Podcast Review: The Training Ground Guru | Damien Comolli: From Tou-lose to Tou-win

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In 2020, Toulouse were bought over by RedBird Capital while they were languishing in the second tier of the French Football leagues. They brought in Damien Comolli and appointed him Chairman and Sporting Director.

Damien’s previous roles included Director of Football at Tottenham, Liverpool, Fenerbache and St Etienne.

In this interview, the host of The Training Ground Guru – Simon Austin dives into the challenges Damien faced coming into a football club and what he had to do to turn the club around. They discuss the importance and massive use of data, how Toulouse have changed the traditional structure of a football club and the huge work that Damien and his team did surrounding culture and identity.

The big takeaway for me and the reason I wanted to write about this podcast episode was the discussion on culture and strategy. This was put at the top of the priority list by Damien in order to create the best environment for success at Toulouse FC.

What is the culture, identity and DNA?

Damien spent weeks meeting and speaking to as many people as he could to find out exactly what the culture and DNA of Toulouse FC was. Meetings with current and former players, staff, volunteers, fan groups and local politicians. He wanted to know about the relationship between the club and the city. He even went to lengths to find out the sociology of the supporter and the people who lived in the surrounding areas to get as clear a picture as possible what the club meant to the people of Toulouse.

 

 

It became clear that the club was completely isolated in the city and the relationship was disjointed. Largely due to a lack of communication and engagement.

The first step Toulouse FC took was to reach out to supporters groups and even non-supporters within the city. They discovered that Toulouse has a large population of students, so they met with the largest student unions and asked one straightforward question: “What do you want us to do for you to come to the stadium?”

Tou-lose to Tou-win

He began his mission by reaching out to people who worked, had worked, or volunteered with the club. By asking this one question; “What does this football club mean to you?”. The answer was a play on words – ‘Tou-lose.’

This simple insight became the catalyst for the club’s rebranding efforts. Damien knew that to make the club more appealing to fans and the wider community, he had to tap into what Toulouse meant to them. By asking a simple question and listening to the answers, Damien was able to uncover a unique insight that became the foundation for the club’s new identity. The next challenge was to change ‘Tou-lose’ to ‘Tou-win’.

What stood out about Damien’s approach was that he recognised that he couldn’t simply implement the culture he or RedBird Capital wanted at the club. He knew that to create a winning culture, the staff had to be empowered to drive change. The key to success, he realised, was to create working groups that each had their own topics to work on.

The message was clear: “We are here, how do you think we get to where we all want to be?” By allowing the staff to take ownership of the changes they wanted to see, Damien and his team were able to create a culture that was both sustainable and successful.

They needed to create an environment where everyone felt safe to take risks and try new things. To achieve this, they reached out to their staff to ask what they wanted in terms of feedback and performance management.

The club recognised that in order to achieve success, they needed to put culture and identity at the forefront of everything they did. This meant selecting managers and coaches based on how they would fit with the club’s playing style and culture, and screening players before signing to ensure they were a good fit for the team.

In addition, the club provided full inductions on the culture of the club to all new players, ensuring that everyone was on the same page from day one. This allowed the team to work together more cohesively, with everyone fully committed to the club’s values and goals.

But it wasn’t just the playing staff that were expected to embrace the culture of the club. Non-playing staff and volunteers were also expected to work within the culture that was set and owned by everyone. This created a sense of ownership and unity across the entire football club.

“It is the staff’s responsibility to safeguard the club’s culture and identity”

Culture breeds success

This new approach wasn’t an instant success, but it did pay off in the long run. After missing out on promotion in controversial circumstances in the 2020/21 season play-offs, Toulouse FC won League 2 in record-breaking style, scoring the most goals ever scored in the league, having the top passers and goalscorer in the league, and six players nominated in the Team of the Year. These impressive achievements were not just down to individual talent, but to the team’s commitment to their culture and identity.

Damien Comolli is quick to point out that this is still very much a ‘work in progress’ project when it comes to the culture at Toulouse. And he spends a lot of time in this interview discussing the importance of data and how they have transformed their use of data in all aspects of the football club. He talks about his time as Director of Football in the UK and how the culture in the UK at the time wasn’t ready for this role. He is also very open about times where he hasn’t had success and been through harder times and what he did to get back on track.

I found this interview fascinating. So many groups and organisations can learn from the Toulouse FC model of making culture and identity one of the top  strategic goals for success. By engaging and communicating with the local fan groups and communities within the city, Toulouse have created a synced purpose and identity for the club and the fans. Internally, the culture was set and is owned by the staff. They have created a space that allows them to be adventurous and not be scared to fail. Players at all levels and ages buy-in to the clubs ethos, DNA and culture and success is clear to see.

