Ted Lasso on Leadership, Negotiation, and Dealing with Conflict Lesson 4: Ted’s Mediation Efforts with Jaime Tartt and Roy Kent and a High Risk High

By Joshua N. Weiss, Ph.D.

When the show begins, we meet Jaime Tartt. He is the epitome of the young soccer superstar with amazing physical gifts. He has seemingly unlimited promise as a young star with a golden leg, but he also has all the negative baggage that often comes with that status. Arrogant, self-absorbed, etc… you get the idea. Tartt is highlighted as the main talent on the pitch, is AFC Richmond’s primary goal scorer, but also an exceedingly selfish player.

Coach Beard and Ted can see that a rift between Jaime and Roy is badly splitting the team and becoming more and more problematic with each passing day. Jaime is also bullying staff, particularly Nate, and Ted is not addressing it. Roy pushes Ted to deal with it but he does not, explaining that his intervening will just make it worst. As he says to Roy, this is a team issue that needs to be worked out by the leaders on the team.?

Ted does realize that the conflict between Jaime and Roy, however, needs resolution as it is badly dividing the team and preventing cohesion from taking place. Ted secretly hatches a plan to try to mediate the conflict in a creative manner. At a charity auction dinner where Rebecca (and her ex-husband Rupert) auction off dates with players, Ted sits Jaime and Roy together at the same table. They both hate it, but the Ted insists. He thinks through some forced interaction that things might change…but the two will clearly need a strong push. To that end, Ted corners Roy and asks him if he ever had a similar scenario in his career and dealt with a guy like Jaime. Roy shares a story of a former older teammate who had the same view of him as a young, talented, and a bit arrogant, star. Ted asks Roy how he and the other guy managed their problem. Roy explained that the two of them had a beer, swore at each other, and came to an understanding of how to play together. Roy got Ted’s point.

Later that evening, Roy sees Jaime at the bar and saunters over. The two grab a beer and uncomfortably hash out a tentative understanding – talking about what they dislike about each other and some surprising things that they appreciate. Roy tells Jaime he is one of the most talented players he has ever seen. Jaime confesses he idolized Roy as a kid and had a poster of him on his wall in his bedroom. They seem to leave with a new understanding, some minor breakthroughs, and a possible way to play together going forward.?? ????????

Fast forward to the next episode and one of AFC Richmond’s most likeable players, Sam Obisanya, gets hurt on the pitch giving AFC Richmond a free kick. (Incidentally, Obisanya is someone Tartt has belittled as the first season unfolded). In this specific situation Tartt callously steps over Sam wanting to take the free kick and not helping him up. This gets under Roy’s skin and he deems that Jaime learned nothing from their talk. His ‘me first’ attitude is still there. Roy pushes Jaime and a fight ensues – ending (somewhat amusingly) with both players from the same team getting a yellow card (penalty). Later in the game, after Jaime scores his second goal of the day, he turns his back to the crowd pointing to his name and yelling “ME, ME, ME!”? At that moment Ted realizes his initial efforts to mediate where not as effective as he imagined and that he has to do something dramatic and send a clearer message to Jaime about his behavior. What does Ted do? He benches Jaime before halftime. He does this much to the amazement of Jaime, the rest of the team, and ownership. While the move angers and humiliates Jaime, it demonstrates to the team that there is no room for individualism and they will never consistently win this way.? Only together…?

That move makes Ted feel like he is finally getting through to Jaime and the rest of the team. It is at that point, for the first time, we see Ted get really upset. But it is not with Jaime, rather with Rebecca. The parent club that owned Jaime’s rights, Manchester City, wanted him back early. Ted pleads with Rebecca not to allow the transfer because he feels like he is finally making headway with Jaime, but she does it anyway in her attempt to sabotage the season.

Lessons

To this point in the show, Ted’s mediation efforts have come to a halt, but we will see later that he has laid the foundation for what will happen in the future. Three approaches and tactics Ted uses here are worth pulling out and learning from.

First, Ted’s approach to the bullying that is occurring is worth examining. Roy appeals to Ted as the coach and authority figure to address the problem, but Ted realizes that he can change Jaime’s behavior by intervening, but not his attitude. Ted believes strongly that he needs to empower the leaders on the team to address this and to build a new culture that pushes this kind of destructive behavior out. In short, Ted resists the quick fix solution and implores Roy and others to lead and address the issue. It is not an easy choice, but it is one that eventually feeds into building a winning team culture.????? ?

Second, Ted’s use of the Contact Theory – which essentially states that if you put people together they will learn about each other, break down barriers, and have a chance at improving their relationship. As we saw from these two episodes, this approach has modest success initially. Often more is needed to make this work, and it needs to be a sustained effort – something Ted seems willing to do until Rebecca agrees to send Jaime back to Manchester City. That stated, this approach did lay the groundwork for future interactions that end up being very productive – so don’t judge Contact Theory too quickly – sometimes time is needed.

Third and Finally, Ted takes a strong and unusual action to get Jaime’s attention when he benches him for his attitude despite his stellar play.? From a leadership point of view Ted understood that this action was necessary to send Jaime a strong signal because nothing was getting through to him about his destructive behavior. This approach was a fine line to walk, and is a high risk/high reward strategy. Sometimes, however, this type of action is necessary to demonstrate to that person, and to the rest of the team/organization, that this is not who we are or how we represent ourselves to the rest of the world. ???