gained their rank in peacetime – it is possible that the ones promoted in the heat of war are more abrupt.
Of course geniality is not the same as decency, the thing you were talking about. The two qualities may overlap but some abrupt people are also decent at heart – Sir Alex Ferguson is one such, it seems.
I offer this as a related observation: to get on in life it helps to be friendly. It is not be sufficient, it may not be necessary, but it certainly helps.
Sorry about the superfluous “be” in “It is not be sufficient”!
A business technique some people use prior to closing a deal is to take the other party out to lunch, and observe how they treat the servers. Rudeness to servers can be a deal-breaker.
If Sugar was a “nice guy” he wouldn’t entertain candidates for his employment who are liars, cheats and criminals.
Chris Hughton nice bloke? Well I suppose so, if you can overlook the fact that he continually selected these two violent thugs: cigar-in-the-eye Joey Barton and girlfriend-beating Andy Carroll. When his team were beaten by Blackburn a little while back, Hughton had the temerity to claim that incidents such as Joey Barton punching an opponent in the chest for no reason went on all the time in football matches up and down the country the very same day. Which is a downright lie.
But aside from those quibbles… Hughton is only getting sympathy because he has performed reasonably well and because he was employed by Mike Ashley, who seems to just taking the Michael out of the club.
Natalie:
Having served in the military I agree with both statements, and also your later remark that abruptness can go together with decency. I sometimes get dismayed at how poorly military culture is portrayed in fiction. And fiction is nearly the only point of contact many people ever have with it.
There are some good examples, though. “A Few Good Men” does a nice job of capturing both the honour and integrity that the military encourages as well as its shadow side. And “Apollo 13” (though not strictly military) nicely captures the marriage of frankness and compassion that good military leaders embody.
Compassion and empathy are at the core of good leadership (military or otherwise) and, though a person may often rise to a high position without them, by skill, perseverance, or even wily means, they will never be regarded as good leaders by those who serve under them. People who are empathetic and compassionate suffer greatly due to the kinds of decisions that military life can impose, but they become better leaders because of it.
Very true, Tedd.
It’s not just the impositions of military life: military is by definition political, and so it’s political impositions as well. All of which means that good people don’t necessarily do well, especially where politics are involved (which these days seems to be just about everywhere).
A relative served in Burma during WWII and he was one of the best men I met. Someone who encouraged you to live, enjoy living, and do the best for those around. The military seems to promote decency, and probably rather in war time than in peace (at which time the old self serving influences come out?).
In business, politics, academe, really any human endeavour, I have yet to meet anyone who got very far who did not cut the competition down with ruthlessness, even crookery and deception when necessary. I have more or less come to accept it goes with the territory.
But that said it’s better to have openly competing crooks than ones who pretend to be helpful (as in Reagan’s most terrifying nine words in the English language – I’m from the government and I’m here to help.)
Even in war, nice guys don’t do too badly. In WW2, nice guys Dwight Eisenhower, Harold Alexander and Omar Bradley did rather better in terms of advancement than awkward bastards George Patton and Bernard Montgomery. Bradley started WW2 as Patton’s subordinate and ended it as his superior…
Mike writes:
Well, I was not aware that Hughton made that excuse for Barton, which is obviously not good. But be careful, Mike: Carroll has not, as far as I know, been convicted in a court of law. I take an old-fashioned approach to things such as this. We’ll see what happens.
Even so, the point stands that Hughton, in these cases, has hardly been a ruthless monster; he could have kicked out Carroll on nothing more than hearsay or allegations, but he didn’t. He’s given that player a bit of a chance. If the player is convicted, then he’s toast.
Barton’s case is, I admit, a bit different. This guy has no place in professional sport.