There are coaches; there are players and then there is a player-coach

My last few weeks have been very enriching and eventful. Travelling across Bengaluru in India attending Agile conferences and various leadership, management and transformation events, more than the useful ideas that I received during the great escape from my daily consulting grind, it was as always more about meeting new people from different backgrounds and cultures.

As I met more, during the conference, in various events, in the hotel lobby, during lunch buffets and even in the men’s room, I couldn’t stop noticing two distinct types. One who were deep down executing delivery programmes, fighting with real day to day people, business, technical and cultural challenges and responding to the ever-changing business ask, whom industry refers to as “practitioners” and I fondly call them here “players”. Second who sounded very knowledgeable, informed, talked about recent developments in business/technology/transformation space and sometimes their research and books, whom I and industry refer to here as “coaches”.

The distinction was clear and always quite noticeable no matter whom I bumped into. While I started appreciating their thinking and perspectives, it kept me thinking – if these kinds exist, do we also have two distinct worlds they come from? A world of dirty, gory, in-the-weeds software delivery reality where linear thinking, long-range casted-in-stone plans, extended daily hours, high people attrition rates, skill challenges, people utilisation etc., etc. are a reality. And then there was another world where embracing complexity theory, experiential approach to problem-solving, business value focused delivery, self-organising cross-functional and stable teams, trusted employees/partners, frequent product increments, etc. were being dreamed of. And, if these two worlds exist, who is the one responsible for building the bridge?

Here is where, a “Player-Coach” comes in. As per Wiki-Pedia – “A player-coach (also playing coach, captain-coach, or player-manager) is a member of a sports team who simultaneously holds both playing and coaching duties”. This person can play a vital role building the bridge between the two worlds I mention above. He/she would be the one holding the torch and providing light in every little nook and dark corners of the enterprise jungle. He/she is the one who is having a conversation with CxO’s of his/her organisation and explaining to them how this can impact their top and bottom lines, but he/she is also the one showing the right way to the developers, testers, business analysts, architects, and release engineers. He/she is the one among them and knows the rules of the game, but he/she is also the one who knows when and which ones to break and gets away with it. He/she is the one who has very relevant and contextual examples which teams can relate to. He/She is the one who can help create or customise research information to make it very relevant to the people on the ground. He/She is the one who is sitting amongst and is always available to the teams. He/She is the one who can carefully observe and work with people who slowly meander along their personal transformation journey. He/She is also the one, by the way, who is already paid for by the organisation.

American football and basketball teams have had a few quite successful names which come up when you google for “Player-Coach” – Bill Russel from Boston Celtics – “A five-time NBA Most Valuable Player and a twelve-time All-Star, he was the centrepiece of the Celtics dynasty, winning eleven NBA championships during his thirteen-year career. In 2009, the NBA announced that the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player trophy would be named the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award in honor of Russell.”

Lenny Wilkens – “Wilkens was a combined 13-time NBA All-Star as a player (nine times) and as a head coach (four times), was the 1993 NBA Coach of the Year, won the 1979 NBA Championship as the head coach of the Seattle SuperSonics, and an Olympic gold medal as the head coach of the 1996 U.S. men’s basketball team. From the 1994–95 season until the 2009–10 season, Wilkens was the winningest coach in NBA history and retired still holding the record at 1,332 victories. ”

Indian mythology is filled with examples of player-coaches across all epics of Ramayana and Mahabharatha, where the great sages and gurus like Vashsishtha and Draunacharya, preached royal students in the gurukuls but also were very able and efficient craftsmen and warriors who fought and won great battles.

Successful as these people were and perfect as the role seems, sports hasn’t actively used the player-coach role, and we do not see too many popular names in the recent past. There are great players, and there are great coaches. Why aren’t their great player-coaches one wonders?

Typical challenges and criticism around a Player-Coach role are the following:
– How will the person supervise and manage while playing a coaching role?
– How is this linked to his/her growth
– Do they have the belief that the company culture would support it and if not can they influence it?
– Where would they start – team, boss, clients?
– Are they just heroes or do they have the will and intention to create more heroes?

The last one above in my mind is the key; most high performers are either busy doing great work or enjoying the success of their work. There are very few who are doing great work but also building more like them who are capable of doing even greater work. If you re-look at the people examples above, while how successful and great Bill Russel was, he was never the focal point of the Celtics’ offense, and in-fact he was notable for his “rebounding abilities”. “He led the NBA in rebounds four times, had a dozen consecutive seasons of 1,000 or more rebounds, and remains second all-time in both total rebounds and rebounds per game.” Similarly, “Show people how to have success and then you can push their expectations up.” is a famous quote from Lenny.

Dronacharya or Vashishta, the great Indian mythology coaches, are never mentioned running around fighting for kingdoms and thrones, but were busy mentoring Arjuna or Rama when they were not helping their Kings win on the battleground.

As for other criticisms of the role, there are multiple different ways we can try – one could be player-coach roles being played in between two full-time business assignments, where high performers get time off stressful external facing assignments, but use that time to develop other colleagues and help improve other programs within the enterprise. Beyond the break, they stay engaged with their coachees as mentors and not full-time supervisors. The important thing being coaching would need a dedicated full-time attention and focus for some time at least and also we can not expect playing and coaching to be 100% parallel activities. Also with the so much data and visible success we see around us with newer ways of working, I would expect these roles to be fully paid for billable roles. No this is not training expenditure, but it is like any other specialist skill till it becomes mainstream.

In general, these people would be far and few and would need to be carefully hand picked and then well groomed to play the player-coach role. They would need to be given a work-profile which allows part of their time to be spent away from their day jobs to mentor and coach others. They would need to be shown a career path within the enterprise which provides them the needed autonomy but also respects their mastery. But once found and groomed they would have the capability to develop many skilled craftsmen, grow teams and deliver results from and within an enterprise. They would be the internal enterprise change agents who would pair up with external coaches and internal leadership, helping transform people, teams, and organisations. They can be the ones I believe who would have the ability to bridge the gap between aspiration and reality.