Want to Watch Great Management in Action? Put on Ted Lasso.

Great managers are boring. They do the same things over and over again. Like a clock or the postal service, they deliver every single day without exception. Because great managers are so consistent and so unglamorous, you will rarely find a movie or television show built around one. Occasionally you get Moneyball, a film that does an outstanding job following a strategic plan and driving its execution through an entire organization. But the day-to-day work of a great manager is simply hard to make entertaining.

The exception is Ted Lasso.

The Apple TV+ comedy series follows a football coach from Kansas who is transplanted to England to run a professional European football club, without any knowledge of the game. Armed with small-town warmth and a quiet philosophy, Ted Lasso changes the culture of his players, his team, and the entire organization, inspiring them to reach heights they never dreamed possible.

Here are three management lessons worth watching for.

Biscuits with the Boss

In the first season, one of Ted's first moves is to establish a short personal meeting with the team's owner every single morning. He famously bakes his own breakfast biscuits, delivers them by hand, and uses the time to understand what his boss values, what she expects, and how they can build trust together. The more they get to know each other, the better the relationship  and the better the team performs.

In business, biscuits with the boss is your weekly one-on-one.

The one-on-one is the single most important meeting a manager has. I call it the T-bone steak of meetings. A T-bone is easily the most underrated cut at the butcher, a New York strip on one side, a filet on the other. The one-on-one works the same way. It is a 30-minute weekly meeting where the direct report has 100% of their manager's time and attention.

The first ten minutes belong entirely to the direct. This is where a manager builds trust through active listening, hearing what challenges exist, what opportunities are emerging, what matters most to this person and where they want to go. By asking good questions and genuinely listening, a manager builds a level of rapport and engagement that keeps great people from ever wanting to leave.

The second ten minutes belong to accountability. Goals, milestones, projects, and productivity, all reviewed with care and consistency. The one-on-one is how a manager achieves the dual purpose of management: drive results and retain the team. It is the manager's ultimate weapon.

Thank You Cards

At the end of season one, a former player named Jamie, now playing for a rival club, delivers the pass that results in the game-winning goal against Ted's Richmond squad. The loss keeps Richmond from promotion. Rather than harbor bitterness, Ted leaves Jamie a handwritten note with two words: "Nice pass."

Jamie treasures it.

In the Esteemed MBA, we encourage every student to adopt this practice. When a direct report does something exceptional, a handwritten card with specific, genuine praise goes a long way. It gets read. It gets kept. The effort required to write it signals to the recipient that their manager sees them, values them, and cares about their growth. Writing thank you cards on a consistent basis is one of the fastest and most underutilized ways to build a team of highly engaged people who combine to become a high-performing one.

Assuming Positive Intent

Also in season one, Ted faces off against the team's former owner, Rupert, in a darts match. Rupert is loud, insulting, and dismissive, ridiculing Ted at every turn. Rather than fire back, Ted references Walt Whitman: "Be curious, not judgmental." He goes on to make the point that judgment, by nature, closes the door. Curiosity opens it. Asking questions and seeking to understand a person before evaluating them changes everything.

In the Esteemed MBA, we stress the practice of assumed positive intent as a core leadership discipline. Our instinct when someone is late to a meeting or misses a deadline is to assume they don't care. That is judgment. When we lead with assumed positive intent, we approach the same situation with a question instead of a verdict: "What happened? Is everything okay?" That shift, from accusation to inquiry, changes the entire dynamic of the feedback conversation and the relationship itself.

Living by assumed positive intent is also simply better for you. It is less stressful. It keeps your blood pressure down. And the next time someone cuts you off in traffic, it's a lot easier to assume they're rushing to the hospital than to assume the worst.

The Diamond Dogs

Ted Lasso forms a small circle of coaches, executives, and staff who meet regularly to surface issues, share opportunities, and support one another through personal and professional challenges. They call themselves the Diamond Dogs. Members bring their own problems, are heard without judgment, and receive candid advice from peers with shared experience. The team is better for it.

In the Esteemed MBA, we draw a direct line from the Diamond Dogs to the foundational work of Jim Collins in Good to Great. Collins argues that every leadership team benefits from a disciplined council that meets regularly, not to report status, but to think together, challenge one another, and be heard. The Esteemed Coterie is built on exactly this philosophy.

If your company does not already have its own Diamond Dogs, it is time to get them in a room.

The next time you want to see great management in action, flip on Ted Lasso. There are dozens of tactics, habits, and principles Ted deploys throughout the series that belong in any serious leader's playbook. We can all learn something from a fictional coach of a fictional football club in England.

Give it a spin. Be Esteemed.