Jose Mourinho
Leadership Case Study

Jose Mourinho Leadership
Who was He?

Jose Mourinho is the current coach of Real Madrid FC, one of the most successful football clubs in the world today. Having many successes with clubs like Chelsea, he has a self-proclaimed nickname "The Special One". Mourinho is regarded among many as one of the greatest coaches in football history.

A Quick History

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Jose Mourinho was born in 1963 in Portugal. His father was a Portuguese goal-keeper who played at the professional level.

From a young age, his mother encouraged him and taught him to be successful in all his endeavors. Although he was kept separated from his father because of his footballing commitments, Mourinho had a deep interest in the game and always watched weekend matches.

His father was very impressed with Mourinho’s knowledge of the game. As the father changed careers from playing to coaching, Mourinho followed his dad around too. From there, Mourinho began to study opposing teams and game tactics.After being a school coach for a few years, Mourinho wanted to go into professional coaching and he looked for inroads into a professional coaching career. However, he ended up starting worked as the interpreter of famous coach Bobby Robson. He developed a friendship with the man and discussed football tactics and strategies with him.

He followed Bobby Robson across several clubs from Sporting, to FC Porto and to Barcelona.

His first chance to enter professional coaching came at Lisbon, Benifica to replace a head coach in September 2000. He had quick successes in that club, but was asked to leave soon after because of management’s personal interest.

Nonetheless, he caught the eyes of the top tier clubs of Portugal. He was hired by FC Porto in 2002 to be head coach. He was extremely successful at the club, guiding the team to win Primeira Liga, Portugese Cup, UEFA Cup in 2003. He would have similar successes in the following seasons.

His stint at Chelsea after was also remarkable, leading Chelsea to win six trophies in three years. However, after a fallout with the owner Roman Abramovich, he left the club in 2007.

After Chelsea, he coached at Inter Milan with relative success before moving on to his current club, Real Madrid FC.

Jose Mourinho Leadership Lessons

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1. Self-Belief
Mourinho has extremely strong self-belief. Although people call him arrogant, but I would like to focus on the fact that he believes deeply in himself. He believes he is a winner, and in his own words, “The Special One”.

While I personally would not encourage using such a term for yourself publicly, but it is important to believe that you are special, unique and a winner in your own field. Your victories in leadership first come from the deep seated self-belief that you can are more than capable to achieve it.

2. Play to Win
Mourinho plays to win. One clue we can see in his life is his mother’s constant encouragement for him to be successful in the small things that he does.

I believe that this provides us a great clue about how to help your followers become winners. Encourage them to be faithful and successful in the small tasks that they do before bringing them to do bigger tasks.

By doing so, you can translate the attitude of success for doing small tasks to accomplishing big tasks. It will prime your followers to become winners not just in the small things, but eventually the big things as well.

3. Teamwork
Mourinho said one of the best advice that Sir Bobby Robson gave to him was that: when you win, you shouldn't assume you are the team, and when you lose, you shouldn’t think you are rubbish.

Basically, this means that although you are the leader, you should not make yourself the point of the team.

Just because you are leading the team doesn’t make every victory your credit and every defeat your failure.

It is important that we learn that the whole team should take the credit for victory as well as responsibility for defeats. Although you are leading the team, everyone bears the burden and everyone deserves equal credit.

Related Books and Literature
on Jose Mourinho Leadership

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Best Quotes from Jose Mourinho Leadership

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So I know all about the ups and downs of football, I know that one day I will be sacked.

The only thing I would like is to have more control of the game in terms of possession.

And I think because of the passion of every English player and every English supporter, and every English journalist for the game, most of the game is played with passion, love for football and instinct, but in football you also have to think.

Especially when you play at home, you need a good atmosphere behind you.

I enjoy the work, I enjoy every minute of my professional life.

The Porto players were with me for two and a half years, they believed in me, in my methods, in the way we do it. The next day I go and a manager arrives who works completely differently.

When I go to the press conference before the game, in my mind the game has already started.

I feel I have a lot to learn from English football and I am completely open to good influences in my way of thinking football. But I also have things to give them.

In the same way that I had to follow an Italian manager here, I can imagine that it was not easy for an Italian manager to follow me at Porto.

The only thing that we cannot control is our supporters.

Arsenal have won that advantage, nobody gave it to them. By playing fantastic football and by winning matches and by winning trophies, they won that respect that the opponent has for them.

But I think it's more normal for my team to have no success than it is to win two consecutive European cups.

When you just work tactically, in pure football sessions, you can see the way they can think football.

You have to win and especially, as I have, you have to win a trophy for the first time.

Video On Jose Mourinho Leadership

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Other Links

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Wikipedia: A short account of Jose Mourinho’s life
Josemariomourinho.com: Official Fan Site of Jose Mourinho

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