The Tottenham Hotspur players will soon discover that Ange Postecoglou is a man of few words but he makes them count.
The 57-year-old is set to take the reins at Spurs this week after winning the domestic treble with Celtic following a season of free-flowing attacking football which has made plenty of clubs sit up and take notice of the Greek-born Australian. It is Tottenham who have prised away Postecoglou and he is someone who wants his players to feel that they are part of something special.
In an insightful podcast recorded three years ago for Anthony Hudson's Masterminds - Elite Coach Development series, Postecoglou said: "I want to do things that are different. I want to do things that stand out. I want people to talk about my teams beyond just the success they have. I want the players to feel like they're part of something special that they haven't experienced before. Those kind of things really drive me and excite me.
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"Around the world, whenever I see someone doing anything that's a little bit different in any walk of life, sport, science, whatever it may be, it really intrigues and excites me because I think of the bravery and character it must have taken to take that leap and the way they must have made people believe in them, it's something that really resonates with me."
One thing people have said about Postecoglou over the years is that while his players would run through walls for him, the Aussie maintains a distance from them and it's something he admits is very deliberate.
"If you talk to all of the players that I've coached over the years they'll probably be consistent in saying that they've never had a conversation of longer than a minute with me in the whole time. It's just me as a person. I'm not a great social sort of beast in life in general, in terms of particularly my professional environment," he explained.
"I do keep a distance from the players and it takes a while for the players to get used to that for the most part. I understand that, they're human beings and they want that connection and that feedback. They want to know that you're engaged with them and my way of keeping my distance can be a little bit disconcerting.
"Over the course of time what I think happens is that the players and staff kind of understand that it's just me and they know that I treat everyone the same. They know I do care about them and I care about them in my own way. When critical times come I've got their back and I take that responsibility.
"After a while I think they appreciate that and they understand that 'ok there's no favouritism here, he treats everyone the same whether that's the president or chairman of the club or the boot man, or the first player on the list or the last player on the list'. I've always worked that way."
He added: "I was almost forced to do it in my first coaching job. I retired young and got into coaching early. I was 30-years-old and I coached the club I played for. A lot of the guys I was coaching were my former team-mates, one of them was my best mate. I had to separate myself one day to the next. It was tough, particularly for the guys I'd played with and that I considered mates, but as a manager I've got to make decisions every day.
"The one thing about your existence in this job is that every day you're making decisions. People when they speak to you want decisions from you, whether it's about training, the schedule, the team and we need knowledge to make good decisions, more good than bad, and you need clarity of thought. Me keeping a distance from players or staff, whenever I make a decision whether it's about staff or the way we're going to play, it's almost unemotional in the way that I make it. I will make the decision that is best for the team and what we want to achieve.
"I've found that that works best for me as a manager. I treat everyone the same but I do feel that I wouldn't have had success if the players didn't feel close to me. It's just a different kind of closeness than maybe people see from the outside. I guarantee that if you interview any player that I've coached in the past 20 years they'll give you the same answer if you ask them what the longest conversation they've had with the boss.
"They'll say no more than a minute and if anything if I did catch up with them after they stopped playing and I did have a little bit of chat with them they found it a little bit disconcerting that I was now speaking to them because I wasn't their coach."
Postecoglou explained that while all coaches are different in the style of communication with their players it's key that they ultimately must remain true to themselves.
"It comes down to your personality as a coach. There are different ways of doing it but you have to be consistent with who you are as a person. People will see right through you if you're not genuine," he said. "My way of communicating is collectively I like to tell stories. I like to explain why we're doing something. I love the detail behind it but at the same time I need to be able to explain it in a way that everyone understands. That's the way I communicate.
"Other coaches are different. Other coaches get close to their players and get really involved with them and are able to communicate that message in a one-to-one basis, an individual basis. Other coaches find different mediums, whether that's visual or other ways to get their message across.
"For me, that has been the most effective way to get players and staff to buy in, to tell that story about why we're doing something rather than just this is the way we're going to do it."
One of the key aspects for Postecoglou to succeed has been his ability to evolve over the years in the way he communicates with his squad, whether through his short, sharp chats with the players or the group meetings that often make an impact, some having gone viral across social media.
"I think the biggest change that happened, and it's not consciously on my part, is you think that my first year of senior coaching was 1996, I just think about how much the world has changed in that time and the difference between a 20-year-old in the 90s and a 20-year-old now and the way that we communicate as a society. That's the biggest challenge for all of us as coaches," he said.
"We have the knowledge and we're constantly upscaling ourselves in terms of knowledge and understanding what the latest trends in what we do are, whatever it is, the technical aspects as well of it. But how do we communicate that to different generations if we stay in the game long enough?
"I think that's where I've managed to continually keep myself relevant to the next generation that's coming through because when you're telling stories about leaping into the unknown I need to understand what a young man of today is thinking, what's inspiring him, what's motivating him and what's important to him in his life right now, not necessarily what was important to me in my life and my upbringing.
"Some of those messages are consistent and some of them do still resonate but the way that we communicate, I've learned to tell stories and paint pictures that are relevant to today's world rather than something that might have been relevant 10 years ago or 20 years ago, keeping my message even simpler now maybe than it used to be.
"It's understanding that the 'why' now is the most important thing when you're asking a player to do something. It's just the way it is. In our generation if the coach told you to do something you just did it. You didn't really question it. You're more likely to get questioned about it today, particularly if you're asking players to do something that is a little bit different.
"You've got to know why you want them to do it and explain it to them and I think that's been the biggest thing for me and I think that's when I know I'm coming to the end of my journey if I lose that connection and being able to get players and staff to clearly understand what I need them to do and why I want them to do it, that's when I know when I'm starting to lose touch a little bit. I think it's really important."
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