4 Reasons Why Ted Lasso’s Leadership Wouldn’t Fly in Real Life

As the third and possibly final season of Ted Lasso kicks into high gear, so too has the media parade surrounding the Emmy Award–winning series. Among the downpour of Tweets, recaps, and hot takes drowning the internet is the now ubiquitous business story hailing Ted as a modern-day leadership guru.

It’s an easy sell, quite frankly. As television’s most loveable coach, Ted checks a lot of boxes; he’s principled, transparent, empathetic, values-driven, and he genuinely cares about the well-being of the people in his organization.

Ted abides by a simple leadership philosophy: “Believe” — in yourself, in your team, in the power of positivity — and the rest will fall into place. Through a steady diet of inspirational quotes and radical optimism, Ted leads AFC Richmond to respectability, helping his players maximize their potential, both as athletes and as kind and caring humans. In a world that grows more cynical by the minute, the show reminds us, decency and compassion win the day.

It’s a potent lesson, if a bit oversimplified. Leading teams of people in the real world requires more than unyielding charm and a bottomless bucket of pop-culture references. While Ted’s folksy management style might make for feel-good TV, when examined more closely, it has more holes than a soccer net. 

So with apologies to all the Ted Heads out there, here are Ted Lasso’s four biggest leadership flaws. (For those who haven’t yet tuned in to the series, consider this your friendly spoiler alert.) 

1. Ted refuses to learn on the job

Ted Lasso is built on the premise that Ted is grossly underqualified for his job. The small-town American football coach is lured to London by AFC Richmond’s owner, Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) to unwittingly sabotage the club, which she inherited from her terrible ex-husband. Many of the show’s early gags center on Ted’s vast ignorance of European-style football. 

But as the show progresses into seasons two and three, it’s clear that Ted has done nothing to educate himself about the sport. In one recent episode, Rebecca pursues a mercurial superstar named Zava (Maximilian Osinski), whose addition promises to help the team win matches. Ted greets the news with apathy, admitting that he’s never heard of Zava, or his former club, despite it being a powerhouse of European football.

Learning curves are predicated on a person acquiring knowledge as they go, and that’s especially true for leadership roles. The best leaders are lifelong learners who constantly master their craft. Ted’s unwillingness to bone up on the basics might play for a laugh, but in the real world it would amount to a huge red flag. 

2. Ted relies too much on intuition

Strong leaders are known for having great instincts; it’s what gives them the confidence to make the kind of difficult decisions that can make or break an organization. But intuition is something that’s developed over time, born out of training, experience, analysis, and access to data.

Ted has none of this, of course, yet still he makes gut call after gut call, with spectacularly mixed results. In season one, he decides to bench the team’s star player, Jaimie Tartt (Phil Dunster), for his poor attitude, a move that negatively impacts Richmond’s success. The players, who prioritize performance over team values, are angered, and Ted has to re-earn their trust.

More noteworthy is his decision to promote the team’s equipment manager, Nate Shelley (Nick Mohammed), to assistant coach. At first thankful for the opportunity, Nate quickly morphs into an anti-Ted, coiled with resentment and insecurity, before dashing off in a jealous rage to coach West Ham, a rival team owned by Rececca’s ex-husband.

Ted sees potential in Nate as a football strategist and rolls the dice. But a seasoned leader with a solid foundation in their field would have a list of vetted candidates to choose from — or at the very least would introduce Nate slowly into the system, to be sure he was the right fit for the job. Bottom line: Intuition is good, but only if you have the hard-earned experience to guide it. 

3. Ted doesn’t respect boundaries

Part of Ted’s shtick is that he goes through great lengths to win people over. In doing so, however, he has a tendency to violate professional boundaries. At the beginning of season one, Ted drops by Rebecca’s office unannounced with biscuits, and promises to make it a regular occurrence, despite her disapproval. The scene is meant to establish Ted’s likability, but to anyone in a leadership role dealing with the rigors of time management, Ted’s behavior is grating, verging on inappropriate.

He employs similar antics with other characters. In season two, we’re introduced to Dr. Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles), a sports psychologist hired by the team. Ted, who suffers from panic attacks, tries disarming the doctor with his aw shucks routine, but she’s impervious to his charms. Later, as Ted opens up about his challenges, he continues to cross the line, buying her gifts and in one scene entering her apartment to her obvious discomfort. 

Ted has good intentions, but that’s largely beside the point: Professional boundaries are put in place to help define what’s OK and what’s not OK in the workplace. A leader who doesn’t recognize that, or is willing to compromise those principles to achieve a personal goal, sets a dangerous example. In Ted Lasso the line between personal and professional is blurred. In real life, that can be a recipe for disaster. 

4. Ted isn’t focused on results

One of Ted Lasso's enduring charms is how it constantly examines our assumptions of success. Winning, in Ted’s view, has little to do with which team scores the most goals. “For me,” Ted declares in season one, “it’s about helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.”

It’s a heartwarming sentiment and the show’s guiding light. But from a leadership perspective, it’s flat-out irresponsible. For sports teams, like most all teams, the yardstick of success is performance. (There’s a reason companies appropriate the language of competition with its targets, goals, and wins.) To ignore that truth is, in some ways, to undermine the entire endeavor.  

At the start of season three, tensions arise between Ted and the rest of the team over their expectations of success. Ted’s lofty idealism obscures his players’ need to score actual goals — their standing in the sport, indeed, their professional futures, depend on it. 

The jury’s still out on whether Ted will accede to their demands. Good leaders are adept at balancing individual interests with collective performance. The best leaders always play to win.