Every Manager Should Study How Liverpool Led Their Team After Tragedy

When Liverpool’s manager told his players, “If you need to cry, cry. If you want to laugh, laugh,” he modelled something most corporate leaders still avoid: human‑centred leadership in the middle of real loss. This isn’t soft – it’s exactly how you build gritty optimism and team resilience.

In this video, I break down three leadership moves from Liverpool that every manager can apply:

Permission to feel: allowing real human emotion and forward motion.

Trust over control: “if you want to train, train – if you don’t, don’t” as a radical act of accountability and belief.

Walking beside the team: a manager saying “I’m feeling this too, and we’ll work through it together.”

Managers account for most of the variance in team engagement and performance, yet many are still trained to shut emotion down instead of channelling it. High‑trust, psychologically safe teams consistently outperform, especially under pressure and change.

Around 70% of the variation in team engagement is explained by the manager, which means how a leader responds in hard moments directly shapes performance.​

High‑trust, human‑centred teams report significantly higher productivity and lower stress than low‑trust, fear‑driven cultures.​

Psychological safety – being able to show emotion and speak up without fear – is consistently linked with better learning, error reduction and team performance.

Managers account for most of the variance in team engagement and performance, yet many are still trained to shut emotion down instead of channelling it. High‑trust, psychologically safe teams consistently outperform, especially under pressure and change.​

If you lead a team and you’re tired of surface‑level resilience posters, this is your playbook.

Work with me:

Keynotes on Resilience 2.0 and human‑centred leadership

Executive and sales leader coaching

Team programmes to turn pressure into performance

Bio: Chief Heart Officer at Humanity Works Consultancy, helping leaders build resilient, high‑performing teams that can handle real‑world pressure. Learn more at www.humanityworksconsultancy.com.

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