Believe Is a Verb

What happens to an organization the moment its strongest personality walks out the door? This series, Lessons From a Fictional Football Club, turns to Ted Lasso as an unlikely case study, treating it as a structural experiment in what actually holds an organization together under pressure, versus what was just one person's charisma wearing a disguise. Across this series, I will pull leadership lessons from specific scenes, ground them in research where it exists, and close with structural reads through the Loadmap framework, all in service of one question worth asking about your own team: when you leave the room, what keeps running?

Lasso Time. As usual, spoilers.In the last episode of season three, in the locker room before the final match, each of the  players step forward one at a time, each taking out a piece of paper he’s been hiding. Torn corners. Ragged strips from wallets, books, socks... Together the pieces are the club’s handmade BELIEVE sign, ripped up two seasons earlier. The players tape it back together and put it back above the door, where it started... and belonged.

Two seasons passed between the tearing and the taping. And I think that passage of time is what makes the scene so powerful... and helps convey why traditional motivational posters on office walls aren’t. BELIEVE earned its place on and off screen, slowly, and painfully... in a way that a traditional “Teamwork” poster never could.

On his first day, Coach Lasso tapes a hand-lettered sign over the door: BELIEVE. The players make fun of it, which is probably the right first response, because at that moment the sign is exactly what a Teamwork poster is. Shallow. Unearned. It exists, but does nothing more. Any organization can do the same before the first coffee break, and most stop there, which is why the standard-issue “Keep Pulling Together” poster gets the sneers it deserves.

Over the two seasons, the word gradually stops being a decoration and starts showing up inside decisions. And people. Players pass to teammates they used to freeze out. An assistant who was mocked as a nobody gets listened to. The thing on the wall becomes, through trial and error, a thing people do and part of who they are. When Nate tears the sign in half on his way out the door (see post three in this series), I think it’s proof that this wasn’t a straight path. 

Nate’s act was belief’s first real test. But Coach Lasso also tore the sign apart, and he did it in front of his players, tearing it two more times to prove a point - that the belief was in them, not in the symbol. 

Although we don’t see it happen, the players do something deeply meaningful offscreen. Lasso tore the sign into eight roughly equal sized pieces, but when the players pull their pieces from their hiding places, there are a couple dozen of them, many just tiny scraps. So, not only did they recover the torn sign from Lasso’s office, they further tore it themselves so that everyone could stay connected to it.

When the pieces finally come back, taped clumsily together with seams showing, the sign means something entirely different than it did when it was new. 

Belief is a practice you keep, especially after it’s torn.

I equate beliefs and values as roughly the same thing. They both can do three different things, and there’s a lot of daylight between each. They can exist: the Teamwork poster, the line on the careers page. They can be lived: actually present inside real decisions, visibly changing what people do, particularly when it’s inconvenient. And they can hold: still standing when the pressure is unbearable and staying the course costs something real. Most organizations get to the first and call it a win. But there's an infinite distance between telling people that you have a value and either of the other two, and the sign on the wall can only prove the meaningless one. For Richmond AFC, their sign existed for three years, was lived for maybe two, but only began to hold after the coach himself tore it.

I think that also may be why belief that has survived its own worst moment is the only kind professionals reach for under pressure. A value that has never been tested and broken is a guess... a wish. Nobody bets on it when it matters, because nobody knows what it costs. The taped sign carries information the new sign couldn’t: everyone in that room knows exactly what failure looked like, and chose to believe again anyway.

If you don’t want to practice something this week, I’ll understand. This one is private, and probably a little painful. On the top half of a piece of paper, write down a belief, about yourself or your team, that broke this year. Really broke. It’s the thing you can’t get out of your head when you’re trying to fall asleep, or you can’t help but think of and cringe when you see the people who were involved. A moment, a meeting... a day you’d rather forget. Fold the paper in half, then write down what survived below the fold, what you’ll still fight for next time. You can perform your own act of destruction and tear off the top half. Keep that second piece of paper somewhere you can see it. You’re doing what the players did, and for the same reason: the fragment that survives the tearing is the only load-tested material you own.

Going forward? Consider reducing the importance of announced changes or beliefs and focusing on getting to the point where those things are integrated into what you do and who you are. I’d stop short of wishing for the situation in which your values will be truly tested, but hope that when it comes to pass you’ll see it for what it is - the moment your beliefs and values prove themselves to be true and meaningful.If your team has hit a rough patch and is struggling, focus on the pieces that can still fit together, however unwieldy they may be. It’s likely to be a capable foundation for a more stable future.

Lessons from a Fictional Football Club is a series of unofficial analysis and commentary. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Apple, Warner Bros., or anyone connected with the television series Ted Lasso. Loadmap is the framework I think with in these posts. Loadmap, by Tate Linden, is offered exclusively by Stokefire. 

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