When Ted Lasso first debuted on Apple TV, its premise seemed almost too unlikely to work. An American football coach with little knowledge of soccer is sent across the Atlantic to coach AFC Richmond, a struggling English football club. The fans doubt him. The press mocks him. Even some of the players question whether he belongs. And yet, Ted keeps showing up.

He smiles. He listens. He learns. He remembers people’s names and their stories. Most importantly, he treats the people around him as human beings rather than simply as players, employees or obstacles standing in the way of winning.

That may be the biggest reason Ted Lasso has resonated with so many viewers, and why the return of the series for its fourth season this summer provides a timely opportunity to revisit what Ted can teach us about leadership. Ted Lasso understands something that great leaders in any organization eventually discover: people perform at their best when they feel connected.

It’s not just about winning

From the beginning, Ted’s approach frustrates those around him because he seems strangely unconcerned with winning. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to win. He does. But he understands that winning cannot be the only measure of success. A team can win a game and still be broken. An organization can hit its numbers while its people are burned out, disengaged or quietly looking for the exit.

As Michael Stallard, Co-Founder and President of Connection Culture Group, often shares with leaders, sustainable performance requires both task excellence and relationship excellence. When we focus exclusively on the task, we can achieve results for a while but without strong relationships, those results become difficult to sustain.

Ted instinctively understands this. He invests his time in getting to know his players. He encourages them when they struggle. He challenges them when they need to grow. He gives them opportunities to support one another. And when someone is hurting, he doesn't simply tell them to get back on the field. He takes the time to understand what is happening beneath the surface.

Over time, something remarkable happens. The players of AFC Richmond begin to trust one another.

A team becomes more than a collection of individuals

When Ted arrives at AFC Richmond, the club is struggling. The people within it are disconnected from one another. Players have competing personalities, causing clashes in the locker room and on the pitch. What's more, the team's owner has an agenda of her own, wishing to lead the team to demise to hurt her ex-husband whose one true love, according to her, was AFC Richmond.

Ted begins changing that culture one relationship at a time. He creates an environment where people feel valued and supported. He encourages players to see one another differently. He celebrates their strengths while helping them confront their weaknesses. He creates space for people who might otherwise remain on the margins. In other words, he builds connection.

A connection culture is an environment in which people feel they belong, believe they matter and know they are part of something bigger than themselves. Those three experiences — shared identity, empathy and understanding — help people bring their best to work.

That is precisely what begins to happen at AFC Richmond. The team develops a shared identity. Players begin caring about one another. They become willing to sacrifice individual interests for the good of the team. Their culture becomes their superpower.

The skeptic who became a believer

One of the most interesting examples is Trent Crimm. When Trent is first introduced, he is a tough, skeptical journalist covering AFC Richmond. He is not particularly impressed by Ted or his unconventional approach. However, as he spends more time around the team, he begins to see something that cannot be explained simply by tactics or talent.

By Season 3, Trent is following the team closely as he works on a book about them. After one particularly important game, AFC Richmond comes together and successfully executes a new style of play they have been trying out, called “total football.” Trent is excited. He approaches Ted and insists that this new system is going to work.

Ted smiles. It's the first time in the series' three seasons that someone recognizes out loud the team's superpower: the culture Ted has been building since he first walked into the locker room.

The players trust one another enough to make the system work. They understand their roles, but they also understand that they are responsible for helping one another. They are no longer simply eleven individuals trying to perform their own jobs. They have become a team.

Connection doesn't guarantee victory

A connection culture is not a magic formula that eliminates setbacks. AFC Richmond experiences plenty of them. The team loses games. Relationships become strained. Players make mistakes. Ted struggles with his own challenges. At one point, Richmond is even relegated from the Premier League. However, something important has changed. The team has developed the resilience to recover together. That distinction matters for leaders.

Great leaders know they will not win 100 percent of the time. No organization does. Markets change. Strategies fail. Competitors emerge. People make mistakes. Sometimes circumstances simply don't go our way. The question is not whether a team will experience adversity. The question is how the team will respond when adversity arrives.

Teams with strong cultures of connection have an advantage. Their members are more willing to ask for help, offer support, learn from mistakes and keep working toward a shared goal. They don't fall apart when things go wrong because they know they are not facing the challenge alone.

The leader's job is to create connection

Ted Lasso is not a perfect leader, however, he consistently demonstrates a powerful leadership principle: leadership is less about having all the answers and more about helping people become their best selves together.

Ted doesn't walk into AFC Richmond with superior soccer knowledge. He walks in with curiosity, humility, empathy, and a genuine desire to help people. And those qualities allow others to flourish. That is an important lesson for leaders.

You don't have to be the smartest person in the room. You don't have to have every answer. You don't have to be the star player. Your job is to create the conditions in which the people around you can succeed.

Get to know them. Listen to them. Help them see how their work contributes to something larger. Recognize their contributions. Encourage them when they struggle. And, perhaps most importantly, help them develop relationships with one another.

When people feel connected to their leader, to their colleagues, and to the mission they share, something powerful happens: they become more than a collection of individuals performing individual tasks. They become a team.

The Richmond lesson

The story of AFC Richmond ultimately isn't about soccer. It is about people.

Ted arrives in England knowing little about the sport, yet he brings with him something more impactful than a particular formation or strategy: the belief that a team's greatest advantage is the way its people learn to care for one another. That lesson applies far beyond a football pitch.

Whether you lead a business, a nonprofit, a classroom, a sports team or a family, you will face setbacks. You won't win every time. You won't always have the right answer. But when the people around you trust one another, feel valued and are united behind a shared purpose, you give them something more enduring than a winning strategy. You give them connection. And connection may be the most powerful competitive advantage any team can have.

About the Author

Elizabeth Price Stallard is a non-profit leader and fundraiser, currently serving as Managing Director of IE US Fund. In empowering people and creating community, Elizabeth has found human connection to be an essential ingredient to success, making it the cornerstone of her philosophy on leadership and her approach to fundraising.

‍Photo by Chaos Soccer Gear on Unsplash