Leadership the Sven-Goran Eriksson Way: How to Turn Your Team into Winners Book

Football is a game of two halves but for the moment at least, Leadership the Sven-Göran Eriksson Way appears to suit England. An eventful start to a managerial term in which his team have demolished arch-rivals Germany 5-1--on German soil--and qualified for the 2002 World Cup, has elevated Eriksson to legendary status and caught the attention of commentators Julian Birkinshaw and Stuart Crainer whose sport/business crossover dissects the Swedish soccer guru's techniques and tactics for nuggets of leadership wisdom. "While politics is sullied by cynicism, the sporting world, for all its faults and narrow confines, is perhaps the truest arena for the practice of modern leadership", they argue. Against an entertaining and illuminating backdrop of football and national culture Leadership the Sven-Göran Eriksson Way explores the art of management, cleverly transferring learnings from the playing field to the office. Birkinshaw, tipped as one of the business gurus of the future and Crainer, a bestselling business writer, clearly know and love both subjects and their obvious enjoyment at having managed to combine the two translates into shrewd observation and insight. Eriksson's brand of soft, people-centred leadership, where attributes like situation-sensing, authenticity and empathy are championed, embodies the evolution towards a new leadership model, they suggest. In this way, Leadership the Sven-Göran Eriksson Way is as much an exploration of the characteristics of the emerging Swedish management movement through Eriksson as it is about the individual himself. "Sven-Göran Eriksson is by no means unique in his leadership style, but he offers us a visible and successful example of this new model of leadership." And if there are any doubts about Sweden's current dominance of enlightened business thinking, Funky Business and Netocracy should set the record straight. The result? Away win. --Iain CampbellRead More