Ted Lasso creators Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt reveal life lessons for execs

The hit TV show became a “cultural phenomenon” and executives are now inviting the creators to team events to glean tips to motivate staff.

Ted Lasso exploded onto TV screens, presenting an unusual comedy which celebrated boundless optimism in the form of a big BELIEVE sign and plenty of biscuits, without sugar-coating more challenging areas like mental health and toxic ambition.

It proved an instant hit, with Apple TV+ commissioning three series about the ‘fish out of water’ coach who arrives in the UK from the US, leading a poorly performing football team to success.

Life lessons: Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso, who coached a poorly performing soccer team to success.

As the show became a “cultural phenomenon”, executives are now poring over the series to see what lessons they can glean to motivate staff in an era of flatlining productivity and faltering economy.

Atlassian, a $US47.3bn, enterprise software titan, invited the show’s co-creators and stars Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt to its annual Team event in Las Vegas last week. Outgoing chief executive Scott Farquhar said the pair’s appearance was the perfect fit for Australian tech darling.

“We believe that what is impossible alone is possible to achieve together, and when I think about what’s possible together, I can’t think of a better example than Ted Lasso,” Farquhar said.

“He takes a poorly performing football team and transforms it through kindness, empathy and, most importantly, teamwork.”

But, can Ted Lasso — who started out in a different guise as a clueless, brash American coach in a television commercial for NBC Sports’s Premier League coverage — really present lessons for the corporate world?

Farquhar thinks so, and Sudeikis and Hunt were happy to reveal their secrets — even about what makes their off-screen partnership cook.

Here are their main tips:

Value social networks

This seems like a no-brainer, but often is something which goes missing in the office, particularly when teams are under pressure and the velocity of work intensifies or remote working is poorly managed.

Checking in about how an employee is going is just as important as asking for an update on a project or the dreaded weekly WIP (work in progress) meeting. Early in the Ted Lasso series, Sudeikis’s character presents his boss Rebecca Welton with a pink box of cookies — or biscuits as he says the Brits (and Aussies) call them.

He wants to make it a regular “biscuits with the boss” tradition, despite Rebecca’s protestations. She then tastes the biscuits and loves them, asking Ted where he got them. He refuses and it’s later revealed he was making a more personal gesture, baking the biscuits himself. In the show it was about establishing rapport, which later paid off in spades.

Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso with co-star Hannah Waddingham who played his boss Rebecca. The characters struck an unlikely bond over the show’s run — which started with biscuits.

For Sudeikis, personally, the idea of bringing people together has been a key part of his success and the Ted Lasso series would not have been possible had he not asked other cast members of Boom Chicago — an improvisational comedy group based in Amsterdam — in the late 1990s to chip in $20 each to buy a Sony PlayStation, so they could have something to occupy themselves with in the green room.

He launched a social club of sorts, and when they finally bought the PlayStation it came with a FIFA game. Sudeikis had no experience with soccer but Hunt did, and explained how the football code worked, hooking his colleague.

“That almost became the way coach Beard and Ted spoke to each other. And we just did so many hours that I understood the game a little bit more,” Sudeikis says.

“So by 2013 when they asked me if I would like to do this commercial for Premier League and NBC sports, I was like ‘yes, but can I bring two buddies to help me write it though?’. And Brendan was the first, following right behind was our buddy Joe Kelly (another Boom Chicago alumni).”

The genesis for Ted Lasso began in the late 1990s over a PlayStation game.

Be authentic

But know the dangers of faking it until you make it.

Brendan Hunt is known for his unconventional take on life. When two fans of the fictional AFC Richmond football club ask him to share some of his wisdom on Ted Lasso, he responds: “I’ve been to Vegas many times. One night is good, two nights is perfect, three is too many. Ted is a man; just a man. And as for the fragility of life, I’m so glad someone finally asked because yeah, I got a few thoughts”.

In real life, Hunt said he had experience as an English tour guide — not in the UK — but on a double decker bus as a teenager growing up in Chicago.

“I got a job in downtown Chicago, giving tours in an English-style double decker tour buses and for reasons that are not important and were very random, I decided I would pretend to be English — not just to customers but to the people I worked with,” Hunt says.

“For two months, I appeared to be getting away with it … I’m thinking in an English accent and I feel like a dickhead because these people are kind of like friends now and technically every word I say to them is a lie.

