Season three of the Bonafide Leaders Podcast focuses on the intersection between sports, business and leadership. 

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Because of season three’s relevance to business and organizational leadership, I am writing what I intend to be a series of blog posts related to the topics surfaced in the season. 

In this first post, I’m shining a light on the roles played in sports and how those roles correlate to the roles we play in business and within organizations as leaders and professionals.

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The Roles We Play

While playing sports is what most of us think of when we think about sports involvement, there are actually many ways to engage outside the realm of playing. Of course, in life, there is no substitute for hands-on experience, however, that’s certainly not the only way one can benefit from their association with a given area. 

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Being involved in sports has helped me in numerous ways, too many to count. One of the most impactful has been my engagement with teams. Over the past three decades, I’ve been associated with dozens of teams; many professional work teams, and many sports teams. I’ve served as team captain, worst player, team captain, member and contributor, and also executive sponsor. As a college freshman and member of the basketball team, I learned a lesson that has stuck with me, and one I’ll never forget, because it’s so applicable in everyday life. 

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My head coach, in only the way he could, full of intensity and a scowl that would make Coach Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers proud, told us one day at practice that there are four distinct and unique roles in the game of basketball. 

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He expressed to us that folks could either:

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1) Play

2) Coach

3) Officiate (Referee or Official)

4) Spectate (Fan)

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The Player

He was making the point that if we were members of this team, our role was not to drive the basketball program strategy – that was his job. It wasn’t to dictate playing time – that was his job. Nor was it to talk to the officials or to complain about missed or bad calls. He told us that if we had a problem with the officials, that we should refer the matter to him, so that as head coach, he could handle it with the professionalism, respect, and care it deserved. He would not tolerate any technical fouls from his players. Coach made the point that the only people who paid money to attend games were fans, and that it was the fans’ job to root on their team or to degrade the other team. 

He explained that as paying fans, their boundaries were restricted to the stands, and while they could basically say anything they wanted, the one thing they could not do was to get on the court and play. That was our job. He didn’t want us watching like tourists on the court. Instead, he wanted us to engage in the game, either through our on the court play, or on the bench by supporting and cheering on our team, as well as observing, analyzing and planning for how we would contribute on the court in our next opportunity.

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Now, while it may seem as if this sports illustration has no relevance to your professional situation, allow me a moment to break down the other roles and I think it will become clearer. 

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The Coach

On every team, project, or company initiative you or I have ever been associated with, there has been a leader. The leader sets the tone and direction, provides a clear mission or purpose, organizes its activities, and assigns roles. Similarly, sports coaches serve the exact same role. Coaches, just as in a professional environment on project teams and work teams, inspire, encourage, teach, direct, and shepherd the way. Without a coach, a team will lack direction and focus. That said, great teams not only have a head coach who leads the way, but they also tend to have strong peer to peer leadership, who push the others to a standard; what I like to call positive peer pressure. In fact, the best coaches lead well, in part, by encouraging peer leadership. Similar to a live game, the coach can’t get on the floor. He or she can’t direct every offensive play and defensive play. Which means, when in the game, the player has to recall what’s been learned in practice, and the player has to rely on their teammates for support in real-time to be effective. And the same is true on projects I’ve been a part of – sometimes the team members have to make decisions without the boss present. But if that leader has set clear goals, and given clear guardrails, while empowering the team, then the team can fulfill the vision, even without the everlasting presence of that leader. 

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The Official

I feel bad for the referees. They have one of the toughest jobs in sport. They’ve got to have great vision, be firm in their delivery, and be in good enough shape to keep up with the pace of the game – often being played by people much younger and more energetic than them. On top of that, the coaches and fans regularly yell at them. They are rarely praised, at least publicly, for a job well done. In fact, the times the referees do their best work is typically when they are not even noticed at all by the players, coaches and fans. 

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Officials set policies and rules about how the game is to be played. They deliver news via their whistle and hand gestures, rendering both favorable and unfavorable judgments on game activities based on their perspective through their interpretation of the rules. In our professional lives, judges serve as the officials in legal matters. In the world of corporate accounting and financial reporting, the SEC and FASB are officials. And a host of other government agencies serve as officials on matters related to food and drugs (FDA), environmental standards (EPA), and the like.

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As a guy who spent decades in corporate leadership roles, I found it was challenging at times for me and for our teams to remain focused on our mission. As in a game of sports, officials can literally change the game. There was a time in which I was leading order fulfillment and supply chain operations for our global semiconductor businesses when the U.S. Government mandated a “stop-ship” to certain China based electronics manufacturers. We had built dozens of millions of dollars in custom inventory – as part of our normal business practice based on customer orders and their forecasted demand, and then suddenly, the “Officials” told us we could no longer ship and sell to a sizable segment of our customer base. That moment served as a huge distraction to our work of fulfilling orders and managing our capacity and operations. That moment also served, however, as a sharp reminder, that we don’t control the decisions our government makes. We are in control of our business response to those decisions. Fortunately, after some time, we were permitted to ship most of the inventory we had built. 

