The show Ted Lasso is about to wrap up its final season. I am one of the many people who really enjoy the show, which turns on a group of likable people helping each other through various life challenges with care and empathy. Lasso is an American college football coach who was recruited to coach an English “football” team, and manages to muddle through with Zen-like calm and folksy good spirits.

Although entertaining, is the Ted Lasso style of coaching effective? Is it more effective to coach more like a drill sergeant, with fear and intimidation? It’s interesting that the fear-based model of leadership, whether coaching or otherwise, seems to be intuitive. It’s the default mode for many people. But evidence increasingly shows that the Ted Lasso model works better. Empathy may be the most effective leadership style.

Coaches who lead with empathy tend to get more out of their athletes, foster loyalty, establish trust and more effective communication. When you think about it, it makes sense. People work harder when they are motivated. Fear-based motivation is ultimately external, the fear of displeasing a leader, earning their wrath or punishment. Empathy nurtures internal motivation, wanting to succeed because you feel confident, and you want to achieve personal and group goals.

This philosophy is not new – this is a form of the old cliche of catching more flies with honey than vinegar. The philosophy has also filtered into the education community, which increasingly emphasizes positive reward rather than negative feedback. Making students feel anxious or stupid, it turns out, is counterproductive. This can be taken too far as well, however. I have seen it manifest as a policy of never telling students they are wrong. But what if they are? Well, don’t ask them a question that can be right or wrong, therefore there is no possibility of being wrong. OK, but some answers are still better than others.

I think a better approach is the compliment sandwich. This is a complex topic, actually, and is much maligned and, in my opinion, misunderstood. The valid approach is to give feedback by first emphasizing a person’s strength, then p0inting out an area where they can use improvement, and finally giving them actionable advice on how to make those improvements. For example – I can see that you study really hard. I am concerned, however, that you may not be studying in the most efficient way. Let’s talk about some strategies to help you study more effectively. This gives the student the required feedback, but frames it in a positive way that focuses on practical actionable items for improvement. It is not shaming, negative, and does not personalize the fault – “You are a bad student”.

This, btw, is my problem with cancel culture. It’s shaming and personal – you are a bad person who needs to be canceled. In many cases (yeah, not all) it might be better to take the approach of – I can see you mean well, but this may not be the best way to express what you intend. Let’s talk about what compromises might meet your goals while taking other people’s feeling and perspectives into better account (or something like that). The same is true when skeptics confront a regular person who has fallen for pseudoscience – I can tell you are enthusiastic about science. So am I. This stuff is really cool. I have concerns, though, that this claim may not be the best interpretation of the evidence. How can we explore this question together? This will probably work better than – wow, you’re a gullible idiot for believing this obvious nonsense.

I am also reminded of the movie Whiplash. Fellow skeptic and professional drummer (and personal friend), George Hrab, absolutely hates this movie because it seems to be supporting the drill sergeant approach to teaching music, rather than the supportive Ted Lasso approach. Also, he hates the many drumming tropes spread throughout the movie, and I get that. But I am still not sure the movie was endorsing the style of Fletcher (played by J. K. Simmons) or actually showing it in a negative light. I think you can make an argument either way. But in any case it does explore this very question, terrorizing vs nurturing students, external vs internal motivation, and what is required for true excellence.

We also see the same pattern with parenting. The most effective parenting style seems to be supportive, rather than harshly disciplinary. The old chestnut of “spare the rod and spoil the child” appears to be nonsense. A systematic review found that out of 11 factors examined, corporal punishment had a negative effect on 10 of them. The only positive association was immediate compliance. So yeah, if your child is in immediate physical danger if they don’t do what you tell them, you may be able to justify taking measures to gain immediate compliance. Otherwise, physical punishment has a negative effect.

In all of these spheres the Ted Lasso approach seems to be best. People just respond better to empathy and nurturing positive feedback. It may make you feel better to be critical and insulting, but it is counterproductive, and is therefore an ultimately selfish act. You cannot justify it by arguing that it helps people improve, because it doesn’t.

If this is so universally true, then why is it that our instincts tend toward the opposite? This is common in psychology, we intuitively take actions that have the opposite effect than what we intend. This has to do with emotional intelligence, and people who have a greater connection with their feelings and more empathy toward others have a distinct advantage in an intensely social species. Perhaps people who gravitate toward positions of power have a certain personality profile that does not align well with empathy. Perhaps society incorrectly rewards these counterproductive behaviors. We tend to promote people who act tough, even though they are demonstrably worse leaders. There is also an argument to be made that this is a symptom of male-dominated hierarchies. More diversity and balance in leadership would likely, therefore, lead to better overall leadership styles.

Either way, it’s important to consciously understand this dynamic. We can individually resist the urge to be snarky, intimidating, and negative and remind ourselves that empathy works better. Just ask yourself – what would Ted Lasso do?