The World Cup is when I feel at my most English.

Every four years I find myself cheerfully pitted against friends, my loyalty stubbornly, stoically with the England football team. It matters even more this time, with the All Whites out of the running, so there is no local flag to hide behind. There is just me, on the edge of my seat, being very English indeed.

On Sunday I watched the quarter-final against Norway with my eyes half-closed at every near miss for the opposition, then jumping and hollering at Bellingham’s first goal. And then, in the cruellest of timing, I had to leave for the second half to go and teach yoga — so I missed the live finish entirely. But wow, the buzz when I heard that we — England, obviously — were through to the semi-finals. There is nothing quite like it.

Like everyone from England, I live in hope that football’s coming home. And in the cold light of day, let’s be honest: we haven’t brought the cup home since 1966. Still, we hope. Undeniably, without a strategy, the prospect is somewhat unlikely — and here is where I start arguing with myself, because as a strategist I am forever saying “hope is not a strategy”. Can both things not be true at once? Hope and strategy, running in parallel. I have come to think they must, because hope without a strategy is a wish, and a strategy without hope rarely survives contact with a hard season.

The most thankless leadership job in the world

Sit with the parallels between running a business — as a CEO, MD or owner — and managing the England football team, and they are almost uncomfortable. We both have teams. We both have strategies and tactics. We both carry a culture, a history, a long tail of learnings, experience and reflections. We both live the highs of the wins and the lows of the losses.

But honestly – who on earth would want to be manager of the England team? It is a largely thankless job in which you already know how the story ends: eventually you will be invited to move on. Unless you bring the cup home, ruthless commentary from literally everyone follows your every decision. Commentators, ex-managers, ex-players, the fans, the armchair warriors, the politicians — the list goes on. You carry the mood of an entire nation on your shoulders, somehow held responsible for either the highest productivity in the country or its deepest collective slump.

That is not hyperbole, and this is the sobering part. Researchers at Lancaster University, analysing police data across three World Cups, found that reported domestic abuse rose by 26% when England won or drew, and by 38% when England lost, with incidents remaining elevated the day after a match regardless of the result. I include it not to darken a light-hearted piece, but because it makes the point better than anything else could: the emotional weight riding on a leader’s results is real, and it lands well beyond the boardroom or the pitch. Leadership at that altitude is never just about the game.

What actually gets you through

Having been a CEO and an MD myself, I know the particular company of critics who have a great deal to say about your strategy and your leadership — and who, almost without exception, never get within a mile of doing the job you are doing. Every England manager knows those voices too. So what is it that gets you through? What got me through, and gets those managers through?

Yes, hope. A winning strategy. A great team. A strong ability to execute. And alongside all of that, authenticity, resilience, and a genuine willingness to accept that mistakes happen and that everyone else invariably thinks they know better than you. But if I had to name the thing that actually separates the leaders who compound success from the ones who stall, it is this: mindset, leadership and strategy, held in equal measure. That is the edge. When any one of the three lags, so does your business, your team and your results.

The mindset piece is the one most leaders underestimate, and there is good evidence for why it matters. In her Harvard Business Review work on the subject, the psychologist Carol Dweck describes the difference between a fixed mindset — believing your talents are simply innate and finite — and a growth mindset, believing they can be developed through effort, good strategy and honest input from others. Her finding is that people, and whole organisations, who lean into a growth mindset worry less about looking clever and put far more energy into actually learning and improving. Think about what that means for a manager three games from a final, or a founder three quarters into a hard year. The scoreboard will wobble. Whether you treat that wobble as proof you are not good enough, or as information to learn from, is very often the whole game.

Winner or runner-up?

So this is the reflection I would leave you sitting with, the same one I take into the room with the leaders I coach. When you look honestly at your team’s performance, at how effectively you are driving a winning strategy and executing it, and at whether your mindset lets you break through barriers, live with confidence and genuinely believe in yourself — are you on track to win your ultimate prize, whatever your version of success looks like? Or are you quietly settling for runner-up?

Hope and strategy can run in parallel; in fact, the best leadership coaching I know insists that they do. Hope keeps the team believing on the days the results do not; strategy makes sure that belief has somewhere real to go. Hold both, keep your mindset, your leadership and your strategy in equal balance, and you give yourself an actual shot at the thing you are playing for.

And on the days when it is tough — and there will be plenty, whether or not it’s coming home — know that if you are still in it, still leading, still learning, you are already winning. Be grateful for that. And if you can’t kick a ball, kick ass.