If your goal is to win, then focus on becoming a Level 5 Leader

There’s a buzz about the North of England right now. I sense it in the way people discuss local business growth and opportunities, how investment is transforming communities and the enthusiasm of entrepreneurs with whom I meet regularly. But the real buzz is in Newcastle – and it’s partly down to the leadership of a 45-year-old ex-footballer who lost his job three years ago and didn’t know what to do next.

Eddie Howe is the Manager of Newcastle United, the football team I’ve loved since I moved to the North East aged five. But this isn’t a story about sport. It’s about business and the kind of leadership, mentoring and coaching skills that inspire success.

For the first time in more than 20 years, Newcastle have qualified for Europe’s most prestigious tournament, the Champions League, after a brilliant top-four finish in the Premiership. Many fans, me included, are convinced the players have over-achieved because of Eddie.

He embodies everything a great business leader should be. Humble, driven, without ego or vanity, he has a laser-like focus on how to achieve success. Plus, his emotional intelligence gets the best out of a team – by listening and learning, he elevates standards.

When Eddie lost his job as Manager of relegated Bournemouth in 2020 – having presided over years of astonishing success there – he didn’t waltz into another role. Instead, he took time away, reflected on his mistakes, watched and learned how other successful leaders operated, analysed the winning secrets of top teams, and returned to the game with a meticulous plan that he and his Newcastle team have followed relentlessly. Crowd-pleasing, high-energy football, supported and driven by one of the league’s strongest defences.

It's worked because Eddie is a Level 5 Leader, a term coined by the visionary business guru Jim Collins in his book Good To Great, which describes someone who inspires people to follow a cause, not just an individual. Someone who thrives from continuous learning and a determination to do what’s right rather than what’s easy. And someone who knows that if the organisation wins, then he or she will too. They want results not adulation.

Successful businesses are often shaped by these Level 5 leaders who, whilst incredibly ambitious, put the needs of others above their own. They also provide stability, direction and a purposeful vision which, especially in the current uncertain climate, are essential for growth.

I suspect Eddie also shares a mantra I live by – no matter how successful you are at reaching the top (as a player for him, an entrepreneur for me) you need to keep learning if you want to be a better leader. To be a top football coach you need to spend almost £5,000 to progress through five coaching levels. To be a coach and mentor for other business leaders and to be a valued investor, I’ve spent a not insubstantial amount of time and money to get my INSEAD business coaching certificate. My boundless curiosity means I have to keep learning – new skills, approaches, techniques, adopting the expertise of others, listening to their success stories. There’s always room to improve and people to learn from.

And I’ve learned from some of the best. People like Nigel Morris, co-founder of Capital One Financial Services, whose expertise helped me to make a success of HomeServe in the US. Jeff Boyd who ran Booking.com was a great mentor for me in understanding the online marketplace. And the business insights I’ve gleaned from TripAdvisor’s founder Steve Kaufer and Scott Forbes, the former chairman of Rightmove, have been invaluable.

That thirst for learning is why I wrote a booklet, the Secrets To Building A £Billion Business. Before Brookfield finally acquired HomeServe this year for £4.1bn, I spent months reflecting on what got us there, the challenges we overcame, mistakes we made, the good and bad decisions we took, analysing everything just like Eddie. And then I distilled those experiences into a guide from which I hope others can benefit.

My passion now is to use these learnings to help all medium sized businesses that have an aspiration to become large, whilst creating a network of like-minded leaders whose desire for business growth across the UK is as all-consuming as mine. It’s why I created Growth Partner.

For me, the goal is growth. For Eddie and his team, the goal is to keep scoring (and not conceding!). I spent my formative years in and around Newcastle, so it and its football team are a part of me and who I am. They’ve done the city proud, and business leaders like me could learn a lot from them.

Because building a successful company is like building a winning football team. The same ingredients are there, the same excitement when things fall into place and the same need for inspiring leadership.