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Have you ever watched a game and seen a referee make what seemed at the time to be a “bad call?” It happens at least once in most games, whether in a tennis or volleyball match, football or basketball game. What’s amazing is that with the advancement of slow-motion camera technology, in many cases, what looked like a bad call live, ends up being the right call in the end. When perceived bad calls or missed calls happen, some players and teams allow their emotions to get the best of them, and they never recover, or they recover too late and wind up losing games they should have won. Championship teams often display the same immediate negative emotional reaction as other teams. That part is the same. What separates championship teams from the pack is how quickly they’re able to gather themselves, refocus, and bounce back from those circumstances. What I’ve found is that sometimes the call isn’t made in error, in fact it’s the right call, and it’s just a tough pill to swallow. Championship teams see the tough or bad call as simply a temporary obstacle in the way of them achieving their goals. Rather than wallow in self-pity and blame, they recognize that the likelihood of a reversal of the call is highly unlikely, so they move on to what’s next, the next play, the next project, the next assignment that moves them closer to their mission. Officials are akin to adverse government regulations, economic shifts, and market disruptions – there’s little to nothing we can do about them, so our best move is to accept where we are and focus on what’s within our control. Sports is a great teacher in that regard. 

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The Fans

Lastly, there are fans. I’ve shared the role of fans in a sports context above. Here’s the thing about fans: 

- They don’t come to practice, games only. 

- They don’t attend team meetings or film study. 

- They are not in the locker room or riding on the bus or plane with the team and nor do they travel with the teams to their hotel venue.

- They may read about the team, do research on the team, be extremely knowledgeable, or have limited knowledge; depth of a given fan’s knowledge and expertise is as wide as the east is from the west.

- They often have limited game experience and certainly limited game experience at the collegiate and pro ranks (elite level). 

- They will cheer you today and some will jeer you tomorrow.

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In sports, fan messaging comes through message boards, social media posts, and through mass media in the form of traditional and non-traditional journalism. Similar to officials, fans can be a distraction to players. So wise players (professional workers and leaders) are highly selective on which fans, if any, they choose to listen to, and to the extent they allow these fans to influence their thinking and their behavior. In today’s world of social media and 24-hour news cycles, without literally turning off the phone or disabling 100% of its notifications, it is basically impossible to tune out all outside noise. 

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What I’ve observed with the highest performing pro athletes is that in critical times, such as the playoffs, they actually do turn off the phone and disable notifications, enabling them to lock in on their goals with better clarity. Fans can sometimes have an over inflated or under inflated view of player or team performance. The people closest to the action – peers, teammates, coaches, and opposing team members and coaches often have the greatest insight into real performance, not family or close friends. Wise players listen to and consider the opinions and thoughts of people closest to the action. In our professional lives, fans are represented by family, friends, associates, acquaintances, sponsors in other departments, or even outside of the company in which we work. Some of these people love us deeply and are incredibly supportive. What they may not be able to do is tell us the hard truth when it needs to be told. Where fans are largely absent from the experiences mentioned above, those closest to the action are not, and they have real-time experience. What’s the point here? The point is that fans have limited credibility, and therefore, players and coaches would be wise to tune most of it out. 

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I could write for another 1,000 words on the applicability of decisions and recommendations on performance management, talent management, promotion and succession being made as close to the ground as possible within organizations. So many companies get this wrong, and I think they get it wrong, in part because those involved in setting strategy and execution of human resources lack sports experience. Though not applicable in every single professional work scenario, I’ve found sports applicable in many business and organizational leadership situations. 

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Value of Working in Varied Roles 

Over the course of time, I’ve participated in each of these four roles in some form or another. As a teenager, I began refereeing basketball games, and that helped my playing because I grew more familiar with the rules of the game, and I gained respect for the job referees do. Later, I began coaching high school teams, and that sharpened my leadership skills as a manager, director, and later vice president. Lastly, I’ve watched hundreds of games, live and on television and on the bench as a non-suited up player. Watching as a fan helps to slow the game down, making it easier to understand. What I’ve learned is that playing the game and coaching the game, while similar, are also drastically different. In fact, in real life, most great players who later coach struggle as coaches. To the contrary, most of the outstanding professional coaches often played at the collegiate level or higher, however, most were average players at the level at which they are coaching. The empirical evidence suggests that the best individual contributors don’t always make the greatest leaders, and conversely, average players can turn into outstanding leaders. While a player has nearly complete control over their actions, the coach can only influence the actions of a player through teaching and inspiration.

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The point – working in different roles (organizations) is one of the best ways to sharpen one’s overall skill level, because those experiences provide a broad perspective. And broad perspectives sourced from varied experiences can only enhance the value those folks bring to a business or organization. 

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So, to wrap up, there are four distinct and unique roles we can have in sports. Similarly, those same roles exist in business and within organizations. 

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Let’s know our roles and perform them well!

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