Rio Ferdinand’s Between The Lines | Ep 8: Frank Lampard talks man management and leadership

Welcome to Between the Lines. I'm joined today by Frank Lampard, the highest-scoring midfielder in the Premier League's history. You must be proud of that one, Frank. I like that. Thanks for that. Frank, welcome to the show. Normally, the normal journey is talking to a player or a manager about their career. You're very unique. You've been a player in the Premier League and now a manager. What are the big differences between Frank Lampard, the player, and Frank Lampard, the manager? The responsibility of the job. It just changes you and you realise quickly how lucky we were to be players. You look after yourself, you turn up, you can have a not selfish mentality but worry about yourself, short days, naturally stay fit. There are so many perks to the job. And then when you get on this side of it, you've got responsibility of probably the first thing is managing people. That's what a lot of players that maybe try and get into management, I wouldn't say they don't realise but they have to realise quickly, is as much as it's tactics and all the things you thought you knew as a player, you better start trying to work with people because it's about people and players. And talking about changing rooms, what are the key differences from you as a player that you witnessed but what you're witnessing now as a manager? What are those differences? It's just evolving and you've got to be careful to become the dinosaur that goes, oh, in my day, the dressing room was tougher, it was stronger, there were voices, there were this. It's probably an element of truth. I think leaders look different. I think we've just had Conor Cody walk in to Everton now and he looks like the leaders that I associated with in maybe our day. Vocal, pushing, really driven, really direct in how they're really positive about it. A lot of the lads now, I don't feel that same kind of communication level. They communicate differently. They're used to communicating a lot on social media. They're used to a different way of life to what we were so I think you just have to understand that. And sometimes you have to dig a little bit deeper with them and you have to treat them differently to what we were used to being treated. We were okay. I don't know, I speak for myself, but I know you came through the same academy as me so we were okay and expectant of a hammering after a bad game or a bad training performance or these things. I think now with the modern day... Your dad was one of them. He was my dad so I got it even worse, do you know what I mean? But we got on with that. The players now, that for me is not generally the way to handle them because they are different and the landscapes change, the power of the players change, the agents around them. So sometimes you're a son and they're almost like biting your tongue in certain situations. Yeah, for sure. And again, this is something I learned at Chelsea in different ways but sometimes the thing that you think you want to come out with straight away, say it's like training the other day, I didn't like it, it wasn't so good, it didn't run so well. Some days it goes great, other days it's not. Your instinct or you kind of think... If you kind of go like, we all grew up and we love Sir Alex Ferguson, you hear the stories of the hairdryer and all those things and you go, I better do that because that's what managers do. They have to give someone a hammering so everyone's a little bit wary of stuff. And when you actually do it, and I've done it, if you get it wrong, it's really hard to retrieve. Whether it's an individual player or in front of the group that they've got friends within the group that then don't like it or your aim can only be, can I win on Saturday? So if I train on Wednesday like this week and I didn't really like the session, if I go out and absolutely shout and hammer some players for it, as I say, you weren't training hard, you didn't listen to the information, I kind of maybe could lose them. Whereas if I go away myself and go, what was the session like, what did I want out of it, how can I tweak that, how can I bring that back, can I show a video of it, can I improve it? Then it feels like you're being more hands-on rather than just bang, shouting, which is quite easy to do. So there's a time and place for a shout, don't get me wrong, but I think the modern player, you have to really approach it in particular ways. Obviously we're here at Everton now and we had Carlo Ancelotti here when he was Everton manager and he said he wants to bring back the glory days back to Everton. What are your aspirations for Everton? The same as Carlo, but I think you have to be real and you have to understand that we were in a relegation fight for a reason and whatever those reasons are, they're not important to me now, the important thing is that we get things right now and going forward. So I think it's almost like, what's the next steps forward for us? And one will be to be more stable this year in the Premier League. I don't think there are any crazy statements about where we can get to until we start to show it on the pitch.