Challenges faced by technical directors and how to overcome them

Resistance to change, managing competing demands and project prioritisation are just some of the challenges faced by technical directors in member associations, says Ali Mwebe, FIFA Regional Technical Consultant East and Central Africa.

“One of the challenges we have is resistance to change,” explains Mwebe, who was previously Director of Football Development at the Federation of Uganda Football Associations. “This can be resistance to cultural change or individual change. Sometimes people are resistant to new ideas and you find that someone resists a change or a good idea because of the culture or because of a personal feeling.”

To overcome this resistance, technical directors must be skilled in the art of persuasion and also encourage senior leaders to role model change, believes Mwebe. “We need to teach or to promote a culture of embracing change to our people we work with, and then get persuasive skills to persuade our top leaders to also embrace change.”

Dealing with competing demands and finding time and resource for a variety of projects are other common challenges faced by technical directors, says Mwebe, who is a graduate of FIFA’s Technical Leadership Diploma. “Technical directors have a lot of activity and sometimes it brings a scarcity of resources,” explains Mwebe. “Sometimes the resources needed can be financial as well as time available because of the competing demands.”

Prioritisation of projects is a key part of technical leadership, adds Mwebe. “For the competing demands, technical directors need to prioritise,” he says. “Instead of dealing with certain work, you have to prioritise what is important and then ensure that resources are enough or sufficient to do the activity.”

Making decisions on projects and resource can be a challenge for technical directors. However, a key part of effective decision-making is explaining why decisions are made, explains Patrick Bruggmann, Director of Football Development at the Swiss FA. “The decision-making process as a technical director is quite a challenge because sometimes you have to take decisions very fast,” he explains. “Sometimes you can win a little bit of time to reflect before you take a decision and sometimes the decision is so hard to take it’s a challenge. I try to make faster decisions but always try to explain why I came to that decision.”

Employing a strong team of expert staff and knowing how to delegate effectively are two further ways technical directors can deal with competing demands, says Jacquie Shipanga, Technical Director of Namibia Football Association. “The modern technical director is challenged to not only focus on the technical side of the game - how are the national teams doing; the talent development scheme; amateur football – but all of the other responsibilities off the pitch.  

“Technical directors must become skilled in time management and have the ability to manoeuvre through all these programmes. Part of this is delegating effectively and making sure that you have a team behind you. Because the team behind the team will make all the difference.”

Ensuring all key stakeholders understand the vision and strategy of a technical department is a crucial responsibility of the technical director and one which can help overcome challenges, explains Anton Corneal, former technical director of Trinidad and Tobago Football Association.  “One of our challenges is making sure all the stakeholders see the ‘bigger picture’ because each one of them may be involved in the game for different reasons. This includes internal and external stakeholders.”

Corneal explains how nurturing a strong relationship with key stakeholders can help ensure any potential challenges are more easily overcome. “School football is very big in our region where each school has four different levels of competition and we've got 250 - 300 schools. So, they're really a big stakeholder when it comes to amateur football.  We have to make sure that we understand the role of the major stakeholders. It's a challenge if we don't get them on board. What we have done is we have embraced the stakeholders to help eliminate some of the challenges.”

Positive communication with a wide variety of stakeholders should be seen as a positive challenge for technical directors and not a negative one, explains Jayne Ludlow, FIFA Technical Leadership Expert.  “One of the biggest challenges in the role of technical director is the volume of people that they interact with, whether that's from a workforce perspective or a player perspective. How a technical director nurtures those relationships is a challenge, but not in a negative way. It's a really enjoyable challenge to make sure that you positively impact all those people appropriately.”