Ted Lasso is 1 Million Micro-Lessons for what Tech Leadership needs Right Now.
Understanding complex emotions to enable better business organizations
I’m deep in writing mode right now (four articles+ set to roll out soon), and I’ve learned that playing familiar TV shows in the background somehow helps me focus when tackling long-form pieces.
Right now, I’m re-watching Ted Lasso (currently on Season 3). This time, I’m watching it with a business leadership lens, thinking about what we need to focus on in the technology industry right now.
Success at scale (in part) comes from recognizing team and individual emotions, understanding the actions they spark, and seeing how behavior shapes organizations—while working to drive revenue, grow the business, and helping people realize their potential. By ‘scale,’ I mean operations involving tens of thousands of people and trillions of dollars over time.
Leadership Lessons on Screen
Ted and his brilliant, quirky BFF Coach Beard take over an organization that needs to heal emotionally before it can win. Sounds familiar to anyone in tech right now? hm.
One great character is Nate, the wunderkind, who in Season 3 joins the rival team as head coach. His new org has a very different leadership style—and set of values—than the one that first recognized his talent. Culture differs drastically from the environment in which he was initially elevated, and as Nate advances, he faces several career curveballs. The show smartly and simply demonstrates how he navigates these challenges, climbing the career ladder toward personal and professional goals.
Holding true to your values as you work across multiple types of F500 corporations and adhering to those as you manage change as a leader is of critical importance. I love watching Nate as he goes through this growth, as I’m now able to chuckle at the run-ins, because truly, haven’t we all been there? How may of us have had leaders in some funny but slightly uncomfortable way make fun of our cars, and when bonus season rolls around, we go out and get a fancy one too? And yes, there are football field sized parking lots at each major tech campus that are full of fancy cars.
These character arcs work because they’re digestible for every level—from junior staff to the C-suite—and they offer examples that can bridge understanding across diverse teams. In tech, where trillions of dollars and critical infrastructure are on the line, these lessons aren’t just nice to have—they’re essential.
Vulnerability as a Superpower
Another standout storyline is the episode titled, “Smells Like Mean Spirit,” which begins with Ted teaching the team an important lesson in the sewers of London, accidentally sparking a PR crisis, and landing Rebecca (the “big boss,” played fabulously and ferociously by Hannah Waddingham) in the hot seat dealing with both the fallout impacting the professional business she runs and an ongoing personal challenge that keeps surfacing in her work life. Ted steps up—in many ways throughout the show, but especially here—helping Rebecca and the soccer organization solve this crisis via “breaking the ice” in a press conference. He leans into his personality to win over the media in a crisis, while being funny, discerning, open, and deeply vulnerable. As leaders, we don’t talk enough about how to use vulnerability appropriately in business, yet it’s a skill we should be applying more often. I use it all the time and will absolutely continue to. It’s a fucking superpower.
You learn grace when going through hard things. The cast and writers on this show discuss the hard stuff in the right ways. Roy (begrudgingly, I think I might resemble him a tad) and Keely, who infuses fun into change as she builds her own “start-up” of sorts, add even more texture to this leadership landscape. The storylines are also ripe for helpful lessons, such as this scene examining organizational dynamics when a new celebrity-type player joins the team.
Why This Matters for Tech
The parallels are everywhere—for me, my teams, colleagues, bosses, mentors, more. The big takeaway: wins don’t happen because of one person. They happen when the entire ecosystem is engaged and aligned. The real lesson is in being mature enough to recognize these parallels for what they are, while also understanding the complexity of the entire playing field. That includes the emotional backdrop, which is critically important to grasp from a systems-thinking perspective—especially when it comes to the intricacies of people management to help organizations deliver exceptional work at scale.
Now let’s take the above, and shift gears to discuss how we can adapt to better systems and models to make our organizations stronger through this learning.
The process depicted in this show is both fantastic and, at times, heartbreaking—but it’s always about growth and change. That’s the constant. Once real change happens, magical things start to unfold—first for individuals, then for the people they interface with. I love that part. It’s the reason I’m in tech. I love joining these massive companies and doing this kind of work, it’s such a privilege, and when you can do this magic at scale, cool shit can happen in very impactful ways.
Character Development for the Corporate Workforce
Good managers and leaders should work toward a clear, repeatable method for helping their people move through emotions and reactions in healthy, business-appropriate ways: setting expectations, connecting the dots, catching people when they fail or fall, and standing them back up to do it again.
As we look ahead to what we must accomplish in technology over the coming years, new people and priorities will always enter the picture. The learning component in technology includes depth of knowledge, but the breadth required is really about how we change and evolve—with grace, humor, dignity, and vulnerability—and how we impact others along the way. Understanding the big picture, seeing how it plays out, and having the courage to do the right thing for both the business and humanity will be essential.
Why This Matters for Tech
The companies that do the right things now will lead the future revolutions, and win battles along the way that lead to the more important victories. That’s not just a TV lesson—it’s something I’ve learned from many years in the tech industry. But here’s the thing: to win revolutions, we must treat people appropriately and well. Change is here, and we need to determine how to shift organizations for the future—what skills and problems to prioritize, what goes higher or lower on the priority stack, and how we staff for those projects. It’s largely a mathematical and economic challenge, followed by a strategic one. I don’t want to mince words here, so let me be direct: this exercise will usually reduce headcount. And that’s not personal. It’s business.
My Approach
I try very hard to keep things simple [fully bought in on the KISS principle]. At the high level:
(1) Things are going to change, and we need to look at that with a business lens. When I say business, I mean the entire ecosystem of the org/company/humans/partners/customers etc.—think internal and external.
(2) When a business is impacted, people are impacted. Leaders need to make sure the company is making smart decisions and then executing on those in a timely manner so people can be taken care of. This follow-through is critical for orgs in change, it is what creates the psychological safety required to do great things.
3. Regarding teams and tough decisions, I try very hard to be Ted Lasso-esque when tough shit goes down. The lesson in that show is in the growth, acceptance, forgiveness+ of these wonderful characters—and that’s critical to understand as we take on larger and larger teams. When we try to communicate and have positive intent, everything just works better in the long-run. Keep sharpening the method and the medium, but above all—get the message out.
As we move forward in tech and across different businesses in the corporate landscape, there are two takeaways I carry forward:
(1) As a leader, you need to create a framework where your team can tell you you’re wrong—without fear of you getting angry. It’s our job to figure out what that looks like in terms of style and approach. I ask my teams to tell me before I fuck up, and it’s been transformational. I highly recommend it.
(2) RIFs and cuts will continue to happen, it’s cyclic. When they do, my responsibility as a leader is to deliver the message in a way that protects people’s dignity and ensures they’re compensated as fairly as possible for the commitment and impact they’ve made.
I want to thank everyone who makes the Ted Lasso show happen from the bottom of my heart; this show hits deep and is important for today’s society. It’s complex work to create storylines that intertwine the lives of characters with the depth required to grow. I hope the lessons continue to be fruitful for the creative team, clearly their experience and corresponding work give us fabulous and standout TV content.
In life, our careers play such a big part. It can be a hard ride, but it truly can be such a fun ride if we let it. Just don’t get too caught up in the shiny parts—lean into the people parts too. That’s the harder work, but it gets easier with experience.
I’d love folks to chime in with thoughts or stories that help tell our story here in technology better, and I encourage dialogue as we think this through further.
/LC
ps: per below pic, I do want to thank several folks I’ve worked with over the past few years for sending me important messages in really cool and unique ways and inspiring me to watch this show. Our communities in tech are so special and ever-evolving. Now is such an exciting time.
