"If We Lose, We Lose In Our Way" - A Leadership Lesson From The World Cup
"If We Lose, We Lose In Our Way" - A Leadership Lesson From The World Cup
PLUS: Joy over outcomes, speed over perfection and the power of letting go
June 21, 2026
“If we lose, we lose, we lose in our way.”
\- Thomas Tuchel
Like millions around the globe, the World Cup has captured my attention. In fact, it’s why I’ve postponed the newsletter I had planned for this week.
While as an England fan I was inevitably celebrating the win over Croatia on Wednesday, it was something in the aftermath that made me make that call.
It was the halftime team talk from England’s manager, Thomas Tuchel, that inspired the victory.
Tuchel told the team: "If we lose, we lose, we lose in our way."
That spoke to me. What struck me wasn't the drama of it. It was the simplicity. The clarity. The freeing nature of those words.
Tuchel and his team had the data. They had the tactics. They had a squad of some of the best-prepared athletes in world football. But at the moment that mattered most, he set all of it aside and cut straight to the essence of human performance.
Be brave. Be yourselves.
That's it.
THE SCIENCE
Have you ever wondered why elite performers suddenly can't do it when the stakes are highest?
It's not a mystery. It’s not just psychology. It's biology.
When we operate under threat, the body floods with cortisol and adrenaline. That stress response is designed to protect us, as it increases alertness, accelerates your heart rate and tenses your muscles.
But on a football pitch or in the boardroom, it can work against you. The body is now optimised for fight or flight, not for fine motor control or complex decision-making.
Research by Dr. Sian Beilock, cognitive scientist and President of Dartmouth College, shows that pressure doesn't just affect how we think, it disrupts how we execute.
Skills that have been hardwired through years of repetition work because they've become automatic - they bypass conscious thought entirely. Under threat, that automaticity breaks down. The brain starts consciously controlling things that should happen instinctively. And the moment you think about a skill that should be unconscious, you interrupt the very neural pathways that make it work.
On a football pitch, that's the pass that goes astray. The first touch that isn't there. The decision that takes a half-second too long. Things every one of those England players could do in their sleep suddenly become unreliable.
Not because they forgot how. Because the nervous system is in the wrong state.
THE PROOF
Tuchel knew exactly what he was looking at.
His players weren't lacking ability. They weren't lacking preparation. They were lacking permission. The nervous system that Beilock describes - where you overthink the instinctive and you struggle to do something that you can normally do without thinking - was written all over that first half. And so Tuchel did the one thing no tactical board or data analyst could have told him to do. He removed the threat.
"If we lose, we lose, we lose in our way."
As he himself elaborated in a subsequent interview:
"We encouraged them to go for it, to play with more courage, to be brave, to be ourselves."
Those words created psychological safety. They gave 11 world-class athletes the neurological conditions to perform the way they were capable of performing. The second half was the proof.
I saw the same dynamic recently in a completely different context. An entrepreneur I was introduced to, based in a provincial UK city, made a decision that looked irrational on paper. He pivoted his entire business to pursue clients exclusively among West Coast US tech firms. Not a diversification. A complete redirect.
If AI had analysed that decision it would have said the geography was wrong. The network wasn't there. The computer most definitely says no.
He backed his vision and he backed his team. He accepted the worst case and went for it.
That business now has a client roster made up exclusively of US tech firms. By any conventional measure, it shouldn't exist. But it does - in large part because the same qualities that drove England's second half drove that decision. A clear sense of belief (in both the vision and the team). The bravery to back it. The willingness to embrace vulnerability in order to unlock the performance.
Two stories. Utterly disconnected on the surface. Identical underneath.
And a reminder that bravery and vulnerability are two sides of the same coin.
THE APPLICATION
Playing it safe is seductive because it doesn't feel like fear. We tell ourselves it’s rational, responsible, the right way to manage risk.
But when you're focused on avoiding the bad outcome rather than pursuing the good one, you’re creating a situation that will prevent you from performing at your best. Science proves it. You see it on the pitch. You experience this in life.
Three questions worth asking yourself:
Where are you playing not to lose? In your business and in life. Where has safe quietly become the default? Where are you dropping deep and waiting even though you can see the opportunity?
What is your way? Tuchel didn't tell the England team to win. He told them to be themselves. This for me is about authenticity - not the performative kind, it’s the clarity that comes from you and your team knowing what high performance looks like for you and the confidence to express that.
What would you do if you accepted the worst case? Fear can be overwhelming and the brain over-indexes on worst case scenarios. Research shows that naming an emotion out loud reduces activity in the amygdala, the brain's threat detection centre, and restores clear thinking. Tuchel did exactly that at half-time. He named the worst case and in doing so, he defused it. When you remove the catastrophic weight from an outcome, the right answer is often obvious.
We are living through a period of profound change. The temptation for leaders like you to circle the wagons, to play safe and to wait and see, has never been greater.
Stasis is the real threat.
Be brave. Be yourself. Play it your way. Just make sure you play.
And if any of this resonates - if you recognise yourself or your team in that first half - you don't have to figure it out alone. You can get a team on your side. Us.
Go well.
J.
🔥 LIVE BETTER, LEAD BETTER
The best content I researched this week:
1. This Harvard Business Review podcast on why speed and trust are critical to solving hard problems is a reminder that the leaders who move decisively and bring their people with them consistently outperform those who wait for certainty. Sound familiar?
2. Earlier this year ultra-runner Rachel Entrekin became the first woman to win the Cocodona 250 outright, setting an overall course record of just over 56 hours. Here she tells podcaster Rich Roll how chasing joy over outcomes transformed her performance. Another great example of how playing it your own authentic way is the key to success.
3. Finally, in a beautifully succinct post on Instagram, Dr Rangan Chatterjee explains why regret is perfectionism in disguise.This reframing can help you avoid a sense of failure that holds you back.
Share this with a fellow leader - we’re stronger together.
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