Teamwork lessons from Paul Pogba’s missed penalty

In a recent football match between Manchester United and Wolverhampton Wanderers, Paul Pogba won a penalty in the 67th minute against the Wanderers. He insisted on taking it himself, despite Marcus Rashford volunteering. Pogba went ahead to take the penalty, but failed to score and the match ended in a draw.

Football pundits criticised Pogba for not letting Rashford, who’d scored from the same spot in a previous match against Chelsea, take the penalty.

Some analysts also claimed the incident revealed a lack of leadership in the team because no one, not even the club’s coach Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, stopped Pogba from taking the shot, yet he’d missed three penalties since the start of last season.

The coach’s explanation on the incident revealed that the club was not immune to similar future confrontations. Solskjaer said the two players are designated penalty shooters, and it’s up to them to choose who takes a turn.

In The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork, John C Maxwell says: “Sometimes a team member can turn a winning team into a losing one, either through lack of skill or a poor attitude. In those cases, you must put the team first and make changes for the greater good.”

Charles Bates, the author of The 12 Laws of Extreme Business Success, adds: “Being in business is just like a sports game. When you and your team are focused and clear on what you need to do, anything is possible. While you may lose a match, there is always the bigger championship at play.”

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According to Bates, the first rule of business success is to play to win.

“Playing to win requires ambition and the ability to keep yourself in a positive mind-set of determination and excitement.”

So, while on the one hand it’s easy to look at Pogba’s past plays and rule him out of taking penalty shots, on the other, his skill has earned him his spot on the team, and playing to win requires ambition.

Bates adds that you must enjoy the game that you play.

“Instead of dragging yourself through the stresses and strains of entrepreneurship, having fun makes it a pleasure,” he writes.

You have to learn to shift yourself out of that heavy and serious space and rediscover the reason you got in in the first place.