What Mo Salah, Budgets & Loyalty have in common

December 9, 2025

Hi Reader

(3-minute read)

Everyone else is getting clicks because of it so if I can’t beat them etc etc 😏

Mo Salah has blown up and thrown out the toys. And in the last great battle of 2025 the internet's picking sides, drawing battle lines and digging trenches. (As if there’s not actually important sh1t to focus on 🤷)

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here thinking about it a bit different and how often we confuse the problem. Leaders want frameworks for managing star talent meltdowns. They want bigger budgets to fuel creativity. They want to prove their loyalty by sticking to plans.

All common approaches but, as I see it, backwards.

The framework won't help because context matters more than principle. The budget won't spark creativity because constraint does that better. And that loyalty? It’s likely just stubbornness with a really good PR person.

Read on for a few short paragraphs on getting it wrong in ways that feel like getting it right.

The Salah Situation

By Sunday evening, Mo Salah's post-match comments had more takes than Liverpool had completed passes. Immediately we saw the ‘takes’ flood in. Half the internet saying Liverpool should've handled his contract differently. Other half saying he's being unprofessional, that he’d thrown the club under the bus etc. Everyone confident they know exactly what should happen next.

Except nobody actually knows. Because there's no clean playbook for this.

Star performer feels undervalued. Goes public. Now you've got a decision tree with no good branches. Back them publicly and you look weak to the rest of the squad. Discipline them and you risk losing your best asset. Try to find middle ground and you satisfy nobody.

Every week leaders in sport and business face similar situations. Tennis player throwing rackets and tantrums. Team member undermining the boss. Hotel executive complaining to ownership about their general manager. Every time, leadership wants a framework. Something to apply that gives them the "right" answer.

But the problem is that the right answer depends entirely on context nobody outside the situation can see. How many times has this happened before? What's the actual relationship like away from cameras? Is this genuinely about feeling undervalued or is it about leverage? What message does your response send to the next person who feels the same way?

Most leadership advice on managing high performers treats it like a logical or math problem. Apply principle X, get outcome Y. Real leadership is muddier. Sometimes you back the star even when they're wrong because losing them destroys everything you're building. Sometimes you let them walk because keeping them destroys your foundations.

And you won't know if you made the right call for months. Maybe years. And even then, you'll never know what would've happened if you'd chosen differently.

That's why everyone watching has opinions and nobody in the actual situation does. Distance creates certainty. Proximity creates doubt.

Creativity Under Constraint

Something I keep seeing in online conversations lately is Leaders complaining they don't have enough resources to be creative. We need bigger budgets. More staff. Better tools. Blah, blah, blah. And with all those things, then creativity will flow.

That's backward and backwards.

Despite what all these talkers are saying, creativity doesn't come about magically as a result of abundance, it comes from constraint forcing you to think differently.

Here’s a real life example of a team I worked with. They had roughly a third of the budget their competitors had. They could have chosen to play the same game with less money but decided to completely reimagine their approach.

And so they built a development system around what they could actually afford. An approach that takes longer to come to the boil, no doubt. But it’s a good example of turning constraints into competitive advantage.

Meanwhile, their wealthier neighbours kept throwing money at problems. They hired more consultants and more analysts. They bought more sports science and S&C equipment. Each addition created new people and process complexity that required more resources to manage.

Our ‘constrained’ friends got creative. The well-resourced team got bureaucratic.

Now, I’m not saying poverty breeds innovation or that resources don't matter. They do. But past a certain threshold, more resources often just mean more ways to avoid hard thinking. You think you can buy your way out of problems instead of solving them. You end up hiring specialists instead of developing generalists. And you likely add systems instead of questioning whether you need the complexity those systems manage.

Abundance creates options….but how often do we see these paralyse just as easily as they can liberate?

If you search for a bit (use AI as a search engine for this) you’ll find some of the most creative leadership came from people working with laughably inadequate resources. They had to be creative. They had no choice. And it all kicks off with a simple question: "What can we do that doesn't require what we don't have?"

That question forces clarity, then prioritisation, then creativity and then innovation.

When you can afford everything, you avoid asking what actually matters. Constraint leads you to answers.

Is Loyalty a Trap?

How often do leaders confuse loyalty to their plan with loyalty to their people?

For example, say you commit to a strategy. The market then shifts. Your team starts raising concerns and you interpret their concerns as lack of commitment. So you, in your wisdom, double down on the original plan and frame it as some nonsense like "staying the course" or "conviction leadership."

But what if staying the course means steering toward an iceberg your crew can see but you're too invested to acknowledge?

I read an X thread (I assume it was true!) about a CEO who'd spent months selling the board on a particular direction. When his leadership team started noticing problems, he heard it as betrayal and bleated "We all agreed on this path." True. But that was before new information emerged.

His loyalty was to the decision he'd defended and not to the people trying to help him see what had changed.

The trap is subtle. You tell yourself you're showing strength. Consistency. Real leadership. But what if what you're actually showing is stubbornness and not, as you think, principle?

Real loyalty to your people means being willing to abandon your plan when it stops serving them. Or admitting you got it wrong before the consequences become disastrous.

Can you seen how it means valuing their judgment enough to let it change yours?

But that requires something most leaders struggle with i.e. being more loyal to getting it right than to being right.

It’s a real tough one because you won't know in the moment whether you're showing conviction or stubbornness. That distinction only becomes clear in hindsight. So,this means you have to make the call without certainty.

Most leaders resolve this tension by staying loyal to their plan because that feels safer and easier to defend.

You drive along dreaming of an end to your hero’s journey where you paraphrase Frank Sinatra and tell the world that "I stuck to my principles even when others doubted."

Bravo, it sounds really noble. But I think I’m right in saying that principles that ignore changing reality aren't principles and are just expensive (sometimes very expensive) commitments to being wrong. That’s an ego-led play.

I often get asked "what exactly do you do?".

Here's this week's answer....I help the people I work with to think differently about their restraining issues and concerns. The answers you need are generally within you but can't get any oxygen. By prompting you to see and think differently you throw them a life-line and let them loose. And then you look great to everyone else. And I fade into the background...exactly where I like it.

Watch this 1-minute 'Leadership Habit' Short...

When Everyone Agrees, You're Already Wrong.

🎥 So, Are you mistaking harmony for wisdom?

A Master's Voice....

Are you trying to come up with a solution? Or win an argument? There's a BIG difference.

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By Dan Mickle | Mental Performance Coach

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