The Celtic boss knows better than to try that old school “give them a roasting” leadership. Bazza does not.

Very rarely have I seen Brendan Rodgers lose his temper. Very rarely has he even been accused of it.

I can think of only a handful of occasions, after particularly horrendous matches, when Rodgers has visibly been angry, or when one of his players has come out and said he was furious in the dressing room. Now, I appreciate that we keep things more in-house than the club across the city does, but I think it’s a measure of Rodgers’ ability that he doesn’t lose his mind.

One of the subjects that has always interested me—one I’ve written about before—is charismatic leadership. It’s one of the great mysteries of human nature. What makes a person charismatic? Where does it come from? Why can certain people walk into a room and dominate it completely without even opening their mouths? Why does conversation stop the moment they speak?

You see it in politics, in business, in the histories of great companies and great leaders—people who simply command the environment.

It’s fascinating to study, and even more intriguing to try and understand what makes them so good at what they do. Rodgers himself, in his efforts to become a more modern leadership figure, has looked into this subject, including neuro-linguistics—something I’ve written about in relation to him before. Neuro-linguistics is a process by which a leader can reprogram the thinking of others purely through language, tapping into the way people’s minds process information.

But here’s the thing—charismatic leadership cannot be taught.

Some people struggle with that idea because there are endless seminars and courses designed to make people “better leaders.” They work only up to a point. They can teach certain leaderships skills and types, but genuine charisma is internal, not something that can be instilled from the outside.

Either it’s there, or it isn’t. That’s what makes it so mysterious.

Certainly, part of it comes from self-possession and conviction. When someone is confident in who they are and in the ideas they express, that confidence influences others—even when their ideas are nonsense, or even outright deranged.

This is where things get really interesting, because charisma and social skills are not the same thing. Some of the most charismatic figures in history were not socially gifted. In fact, some were deeply awkward.

Take someone like Adolf Hitler. On a one-to-one level, he was famously unimpressive. Putzi Hanfstaengl, Albert Speer, and others who got as close to him as anyone could (though no one was ever truly close) described him as socially awkward, incapable of small talk, with no sense of humour and absolutely no ability to “read the room.” And yet, in public life, he was a masterful orator—commanding, compelling, the absolute epitome of charismatic leadership.

What I’m getting at is this—charisma only works outwardly.

You don’t get the inverse of Hitler—someone who dominates a room full of friends but has zero ability to convince anyone else of their greatness in public. That’s not charisma, and it’s certainly not leadership.

And crucially, charismatic leadership has nothing to do with fear. It’s about persuasion, about making people genuinely believe in your vision. If you push someone against a wall with your hand around their throat, you may force them to agree with you, but you won’t make them believe in you or in what you stand for.

This is why I found last night’s commentary on Ferguson’s first game across the city so ridiculous. This morning, we heard some Ibrox players talking about the dressing-down they got at half-time. And yet, not one person in our media seems to understand how counterproductive that approach is.

It’s old-school nonsense. It comes from a time before managers were addressing a room full of multimillionaires—players with different expectations, different mentalities, and different ways of being motivated.

If you have to lose your temper that early—on your first day in the actual job—you’ve already lost the dressing room. Some players will sit through it once, but the next time it happens, they’ll roll their eyes. They’ll switch off. It’s not a magic spell. It’s a temporary salve, and it gets old fast.

That’s why I laughed the other day when I read Ferguson’s press conference and all his “some players need a clip around the ear” garbage. It’s madness to talk about professional footballers that way. And so, when I heard this morning that he went through the dressing room roasting everybody, I wasn’t even remotely surprised.

That’s how he thinks. That’s what he believes inspiration sounds like. That’s what he thinks leadership demands.

He thinks that’s how you get people to set high standards. It isn’t. You can compel people to obey, but you cannot compel them to understand. You cannot force people to grow, to learn, or to see your point of view.

You have to inspire them to develop their own high standards. You have to help them set high standards in the first place before you start beating on them for not meeting them. And you don’t do it by throwing them against a wall. Or under a bus.

You do it by saying, “Come on, you know you’re better than this.” Challenge their pride in their own standards—instead of just challenging them to a square go.

And Ferguson is only part of the problem over there. This mindset is only part of the problem. We have a media that genuinely believes this is an appropriate way to motivate men. And this is not just the usual pro-Ibrox claptrap; this is a genuine failure within our media to understand how any of this works.

What bothers me more is that none of them have ever properly read a book. I mind that none of them have ever picked up Dale Carnegie. I mind that, if they know who Machiavelli is at all, it’s only from the Cornflakes box version of The Prince. They’ve swallowed that “It is better to be feared than loved” line without a shred of context.

So what did Machiavelli actually say about fear?

He said that if a leader must choose between being feared and being loved, it’s better to be feared—because love is fickle. But the great leader should seek a balance between both, and above all, he should seek to win respect.

He does not advocate inspiring only fear. Because that is what causes revolutions, and the book is a guide to how to be an effective ruler. That stuff breeds bitterness, anger, jealousy, and, ultimately, hatred within an empire.

In fact, Machiavelli is very explicit in warning that a leader must never cross the line from being feared to being hated—because nothing is more dangerous to the internal stability of a regime than that.

Machiavelli’s much-quoted but much-misunderstood line about fear and love is about pragmatism. It’s not an endorsement of cruelty or vindictiveness. Those are the last things he counsels—because of the chaos they create.

You can get people to do what you want by shrieking at them. But if you’ve ever worked in a workplace like that or under a manager who tries to rule by fear, you know two things happen: First, productivity drops, not rises. And people don’t stick around for long. It corrodes everything the leader is trying to achieve.

And yet, look at the news coverage today.

Ferguson is a genius because he shouted at people.

This was his first actual day in the dugout, doing the job he’s paid for. And while I know plenty goes on behind the scenes, just imagine what he’s like in training. Imagine what his interpersonal relationships with the players must already look like.

Nothing about this doesn’t scream disaster in the making.

Nothing about this suggests anything but an absolute mess.

That old-school leadership nonsense doesn’t fly anymore. Not in the modern game. Not in the era of human resources, sports psychology, and player welfare. Even in the workplace, management has evolved.

We’ve moved past the days where bullying was seen as an acceptable leadership style. We’ve moved past the days where people were taught to lead that way.

And yet, this is what Ferguson is pinning his hopes on. This is his big audition for the job.

Well, let’s hope he succeeds—just long enough to sign the contract. Then we can sit back with the ice cream and jelly, and watch as it all falls apart.

Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images