The Alex Ferguson advice I chose to ignore, with Ole Gunnar Solskjær - Hand-picked

0:28Watch it early on the High Performance App.

0:42Hey, I'm Trisha Hershberger, gamer, streamer, and Amazon Live host. I stream about tech, gaming, and the stuff I actually buy right here with my community. And Amazon Live makes it easy. Streaming gameplay, scouting new gear, chatting, and shopping all at the same time? That's my kind of multitasking. And it all happens on Amazon Live. Shop on Amazon Live by searching Amazon Live in the Amazon Shopping app and follow your favorite creators today. This episode is brought to you by Opera Air, the first browser with mindfulness at its core. Now, most of us spend hours every day online, but how often do we pause to take care of ourselves whilst we're doing it?

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1:51Hi everyone, welcome along to another hand-picked episode of the High Performance Podcast, where myself or Professor Damien Hughes delve into the archive and pick an episode that really resonated with us or that maybe we or you have forgotten about and that maybe we should revisit and learn some of the lessons all over again. It's one of the recurring themes, I think, with people that listen to High Performance. You know, they talk about being really impacted deeply by a conversation. Then over time, those lessons slowly start to slip away. So it's actually quite important, Damien, isn't it, to try and remind ourselves pretty regularly about things that we hear because let's be honest, our brains can only retain so much information, right?

2:28Yeah, you know, all great coaches tell you that great coaching is essentially the art of repetition. Taking a key message and making sure that it becomes embedded into our daily routines and habits. And that's one of the reasons I love doing these hand-picked episodes, because it forces us to go back and pick up some of these key messages that we hear from so many of our guests, but everyone has got a unique version of it. Okay, what have you chosen? I'm going to be selfish here today because since we started the podcast, Jay, we've been incredibly privileged to meet some incredible people and visit some incredible places.

3:04But this one had a real personal impact on me. Well, my football team is Manchester United. So to have the then manager of my football team invite us to come into the training ground of my football team and open up and speak to us so candidly about high performance was just a real pinch me moment. so I wanted to go back and revisit our conversation we had with the billion Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. What's the first clip? The first clip is a conversation that he had with his dad. So when he was growing up in Norway, he was a promising young footballer. But like many of us, he got distracted and it was just a conversation with his dad and especially a killer line at the end, if you pay attention to it, that really sets him back on course.

3:49And where did that come from? did your parents instill in you a mindset of being responsible for yourself? Definitely. It's probably more from my dad. He was an athlete himself. He was actually picked for the Norwegian national team wrestling before my grandma and granddad knew that he was doing wrestling. So he did it sneakily. So he wrestled and it was up to him. What was your stigma about wrestling? is that why he was doing it in secret or no he just never told him right he just uh so he was i don't know if he was allowed to but anyway it's he always instilled into me that mindset of it's up to me it's me it depends on me i can't have any excuses i can't blame the coach it's just yourself and because there was one time and that's the only time i remember my dad looking a bit angry I came home I had a party stayed up a little bit late and I just got home early in the morning to get up to training and go straight to training and he just had a little with his cup of coffee little glance when I came in and said do you think this is a way to become a top athlete and that was that's the one comment I remember that he really like he's right how old were you then Oli?

5:12sorry? how old were you then when that comment? 18 I must have been because I'd drunk alcohol. All right. Maybe 19, actually. Interesting stuff. Yeah, really interesting because success is never going to be a straight line and distractions or roadblocks are often going to emerge. But it was that lovely line from his dad of not telling him what to do, but merely prompting him with the question, is this really how a top athlete would behave? Forced him to come to his own conclusions and mend his own ways before he went too far off course. What else stood out? I think it's important to remember that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was a phenomenal striker in his own right for the younger generation that maybe haven't seen him.

5:56He was regarded as one of the ultimate finishers in Premier League history and I like the way that he reframed his challenges of being a striker. Let's listen to this one. I was so keen and watching football and I saw goals being scored and I saw keepers making saves and but there's an opening there and if you hit the top corner or bottom corner he's got no chance and I still believe that there's no such thing as a good save it's just a bad finish and yeah but there's so many time Sir Alex and it used to bug me big time in training that he shouted hit the target make the goalkeeper make a mistake when I missed the target but as soon as that ball left my foot I knew if it's a good finish or a bad finish and if you just hit the post and out I knew that just a slight millimeter to the left or to the right on my boot would make that ball go in so quietly in my mind I said, shut up you.

