As the Harvard Business Review puts it, one of the most difficult transitions for leaders to make is the shift from doing to leading. Jurgen Klopp is a fine coach. But he became an even better leader because of his willingness to embrace new people and new ideas.
His Liverpool side have evolved tactically, adjusting to the trends in the game, but what has made Klopp so successful extends beyond the action on the pitch. It is about the learning culture at Liverpool, the openness to improve. It might be his biggest legacy.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their ability. It is rife in football's insular world where the tendency is to avoid outsiders altogether. Klopp rose above this and reaped the benefits.
Time and again he has shown himself willing to learn from experts. It is one thing to delegate coaching responsibility to someone who it is hoped will coach in a similar way. Introducing coaches who are going to change the way things are done is quite another.
Perhaps the most notorious example at Liverpool is the deployment of Thomas Gronnemark as a specialist throw-in coach. There were those in football who derided this decision - Richard Keys and Andy Gray chuckling like schoolboys at the mere notion of it.
Klopp had no interest in how things had always been done. His only concern was whether it could be done better. "When I heard about Thomas Gronnemark, it was clear to me I wanted to meet him. When I met him, it was 100 per cent clear I wanted to employ him."
Speaking to Gronnemark in 2020 about his role at Liverpool, the detail that went into his work was immediately obvious. The Dane explained in easy-to-understand language how he
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