After this interview with The Training Ground Guru, I will be keeping a much closer eye on Toulouse FC from now on.

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Seek first to understand, then to be understood – How to build effective interpersonal communication to build influence

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In his book – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey dedicates a chapter to Habit No.5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood. 

We are all guilty of being too keen to help someone with a problem they have. We jump in and explain what we think they should do or what we think they need to hear. And it will often come from a good place; “You should try doing this…” or “what you need is…”. But really, all we’re doing in these circumstances is passing on our thoughts based on what we think.

Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes…

How can we really tell someone what we think they need, or need to do without fully understanding their needs? Stephen Covey uses an example of using someone else’s glasses to fix their eyesight. Just because the glasses might benefit the person who is wearing them, doesn’t mean they’ll be any good to anyone else who has eyesight issues.

We can’t fully ‘fix’ someone’s issues, if we don’t fully understand what the problem is. And what works for us, won’t always work for someone else.

I see this a lot in the mental health awareness and ambassador/first aider training that I deliver. Our instinct is to tell a person suffering from poor mental health what we think they should do to get ‘better’. We forget to seek to understand and jump straight to wanting them to understand what we think the problem is and what they should do.

More often than not, the majority of us don’t actually want to hear someone giving us their solutions to our problems, we just want them to listen and understand.

And there lies the problem… Listening.

When did we learn to listen?

Covey describes the 4 basic types of communication:

Reading

Writing 

Speaking 

Listening

But what ones do we use the most every day?

For the vast majority of us, speaking is the main form of communication that we use. Writing and reading would come next and listening often comes last. From our earliest years, we are first taught how to speak, then read and write. But can anyone actually remember being taught to listen?

Julian Treasure’s TEDTalk – How to speak so that people want to listen – is one of the most popular TEDTalks of all time. It sits in the top 10 talks comfortably and has well over 50 million views on YouTube. However, in his interview on the Diary of a CEO Podcast, Julian explains that he has done 5 TEDTalks, and the talk he did on listening has just a 5th of the viewers as his talk on speaking.

“We’re much keener to be heard than we are to listen to others” – Julian Treasure 

Why do we want to be heard so much, but struggle to hear others?

Everyone likes to feel heard. We want to be validated and feel valued. We want to give our value to others and help them when they need it. But we often fall into the trap of doing it on our terms instead of the other person’s. We forget to seek the understanding. Asking questions instead of imparting our knowledge. Truly finding out exactly what the issues, problems or needs are.

We look at things through our own perspectives and hold our own judgments. But as Stephen Covey explains in his book – “The key to good judgement is understanding.” 

A mistake often made in sales is trying to sell a product rather than selling the solution. Finding out exactly what the needs are of the buyer or the market is how some of the most innovative inventions and technology has been created.

Communication is a 2 way process. When we speak, we want to be heard. Julian Treasure can explain exactly how to do that in his TEDTalk. If we really want to be heard and really want our message to have an impact on the people we are talking to, then we need to know and understand them first. Then and only then can we have the impact that we want our own words to have.

How do we listen?

Stephen Covey believes that Empathetic Listening is key to creating an understanding. Trust plays a huge role in being able to get someone to open up and confide in the listener. If anyone starts to feel judged or unsafe, they we won’t be as open as they would if they were comfortable with the listener. We can’t build an understanding if the person we communicate with doesn’t feel comfortable enough to speak to us.

Listen with the intent to understand rather than listening with the intent to reply. Sometimes, silence is golden. We might think that we’ve had a similar experience, but this is their space to share not ours. Respect their space.

Empathise, don’t sympathise. Sympathy is a form of judgmental listening. Sympathy can create dependancy, and Covey explains that people can often feed off sympathy.

It’s not about agreeing or disagreeing, it’s about understanding. We all see the world differently and can have varying perspectives. Enjoy finding out how to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

Be aware!

Empathetic listening is just one way to improve communication. It’s not a technique, and it’s certainly not something that needs to be used all of the time. If someone feels like a technique is being used on them, then they won’t trust you. It takes practice but more importantly, it takes awareness.

Be aware of when to use it and when you don’t need to use it. And be especially aware of when you find yourself creeping back into bad habits of judgmental listening, telling rather than asking and/or diagnosing before prescribing.

