“My boss clearly has his favourites in our team. He spends lots of time with them and everyone else gets very little attention from him. It all creates an unhealthy atmosphere of competition between the team members.”

Fortunately, contrary to this example, there are many team leaders who understand the importance of maintaining good team spirit and know what’s expected of them.

The world of sport is no exception. Take, for example, the French former footballer Zinédine Zidane, who took a new direction when he became the manager of Real Madrid.

Like many top-flight teams, Real Madrid is home to an impressive number of “egos”, which doesn’t make their manager’s life particularly easy. The temptation in this type of situation is to devote lots of time and energy to the strongest personalities, even if it means neglecting the others...But Zidane has found a magic formula to allow the headstrong players to reach their full potential while still supporting the development of the other players for the benefit of the whole team. His solution is to treat all the players with the same degree of respect and not make any distinction between them.

Of course, Real Madrid also goes through tough periods. At these times, Zidane shows patience and protects his team from the pressure he is under, whereas other managers might choose to take that pressure out on their team, creating considerable uncertainty.

Even if you’re part of a top-flight sport team, you still need a minimum amount of recognition, especially before the big matches. In his day-to-day management, Zidane spends time alone with each player, and before each match he has a word with them each in turn. Off the pitch, Zidane remains very discreet. He never criticises his opponents and prefers the plaudits to go to his players.

Even if football doesn’t seem to have much in common with CERN, team work is an essential component of success in both cases. Whatever the field of activity, the qualities of a good leader seem to be pretty much universal. Why not take inspiration from the world of sport to guide your team to success?

Pierre Gildemyn

If you’d like to comment on any of my articles or suggest a topic that I could write about, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me at Ombuds@cern.ch.