Gareth Southgate has become one of England’s finest managers not because of his tactical nous but because of his emotional intelligence.
That’s the verdict of former Tottenham, Norwich and Northern Ireland player turned performance psychologist Paul McVeigh. A man who well remembers getting booted all over Villa Park by Southgate on his Spurs debut back in 1997.
McVeigh said: “One of the first traits that has made Gareth Southgate such a good leader for England is his emotional intelligence.
"The phrase emotional intelligence was coined back in the Nineties by Daniel Goleman and, essentially, what he researched was that people who are the top leaders, the people who run the best teams and the biggest organisations, it’s not about their IQ, it’s about their emotional intelligence, or EQ, and this is based on their people skills.
“So even when Gareth used to kick me all over Villa Park, he wasn’t a ranter and raver, he wasn’t shouting and screaming. But he was very, very good at doing his job and he had this authority, which we see now in his interviews and all the things he has done in his coaching career on top of his playing career.
"He doesn’t lead through being an extrovert or because of the way he dominates people. He leads because he understands people, and one of the greatest traits and characteristics that emotional intelligence purports is empathy. So if you can understand people you get more out of people.
“Ultimately, every organisation in the world is trying to influence their staff, their teams, to do more, be more, work harder, be more efficient and be more productive. But you need to be able to influence them, otherwise you just have a group of people who don’t want to work hard. Senior leaders who have emotional intelligence can influence their teams to all join the dots and all work towards the same goal. That’s how Gareth works and it’s why he has totally transformed the whole English football set-up.
“It’s probably much more to do with his emotional intelligence than his tactical nous. Most of the teams I played in, most of the managers, it was almost like a ‘them and us’ thing. They’d say, ‘We do this in this changing-room and forget about everyone else, because it’s just about us’.
"But, actually, you realise how important fans and other stakeholders within a club, organisation or association are because they are emotionally involved in the whole process, and the more you can get all those people bought into it, that’s when people are all pulling in the same direction. That’s where Gareth is like a genius, because he has done that and very few people before him have managed to bring everyone together.”
McVeigh now runs a leadership programme which features keynote speaking events from hugely successful figures from all walks of life.
He added: “The programme brings together people who have been at the pinnacle of football, rugby, Olympic gold medalists, people who have been MD of multi-million-pound companies, military personnel, all the way through to academics, people who have climbed Everest. Instead of me simply sharing my story at speaking events, I wanted to find a way to create a leadership programme which brings all these experts under one roof, and we’ve done that.”