“And then on my last day — I was an hour and half away from finishing my last shift and my pain would go away, the deal was to get off the bus, wait for tips and then let the next people on. And there’s a dude coming up, an older man in shorts, a V-neck white T-shirt, flip flops, beer belly, stomping towards me.”

Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso (right) with Brendan Hunt (centre) and co-writer and co-star Brett Goldstein (left) who played Roy Kent.

Turns out the man was English and wanted to know where Hunt came from. “I feel him staring daggers inside my head,” Hunt recalls, adding he only knew of two areas in London.

“I tell him confidently “Hyde Park”. And he says: ‘I didn’t know anybody lived in Hyde Park … with the rabbits’.”

Hunt then confessed. “Sir, it’s just a joke”. The man grabbed his hand and pulled him close. “Next time pick a real neighbourhood, not Hyde Park … with the rabbits”. And to Hunt’s surprise he tipped him 50 cents.

Lean into vulnerability and feedback

A main theme in Ted Lasso is vulnerability and being receptive to feedback. Ted suffers from panic attacks and initially tries to hide them. Later, the football club’s therapist Sharon sees Ted suffering and offers to help him, which he declines until he finally seeks help in her office at night after suffering an attack during a FA Cup quarterfinal.

Jason Sudeikis in a scene from Ted Lasso.

In real life Sudeikis has adopted coping mechanisms — one which nearly cost him his big break joining Saturday Night Live in the early noughties.

Sudeikis was performing at The Flamingo — the oldest casino on the Las Vegas strip — when a person from a management company approached him, asking if wanted to audition for SNL.

“I said I don’t want to join that show,” Sudeikis recalls.

“I didn’t know then that that was mid-20s ignorance. I didn’t think they had any interest in me, so it was easier for me to act like I had no interest in them.

“It’s a tactic that I got very good at doing with girls in grade school and high school. I don’t like them, she seems stuck up. And then I was told “she likes you”.

This prompted Sudeikis to respond with incredulity: “she does?”.

By the time it came around to audition for SNL, his manager urged him to pull his head in. “And he was right. It was amazing.”

Embrace soft skills and recognise staff

One of the big plot points in Ted Lasso is when Ted promotes Nate from kit man to assistant coach for AFC Richmond. Nate is enraged when he arrives at work one morning to find his duties have been taken over by someone named Will, who says he is the new kit man.

Nate thinks he has been fired and even calls Rebecca a “wench” before she addresses him by his name, asking him why he is so hostile. Nate is surprised that Rebecca knows his name and she said she needed to know how to spell it for his new contract, with the other players surprising him with a celebration.

Brendan Hunt as Coach Beard, with Jason Sudeikis (centre) and Nick Mohammed who played Nate and was promoted as kit man to assistant coach.

Recognising people for talents which do not appear obvious — also known as ‘soft skills’ — is something Sudeikis learnt while at Second City and SNL.

“When someone comes to host SNL, they usually meet with whoever it is, if they’ve never done it before, they’re kind of this unknown thing. And people usually have more skills than we necessarily know them for their pop album, or their superhero movie, they can do other things,” Sudeikis says.

“And that’s something that I learned at Second City as well: “oh, let’s find out what these people’s special skills are … you know, on a resume that says down the bottom a lot of times special skills, but rarely do we use them.

“We apply that to all the actors and all the roles, but we also allow for anyone and the department heads, you know, to sort of lean into this, so there’s a little bit more ownership over the show, then just doing what they’re told, you know, that they lean in or have the opportunity to change things.”

Know when to call it quits

Scott Farquhar surprised investors when he announced earlier this month he would resign as Atlassian’s co-chief executive in August after 23 years of helming the company with co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Jason Sudeikis also has repeatedly dodged questions about whether Ted Lasso will return for a fourth series. “It’s such a lovely question to be asked … the first hundred times. The second hundred, it’s interesting. The third hundred, you hate it and now here we are at the fourth hundred and I’m back to being flattered,” Sudeikis says.

When asked about a fourth series, Jason Sudeikis says: ‘It’s kind of like is Dorothy going to stick around in Oz just because of ratings?’

But he highlights at the end of the third series — spoiler alert — Ted leaves Richmond to go back to Kansas, and draws parallels between another famous fictional Kansas resident.

“Just out of nowhere will Ted decide not to go home? It’s kind of like is Dorothy going to stick around in Oz just because of ratings? Send the girl home, let her go back to Kansas.”

The author travelled to Las Vegas as a guest of Atlassian.