What can social services learn from Sweden's giant-killing football manager?

Careers can take unexpected turns. When I started social work training in Manchester at the end of the 1970s, I would never have imagined that I’d spend the bulk of my professional life in Sweden. Today, I am the director of social services in Trosa, a town south of Stockholm.

When footballer Graham Potter was turning out for a string of English clubs, including Shrewsbury Town, which I’ve supported for 50 years, little can he have expected to end up managing Östersunds FK, a club he has taken from obscurity to fame in this season’s Europa League.

Would our paths cross? It seemed fateful that the Swedish association of directors of social services decided to hold its annual conference this year in Östersund, a city of 60,000 people almost 300 miles north of Stockholm. Potter’s name came up early in our search for speakers for the event, which attracts delegates from across Sweden’s social welfare sector. Could he give us pointers on leadership, tactics and teamwork?

When he accepted our invitation, Östersunds had just won the Swedish equivalent of the FA Cup, securing entry to the Europa League. As chance would have it, they were drawn to host Hertha Berlin the evening before his scheduled presentation.

Victory put Östersunds at the top of their group. The next morning, Potter addressed 600 enthusiastic social welfare professionals and recounted how, in six years, Östersunds FK had risen from Sweden’s fourth tier to its premier league and European fixtures. All this was placed in the context of theories of leadership and the imperative of creating a positive identity.

Potter’s philosophy is to get away from what he calls the “culture of fear” – of losing – and to see failure as a means of learning. Key values are courage, making a difference and having a sense of joy: fun and enjoyment are essential to giving meaningfulness to the task in hand, he believes.

Arriving at Östersunds in 2011, he saw the need to move the players out of their comfort zone to work on an identity beyond the football field. He introduced cultural activities such as musical performances, drama, art and dance projects, including ballet. Participation developed a team spirit full of energy and empathy.

Potter is a modest character and quick to acknowledge that the club’s success has not been a one-man effort. His role, he stressed, had been to create the right environment in which players and other staff could grow so they could all contribute more.

What could we learn to improve social services? Understanding failure without threatening punishment seems one clear lesson; the importance of clear communication by leaders and managers may be another. But perhaps the key is tolerance of diversity, not just by way of nationalities and cultures but also in terms of individual skills and different approaches to training.

After Potter’s presentation, the association updated the conference on work done during the year. Delegates at the conference communicated digitally, via an app, and were asked to suggest issues the association needed to focus on. A resounding majority voted for integration. Sweden has taken in around 200,000 refugees since 2015. The acute phase of that influx is nearing an end, but we now face a crisis of integration.

Potter’s words on the need to be able to fail, to learn from failure, to create an identity and to foster diversity will be good advice for the leadership of the association as we address the challenges of integration over the next 12 months.

• Graham Owen is a member of the board of Föreningen Sveriges Socialchefer, the association of directors of social services in Sweden
  

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