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We go to conferences to get new ideas from speakers and fellow attendees, to build new relationships and refresh existing ones, and the one held by City Football Group's (CFG's) Leadership Institute recently didn't disappoint. Thanks to CFG’s Corporate Membership of Women in Football, a number of WIF members were invited to attend.

Because I work in social value and diversity in sport, the sessions on football as a force for community good and trends in women’s sport were of interest. But equally, as I grow as a leader, I am interested in the company culture of successful organisations, and the day was also a chance to learn about the ways and whys behind CFG's success on and off the pitch.

And so I enjoyed the panel featuring CFG’s Chief Football Operations Officer Omar Berrada, who talked about the cross-learning, or peer mentoring, that manifests from the weekly leadership meetings of the 13 football clubs in the group. Could your club's or organisation's leaders learn from this in terms of having action learning sessions with peers?

I also enjoyed a reflection from Ferran Soriano, the group's CEO. He spoke about being the leader that your organisation or team needs, not the one you dreamed of being – accepting that this changes. This is as true for Pep Guardiola as it is for Ferran himself, and it was interesting to consider what a company culture could learn from a sports team. One point here was that competition for a place in a squad keeps things healthy – and that "an organisation needs to refresh its squad once in a while".

There were questions that weren't answered. During a session which considered how football can be good for a community (the 13 clubs in CFG's global network run local projects), panellists raised a rhetorical question of how clubs can stop pricing people out of football. This is an area I am passionate about.

On the less rhetorical side, suggestions from the panel were to create partnerships. Sanjay Bhandari from Kick it Out gave the powerful example of a social media boycott by clubs and sponsors. His organisation is clear about its own scope being to provide data and research for other organisations to use – so it needs to build these partnerships to have an impactful output, and the clubs need data from the likes of Kick it Out and the Women in Football survey in order to build the case for action.

Some of the Women in Football members who attended weren’t currently working in sport, but they saw opportunities and a future for themselves in the game. I've rarely worked with a sporting organisation where employees were desperate fans of that sport or that club. Instead, employees tend to be technically excellent – passionate about issues like safeguarding, community building, financing, digital communications – and that was absolutely the message from the panellists. From content creation to coaching to safeguarding, the message for those wishing to work in football is to be confident in your technical skills and relaxed about your passion (or lack of) for the sport.

 

Big reach

So why work in football? For me, the answer is because it reaches parts of communities that nothing else can, as it’s the biggest sport in our country. And I want to open it up to women both from a playing perspective and as a business. There's so much work to be done now at grassroots and professional level to bring women into the game. And there’s so much work to be done to diversify the departments within clubs and organisations such as procurement, law, HR, media, PR and safeguarding.  

Women in Football members will be interested in the panel focused on trends in women’s sport, where Tammy Parlour of the Women’s Sport Trust reflected that "where we are now has come from decades of work".

Tammy referenced research from the trust which highlights a need to sell the excitement of women’s football if we want to draw crowds, rather than its ‘community benefit’ value. Panellists agreed that the audience is there for the taking. Flo Williams of sports and fitness marketing agency MATTA, herself a pro rugby player, recommended that organisations focus on telling the stories of players to enable fans to relate to them more. This echoed speakers on the communications panel who recommended focusing on ‘behind the scenes’ stories for social media and long-form communications.

Loads of knowledge – and if you missed out, perhaps follow the speakers and their organisations on social media, and read the research reports on the Women’s Sports Trust website.

A final reflection from me is that thanks to the partnership between WIF and City Leadership Group, it was the most diverse non-gender-focused football event I have attended, which impacted on the questions that were asked of panellists and drew out some interesting responses throughout the day. I hope City Football Leadership Institute felt this too and that the partnership is strengthened by our presence.

Sarah Galligan is a corporate social responsibility consultant at These Four Words and has worked with organisations including Fair Game, British Cycling, Rugby League World Cup 2021, British Golf Industry Association, Rochdale AFC.

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