The Tao of Ted Lasso: Life, Leadership and the Art of Getting Along (Part 2)

Part 2: The Tao and Ted Lasso

For the uninitiated, Ted Lasso (played by Jason Sudeikis, a performer I’d never heard of) is a winning college American football coach hired by the fictitious AFC Richmond English Premier League professional soccer team as their new head coach. Why an owner would do this is a key part of the Season 1 storyline, but for the purposes of this post let’s just say Ted had compelling reasons to accept the offer.

With zero knowledge of European football, Ted is left to employ skills other than an expert tradesman’s technical knowledge of the sport to get the performance he needs from his players which finally gets us to the first topic of this essay.

But what do these non-technical skills have in common with an obscure ancient eastern philosophy? Quite a bit as it turns out which is intriguing in and of itself and we will come back to touch on later. Much of Ted Lasso’s leadership behavior centers around basic concepts discussed in the Tao.

I was first exposed to Taoism in a “World Religions 101” course I took to satisfy an elective requirement while at the University of Southern California. I wasn't interested in religion one iota, but the course fit my schedule and also covered Wikkan that, at the time, I thought was kind of cool.?

I came across it again when I was living and working in Asia first as a diplomat and later as a U.S. State Department representative on the U.S. interagency team engaged in the Super 301 Trade Talks with Japan. The euphemistically called ‘talks’ were negotiations intended to force open Japan's markets to American auto parts, lumber, satellites and supercomputers, things we did pretty well. Some amusing anecdotes to that experience which I won't get into here. Ask me about American lumber and Japanese earthquakes sometime.?

I’ll be taking free trade in a future blog post. Our recent experience with Covid supply logistics and China’s anti-competitive behavior have caused us to rethink free trade, but back in the 90s globalization and free trade were all the rage.?

Getting back on topic, my goal here is not to convert anyone to Taoism and this isn’t an essay on Taoism per se, but we do need to understand the basics to be able to see it in Ted. Now what follows is a gross oversimplification. We’re talking about concepts communicated in pictographs and a language with no basis in Latin from 2,600 years ago which leaves a lot of room for interpretation. But if you are curious you can read some easily digestible content here, here, and here. One of my favorites is from National Geographic.

The Tao, or Dao (quite literally ‘the way”), is an ancient Chinese philosophy based on the book “Te Tao Ching” from about 600 B.C. that is attributed to the philosopher Lao Tzu.?Its core concepts include humility, curiosity, detachment, interconnectedness, kindness, genuineness and harmony. The Tao guides practitioners on how to exist in harmony with the universe which manifests itself in personal behavior consistent with the view that the individual is part of a greater whole.

This notion of interconnectedness is also an aspect of Buddhism, Shintoism, and many other world religions including those from the west (though not as prominent here.)

Ever wonder why Asian cultures come across as so polite compared to our swaggering American ‘howdy pardner’ style?

This connectedness with everything, animate or not, compels the individual to interact with others as if they were a close relative or, more exotically, part of one’s extended self. Most families treat relatives differently than they do strangers, with a degree of consideration not afforded to the unaffiliated; unless of course one is a member of the Roy family in ‘Succession’ in which case, nevermind.?

This perspective extends not just to other cultures and ethnic groups, but to all living creatures as well as the environment around us. Not as nutty as it might initially seem. Scientists have since the 1960s been telling us the earth is one big closed ecosystem. It's the only one we have so best not to muck it up.

One of the main pillars behind Taoism is a belief in balancing forces, or yin and yang which nearly everyone has heard of. Yin and yang represent balancing pairs, such as light and dark, hot and cold, action and inaction, matter and antimatter, good and evil, which collectively comprise everything we experience. Neither is better than the other, but as polar opposites neither can have meaning without the other.?Extending this further they mean that nothing can exist, or make sense, by itself.?

Although the Tao’s core concepts of humility, curiosity, detachment, interconnectedness, kindness, genuineness and harmony may seem somewhat exotic, they will be recognizable by anyone who has formally studied leadership, attended b-school or successfully managed teams.?

Listen to the Norwegian Cruise Lines president Frank J. Del Rio in his public television spot talk about the three principles instilled in him by his parents: hard work, honesty (genuineness), and kindness (yep) to which he adds curiosity (there’s that word again). Boom! 3 out of 4 Taoist principles right there.?

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