Mikel Arteta – A Case Study in Radical Candor

Introduction – All or Nothing

Managing and supporting a team is a difficult job. A manager is often a coach, disciplinarian, a surrogate parent, and cheerleader – all rolled into one. I am always on the lookout for ways to be a better supporter of my teams. Over the last few days I discovered a fortunate intersection in my interests in sport and in management.

I am a fan of the Arsenal football club. Like many other Arsenal fans, I have been watching and enjoying the Amazon Prime show “All or Nothing: Arsenal,” which follows Arsenal through the 2021 – 2022 season. We get a close look at how Arsenal’s manager Mike Arteta works with his players and his management team and motivates them over a challenging 45-game season.

At 38 years old, Arteta is currently the youngest manager in the English Premier league. He has been at the helm since 2019. The Arsenal squad also has the youngest average age in the Premier League – this season, the first team averages just 25.2 years old.

Arteta’s reign has seen the club slump to 8th place in the 2019 and 2020 seasons before having a marked improvement in form to finish 5th in 2021.

Arteta comes across as an intense, detail-oriented and hands-on manager. I realized that Arteta’s approach to management was something I had come across before. It is strikingly similar to that described in Radical Candor by Kim Scott – one of my favorite books on building high-performance teams.

In this post, I will summarize the Radical Candor approach through the lens of Arteta’s unique take on people management.

What is Radical Candor?

Radical Candor is a book by Kim Scott published in 2017. It focuses on creating a culture of guidance, building an effective and cohesive team, and driving results collaboratively.

The book’s central thesis is that effective leadership requires direct, clear, truthful, and kind feedback, even when difficult. Scott believes getting to know each person in your team personally is essential to understanding their desires and motivations.

The book offers tactical and strategic advice to leaders on building high-performing teams in an open, healthy, and productive environment. I strongly recommend Radical Candor for those looking for an authentic and modern approach to people management.

We see Arteta speaking candidly and passionately with his players throughout the season. He is generous in his feedback when things go well. When things go poorly, Arteta is direct, passionate, and emotional. While he doesn’t mince words, he doesn’t humiliate his players in the dressing room or in front of the media.

Caring Personally while Challenging Directly

The 2X2 below shows “Radical Candor” as giving feedback by caring personally while challenging directly. It also covers some dysfunctional ways of giving feedback – obnoxious aggression, ruinous empathy, and manipulative insincerity.

Ted Lasso aside, football managers are not known for their empathy. Indeed, the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson are revered for their ability to drive performance through aggression and intimidation. Ferguson’s proverbial “hairdryer treatment” would probably end up in the “Obnoxious Aggression” quadrant above.

While he is partial to the odd F-bomb, Arteta’s open displays of emotion and vulnerability inspire his players, as seen in this clip. At the end of a run of poor results in April at Crystal Palace and Brighton, we see a manager who cares about the results and is passionate about wanting to make things better. He calls out a lack of intensity from his players and gives specific feedback on the training pitch and in the dressing room.

This combination of caring personally and directly challenging poor performance is right out of the Radical Candor playbook.

Building Resilience Through Trust

The Radical Candor approach is built on a foundation of trust. Trust is difficult to gain and easy to lose. The key to building trust is to be transparent and authentic, clear and concise in communication, and consistent in your actions.

Arteta calls out his “non-negotiables” in explaining his management philosophy: respect, commitment, and passion. Throughout the show, we see Arteta embodying these values.

This results in significant friction with his star player Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang who does not meet Arteta’s high expectations around discipline and accountability. Aubameyang is the club captain and is a popular member of the squad.

Arteta ends up stripping Aubameyang from the captaincy of the team. This could have destabilized the team, but it seems to have the opposite effect. Arteta does not criticize Aubameyang, and his team is made aware of how important trust and accountability are to their manager. By showing consistency in his actions and clarity in his communication, Arteta builds trust and resilience, resulting in outstanding results on the pitch in the second half of the season.

Managing Rockstars and Superstars

In Radical Candor, Scott describes Rockstars as stable employees who are happy and effective in their roles. These are folks who are aware of their talents and limitations and can consistently perform at a high level. On the other hand, Superstars are on a steep career trajectory and can be change agents. They are ambitious and want new opportunities. A high-performing team usually has both rockstars and superstars.

Given his young team, Arteta works with plenty of players on steep growth trajectories. Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe, and Eddie Nketiah are all young and eager to learn and perform at the highest level. However, he also has players like Rob Holding and Mohammad Elneny. While experienced pros, they have specific roles and are not guaranteed a place in the starting lineup. Holding and Elneny are the rocks (and Rockstars) that provide a stabilizing influence in the dressing room and on the pitch while laying a foundation for the more flamboyant players up front.

As a manager, Arteta has to ensure that the players like Holding and Elneny feel valued and are ready to perform when called upon while the ambition and talents of the young Gooners are nurtured. You can see this come together towards the end of the season. Holding and Elneny perform well after being called into the starting eleven after injuries. He also gives the ambitious Nketiah an extended run. He repays his faith by scoring five goals in the last seven games.
Arteta and his team need to understand each player’s mentality and ensure they feel motivated to perform when needed.

Conclusion

All or Nothing is entertainment and has been edited to push a narrative and maximize engagement. Mikel Arteta has come under intense criticism for being uncompromising and stubborn at times – especially with how he has managed high-profile players like Aubameyang and Mesut Ozil. But, the little glimpse we get in the documentary shows a young manager trying to build a successful team.

Plenty of books like Radical Candor have come out of Silicon Valley, and the content often reflects the author’s experience working in technology companies. The strength of a book, especially in the crowded management genre, is how applicable the message is across different domains.

Managing Arsenal presents quite different challenges from managing a software engineering team. However, I hope the lessons of Radical Candor and All or Nothing are valuable to managers looking to build and support a high-performance team.