7:04I know what I'm doing. And that'll go in on Saturday. I love that. I mean, that's all about taking control, isn't it? One of the great phrases in sports psychology is that you have to control the controllables. And that's a great example that rather than just apportion responsibility to the goalkeeper making a good save, you take responsibility that I could have done better. Great coaches often talk about you have to be better than the worst referee. So that if the referee's having a bad day, you still have to control what you can do to make sure that you're not dependent on the referee but I think that's the same in life in general that when things go wrong you have to be better than your worst day how you behave when the roof falls in on you is a sign of your true character are you somebody that points a finger of blame looks to a portion responsibility elsewhere or are you the sort of person that looks in the mirror does a bit of self-reflection and works out what you could do better next time and I think that in essence is what made Ole Gunnar so successful as a player I guess it comes back to what Robin Van Persie said winners take control okay you got one final clip from this episode do you want to share yeah I have because as you'll hear in this clip I recount a conversation I'd had many years previously with Ole where when he was a reserve team manager I remember him telling me a story about the young striker at the time Danny Welbeck So one of the things that had always impressed him about Danny Welbeck was that when they were doing shooting practice, he was always the guy that had offered to stay behind and collect the footballs.

8:34And what impressed him even further was that he couldn't collect the farthest reaching footballs or the ones that were in the most difficult places. And when I asked Ole why, he said that told him something about Danny Welbeck's character. He was a team player, he was selfless, and he was willing to go the extra mile for others. And as you'll hear him talk about now to the current Manchester United captain, those small intangible behaviours are often a clue as to the wider character of the player that you want I remember you telling me a story years ago when you were the reserve team coach and you spoke about Danny Welbeck and one of the things that impressed you was that he would stay behind and help the coaches collect the balls and after shooting practice and you spoke about that indicated that he was a team player he was thoughtful of other people so what would you say are the are the behavioral factors you look for in people that you want to bring into your culture well of course we we are a club we are a team we are we have staff here that work every day together and it's about respect i think respect is a big word for me I think loyalty is a big word.

9:49And so I expect them to not think about themselves too much like me before the team. It's always the team before I. The manager or Sir Alex always used to say there's no I in team, which is right. But then you've got individual qualities in there that you don't want to take away. but that human quality of being a team player, you have to have that. What did Bruno do? As someone that's come in, it's not easy, is it, to come in halfway through a season or to come in, even in the summer transfer, to come into a squad that's already formed. What did he do where the players immediately thought, right, this guy is one of them?

10:30He's got the talent, of course. You can see the qualities there and we've seen that for a long time. But then again, he steps up when it matters and he does it when it matters. He's delivered crosses, he's delivered assists, he's scored goals, he's took penalties. He's done everything in a short space of time that you'd expect. And off the field? And off the field as well in training. And he demands of me, he demands of his teammates. And the first day he was in the club, he shook everyone's hand. He didn't come in here thinking, I'm the big shot, you follow me. No, the respect and the respectfulness of his, he shook absolutely every staff member's hand.

11:14You noticed that. And of course, this is a family, Man United. We've always been a family. And Sir Alex, the way he's created this atmosphere in this training ground, I think is unique. Well, look, it's great to end with a clip about Bruno Fernandes who continues when he's now the United captain, isn't he? and continues to be a leader in that dressing room. It's one of the sort of fascinating things, I think, about this podcast is that you think you know someone, you think you know someone's job, you think you know the world they're in. And actually, when you have the conversation, you realize so much more is going on beneath the surface.

11:52Yeah, definitely. And I think when we go back to episodes like this, you realize that so much of high performance is about behavior, not necessarily just dependent on talent. Of course, Ole Gunnar Sarsour was a great athlete. but it was the behavior of taking responsibility, being willing to do the small extras and to recognize that in other people and lift them up as well, that any of us can take and adopt in our own lives wherever we are and whatever we're doing. Good man. Thanks, pal. Thanks, mate. Loved it. And thank you as well for listening to this short episode, another hand-picked episode of the High Performance Podcast.

12:28If you want to hear Oligon Associati in full, then the link to that episode is in the description to this podcast.

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13:08If you think that you or a loved one could be struggling with an eating disorder, don't wait to get help. Visit equip.health to learn more. That's equip.health. Hey, I'm Trisha Hershberger, gamer, streamer, and Amazon Live host. I stream about tech, gaming, and the stuff I actually buy right here with my community. And Amazon Live makes it easy. Streaming gameplay, scouting new gear, chatting, and shopping all at the same time, that's my kind of multitasking. And it all happens on Amazon Live. Shop on Amazon Live by searching Amazon Live in the Amazon Shopping app and follow your favorite creators today.