Leadership Lessons from Mercedes F1 Team Principal Toto Wolff

What hockey folks can learn from Formula One's perennial powerhouse team

A few months ago, Harvard Business Review magazine wrote a piece on Formula One (F1) and specifically Toto Wolff’s leadership. Wolff is the team principal at the head of Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1. He fell into the role in 2012 after years of poor performance and turned Mercedes into the best team in the ultra-competitive F1 racing series.

While it’s unbelievably difficult to win even one race, from 2013 to 2021, Mercedes won:

• Eight consecutive Constructors’ Championships

• Roughly 7 of every 10 Grand Prix races

The sport is often decided by margins measured in thousandths of seconds. F1 is a sport of margins like no other.

“A lap difference of a tenth of a second on average over the course of a season decides who is going to be champion—that’s a few meters on a five-kilometer track. So it is incredibly difficult to win an F1 championship, let alone eight in a row.” - Ola Källenius, chairman of Mercedes-Benz.

So how did Wolff go about turning the team into the dominant force of excellence it is today?

Analyze Mistakes, Even When Winning

Performing with excellence does not mean that mistakes are never made.

“He tells you the truth even if it might not be what you want to hear. He’ll just say, ‘This is where we are, this is where we need to get to, and this is how we are going to figure this out,’ in the spirit of ‘You’re not an idiot, but this is why it was an idiotic decision.’” - A team engineer

Wolff places great value on analyzing its race-weekend performances thoroughly, regardless of the result.