The Most Important Leadership Qualities... and Why Austria Might be Cut out to Win the European Championship

Jonas Puck, Academic Director of the Executive MBA Energy Management, has taken a closer look at the team and its surroundings. Passionate about soccer himself, he has been researching the parallels between professional soccer and business for many years. Read on to find out more about the team’s prep work from a management perspective, what managers can apply to their own field of work in terms of leadership qualities, and why Austria will win the cup (or why it’s not entirely out of the question).

The Top 6 Most Important Leadership Qualities

The last weeks and months were eventful for the people close to the national team as well as the players themselves. These developments have had a significant impact on the team dynamics and the chances of success at the European Championships. We’ll have a look at the challenges facing the Austrian national team and explain which leadership qualities are required to master them successfully.

These 6 leadership qualities are indispensable in the modern working world!

Alaba, Schlager, and Kalajdžić: When Top Players Need to Take a Break

Together, we are strong! In the course of the UEFA EURO 2024 qualifying tournament, Head Coach Ralf Rangnick made a real team out of the solo star players of the Austrian squad. Knowing the strengths but also the weaknesses of every individual player, he managed to get them to unite over a shared goal. Top performance, however, is more than just the sum of the individual achievements. It takes an atmosphere in which strong players lift each other up to jointly reach a higher level. But what to do if some of the top stars must be benched right before an important tournament?

1. Leadership Qualities: Adaptability and Resilience

There’s no doubt that it hurts a team if key players (both in sports and in business) are forced to take a break. But if it prompts everybody else to move closer together, it will only increase cohesion within the team. It’s situations like these when team members with a hitherto low profile suddenly shine. A clever manager knows to expect this and actively supports this process. What can we learn from this? Losing key players is hard on a team, but if a skillful leader succeeds in re-assembling the pieces, the team will emerge stronger than before.

Ralf Rangnick Chooses Austria (over FC Bayern Munich)

Against all odds and following weeks of sports media speculations about his potential appointment as a successor to Thomas Tuchel, Coach Rangnick announced in early May 2024 that he would decline the offer by the record-breaking German team FC Bayern Munich and would instead stay on as the Austrian national team’s chief coach.

2. Leadership Qualities: Loyalty and Commitment

It sends a strong signal to the team if a leader chooses to remain with an organization despite attractive offers from other places. This leadership qualities in form of a special kind of commitment create trust and security. They motivate employees to go the extra mile and improve their performance.

Diversity as a USP: Why International Experience Makes all the Difference

In soccer, players that learn from each other fare best. And the members of the Austrian national team have much to offer in this regard: as has been the case in the past, numerous players are currently active in the German Bundesliga, Trauner plays in the Dutch Eredivisie, Danso in the French Ligue 1 – and so on. The members of the Austrian national soccer team benefit greatly from the individual players’ experience and varied playing styles imported from leagues across Europe.

3. Leadership Qualities: Change of Perspective and Creativity

A good leader ensures that diverse experiences are brought to the table for better understanding and encourages team members to draw on their full potential to find creative solutions and develop innovations. A leadership quality that makes an effective difference.

Skillfully Handling Losses – But Also Successes!

Ralf Rangnick showed them how it’s done: the Austrian national soccer team’s consistently solid performance qualified them for EURO 2024. In the run-up, the team has been victorious for six games in a row following the 2:1 against Serbia and the draw against Switzerland. Despite all that, Rangnick knows that you should never rest on your laurels. And so he keeps reminding his players, “We can’t become complacent because of this success. It’s true that we’ve had a run and won games against opponents who seemed unbeatable, but we also lost games that we should have won with ease.” The defeat against France in the group stage now offers the opportunity to deal with failure in the right way.

4. Leadership Qualities: Learning Culture and Self-Reflection

This approach clearly shows that both wins and losses are valuable learning opportunities. And that’s why successful business leaders not only analyze their successes but also create a culture that is forgiving of mistakes, true to the objective of celebrating achievements together without vilifying errors and instead using them as opportunities to do something differently next time. This way, everybody can improve and succeed more often – as a team!

Success story: Sturm Graz as a Textbook Example

In the past season, Sturm Graz, a soccer club with a long tradition from the province of Styria, not only snatched the title Red Bull Salzburg had held for ten years but also won the Austrian Cup. Scoring a double for the first time in the club’s 25-year history. The team that sports black-and-white jerseys achieved a great success that seemed very unlikely at the season’s start. It's not just the Austrian national team that can learn something from this - business leaders can also sharpen their leadership qualities!

5. Leadership Qualities: Enthusiasm and Cohesion

Dream big, even if you are not a dreamer. If you manage to motivate your team through consistency and hard work, get them on board with your passion, and support every member’s strengths, you will see everybody in the team grow beyond themselves and achieve things nobody would have thought possible. Teamwork, as they say, makes the dream work! And that holds true for both the national team and companies.

In principle: If you Are at the Top, you want to Stay at the Top

Once people have reached the top, they usually like to stay there. They don’t want to take second place, because, obviously, that’s second to first place. And this is especially true for teams such as Red Bull Salzburg or FC Bayern Munich, which have been spoilt by their successful past. Until 2024, Red Bull Salzburg won the Austrian Cup ten times in a row. Bayern Munich have been the champions of their leagues eleven times, and won the UEFA Champions League and the elusive “sextuple” by scoring all six possible titles in a single season. But in 2024, the winning streaks of both teams came to an abrupt halt: this past season, they did not win a single title.

6. Leadership Qualities: Constructiveness and Acceptance

What does a setback of this scale mean from a psychological perspective? And how can you still draw strength from such losses? The magic word is acceptance. Failures and setbacks are a natural part of (professional) life. If you manage to see them as something that will pass, you have already taken the first step towards a more successful future. If media reports are to be trusted, the players of both Bayern Munich and Red Bull Salzburg have – with the help of their clubs – already gotten over the season. More than that, they seem extremely eager to use their last chance for a title this year at the European Championship, and it’s safe to assume that their motivation will also rub off on their team players in the national teams.

These Qualities Make a Good Leader!

The identified leadership qualities - from resilience and cohesion to motivational leadership and dealing with failure - are not only crucial for professional sport, but also for the modern working world. They form a foundation for successful management and underline the importance of strong leadership for the success of a team.

Finally: Will Austria Become European Champion?

As we’ve seen, both developments within the team and in its surroundings can have a positive impact on the team and their success at the European Championship. Jonas Puck points out that Austria is currently viewing the national team in a both realistic and positive way. Fans have good reason to be happy about the positive development and the accumulating wins in the recent past. At the same time, they know to keep their expectations in check. And maybe that’s exactly what it takes to become the next European champion!

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