�?There is no work-life balance’ for Ange Postecoglou

The Melbourne-raised manager reported on his first season in charge of Tottenham at a business lunch this week. Any leaders in attendance would have picked up some useful tips.

Euan BlackWork and careers reporter

May 23, 2024 – 12.33pm

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How does Ange Postecoglou balance the demands of managing a Premier League football team with his responsibilities as a father and a husband?

Short answer: for most of the year, he doesn’t.

“There is no work-life balance. That’s the reality of it … especially at this level,” Postecoglou told a business event this week.

Ange Postecoglou during Tottenham’s loss to eventual Premier League winners Manchester City. Getty

The Tottenham Hotspur manager conceded that insight might not “go down too well with people”. And in a world of four-day weeks, nine-day fortnights and fears about burnout, he’s probably right.

But Postecoglou is never one to bite his tongue. The first Australian to manage a football team in the English Premier League calls things as he sees them, as anyone who has caught even a glimpse of his post-match press conferences would know.

Postecoglou, who was named a BOSS True Leader in 2015, delivered the work-life balance line at a lunch at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Tuesday, the day before his team lost 5-4 on penalties to fellow EPL side Newcastle United in front of 78,000 people.

A jet-lagged Postecoglou, who said he had arrived in Melbourne at 5am that morning, had the 300 people in attendance eating out of the palm of his hand.

The Melbourne-raised manager was reporting back on his first season in charge of Tottenham, during which his side made “decent progress” after bettering last season’s 8th-place finish in the league by three positions.

But business leaders in attendance received some useful leadership tips as well.

Ange’s 4 big leadership lessons

First, new starters must hit the ground running. In a highly pressurised environment like the Premier League, there’s no bedding-in period; managers must deliver immediate results, and that often starts with good recruitment.

“I’ve been doing it for a while, so I know in my head that I have to make an impact pretty quickly, and you can do that in different ways,” Postecoglou said.

“It’s not just about coaching. It’s about the decisions you make early on, about the kind of players and the kind of people you bring in. That already sort of sets a marker of the environment.”

Postecoglou was relaxed and straight-talking at a business lunch co-organised by TEG this week.

Second, leaders must be authentic and have courage in their convictions, as this will help them get buy-in from their staff.

“Irrespective of the calibre of players, they’re all pretty good at sort of reading whether you’re genuine or not and how much conviction you have in what you do,” Postecoglou said. “So, the first part of the process is always the same: it’s about getting them to believe in me and what I’m about to do.”

There was perhaps no better evidence of this last season than when his team lost at home 4-1 to Chelsea. Despite being reduced to nine men after 55 minutes with the score at 1-1, Tottenham stayed true to Postecoglou’s attacking philosophy. Quizzed about his tactics after the game, which Chelsea won after scoring three second-half goals, Postecoglou was unrepentant: “It’s just who we are, mate.”

“The beauty for me was it wasn’t even initiated by me,” he elaborated on Tuesday. “The players took it upon themselves, so I kind of knew at that point, about 10 weeks into the season, [that] they bought into [my approach].”

Postecoglou’s third indirect tip was that leaders must provide clarity and take ownership. “That gives the people who work with me the confidence to really sort of push forward and make decisions,” he said.

Fourth, it helps if you’ve worked your way up the business. Arguably, it’s the best way to understand how the constituent parts of an organisation fit and move together.

“The advantage I have where I am today is ... I literally started on the factory floor. I’ve done every job in football,” Postecoglou said.

He told the audience that engaging with the sport was his “most comfortable space”. Which takes us back to that work-life balance line.

Ange Postecoglou (right) with fellow Australian and assistant Mile Jedinak after Tottenham lost to Newcastle United at the MCG on Wednesday. Getty Images

“The key to it is a couple of things. One is understanding that and embracing that, but also [having an] unbelievably supportive family,” Postecoglou said, before referring to his wife Georgia.

“She runs everything in my life apart from the football. She stepped into that a couple of times as well,” he added, earning a big laugh from the audience.

It’s important to him that he spends time with his friends and family in the off-season.

But while he has a family holiday to Greece before the European Championships this northern hemisphere summer, it was announced overnight that the former Socceroos manager will be part of UK broadcaster ITV’s commentary team for the month-long tournament. That’s before all the pre-season preparations begin.

“I got the bus ride back to the hotel and that’ll be it, mate, and then we get going. It never really stops,” Postecoglou said after the game. “I’ll meet up with the family on the weekend and we’ll go to Greece and switch off for a couple of weeks. But it never stops, there’s plenty to do.”

There’s no work-life balance at the top.