 

James Smith – Confidence Predicts Success

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James Smith is one of the main reason that I started this blog. In January 2023, I took some time to listen back to my favourite Diary of a CEO podcast episodes and write about my top 5.

It was though but fun ranking all the episodes that I’d enjoyed and then trying to pick the 5 I enjoyed the most.

James Smith wasn’t someone on my radar. I knew of him but I had never really explored who he was. My perception was that he was another one of these ‘shock jock’ fitness influencers that likes to go against the grain and say things for the shock factor.

Steven Bartlett does describe him in the show notes as having a ‘no holds barred approach to fitness advice’. But after listening to this episode and paying a bit more attention to James and what he is doing, my original perception has since changed.

He’s a confident guy. And he wants to use his confidence to breed confidence in other people through what he does. And if I hadn’t listened back to this episode, I probably wouldn’t have got my shit together and started this blog.

As a fitness coach at heart, James has spent a large part of his working life around people who are wanting to change; either get fitter, stronger, faster or lose the weight they’re not happy carrying around. But rather than just help people shift the few extra pounds or finally get the 6 pack they’ve always wanted, he cuts through to the REAL reason(s) why they want what they want.

And a lot of it comes down to confidence and how they feel. It could be that they no longer feel ‘sexy’ for their partners or don’t feel comfortable when they take their top off in public. He called these ‘pain points’ for his clients. And when he works with a client, he has to get to the core of the issue and find the real pain points so that they can work together on how to start the change process. This is more often than not a case of building confidence. 

Before he began working as a fitness instructor, he worked as a door to door salesman. This is where he believes a lot of his confidence was built and developed.  He explains that he became aware that confidence is a relationship with failure. Doors being slammed in his face, phones being hung up when he was trying to sell were demoralising. But if he got 1 sale from 100 sales calls, then he had the evidence to back himself.

Building resilience is key. We all get knock backs throughout our careers and lives. Having the resilience and strength to find a way to deal with it and bounce back is so important. So when people like James Smith share their story of how they dealt and managed failure, we can take these examples and apply them to ourselves.

“Anxiety predicts failure and confidence predicts success”

We all have anxiety. And for some of us it can vary on how severe it is and when we feel it. Managing anxiety is hard. Especially if we find ourselves in a situation where it becomes amplified. Standing in front of strangers with a mic in your hand or even just trying to hit ‘record’ on your phone camera to shoot a short video. It’s a natural feeling and completely normal to have these pangs of anxiety. But it’s our relationship with anxiety which predicts how much we let it control us.

Fear of failure naturally crosses our mind when we are anxious. ‘What if i forget what I’m supposed to say…’ or ‘What if they don’t like me and I don’t get the job…’ and ‘What if no one likes me and this flops..’. Unfortunately, shit happens sometimes.

There will be times that you don’t get the job that you wanted, or times when you do say something all jumbled up during a presentation. And for James Smith, he uses the memory of doors being slammed in his face on his door to door sales calls. But what he also uses is the knowledge that after so many doors being shut in his face, if he kept going, he’d get that one sale he needed. So using the confidence that he CAN sell the product because he had the evidence, he was able to keep going.

This rings true when he found himself on the other side of the world in Australia and his original plan wasn’t working. He wasn’t getting the same success as a PT in Australia as he’d had in the UK. His confidence was low and he was anxious about what he was going to do. So he decided to record a few videos on his phone and start putting them out on Facebook and the rest is history.

One of the main takeaways I took from this episode was the power of audacity. We can often associate audacity with negative connotations. We can look at someone like James and think that he’s over confident and has the audacity to say the things he says on his social media. We need confidence and audacity to achieve the things we want to. 

But having the audacity to ask difficult questions and not be worried about how other people think is huge when it comes to building confidence. He references a great experiment he heard on The Tim Ferris Podcast about asking for a 10% discount when buying a coffee. And goes on to quote Mark Manson with a quote I really like – “People wouldn’t care what other people thought of them so much if they realised how seldom they do.” 

We worry about what other people will think about us. And this builds anxiety in our heads. The anxiety relates to the reason we often don’t start the blog or podcast we have always wanted to. Or getting our message across the way we want to get it over.

We live in a polarised world where everything we say and put out on social media is open for others to judge us on. If you are less anxious and a bit more audacious with a positive outlook on your expectations, then with small steps you can achieve a lot more than you can by sitting wondering about it.

For me it was toss up between James Smith or Sir Richard Branson to add to my top 5 episodes. Sorry Dicky, James pipped you to the post on this one.

Check the full episode on YouTube –  HERE 

Listen to the episode HERE