The Game.
"Why don’t the best players turn into the best managers?”
ST Georges Park, Nike Coaching summit. A question directed from the back of the room to the guest speaker, Gus Hiddink - Champions League winner, European Semi-Finalist and World-Cup Semi-Finalist.
The room went quiet.
Then someone mentioned José Mourinho. He didn’t play professional football. He is a 2X Champions League winner, and has consistently managed some of the biggest clubs in the sport.
It's not that the best players lack tactical knowledge, and it's not that they can't communicate - many of them have captained their teams and led them to winning trophies.
So, what underlines this complex?
The Analysis.
In business, this plays out identically.
The high-performing engineer who gets promoted to Head of Engineering struggles because the problems they could quickly identify and solve, their team don’t. "Why can't they just see it?"
The top salesperson who becomes Sales Director can't figure out why their team won't just "pick-up the phone and close the sale." They did it effortlessly for years, and so why can't everyone else?
This is the Peter Principle in action:
“People get promoted to their level of incompetence”
Being a world-class player and being a world-class manager require entirely different skill sets.
One is about personal execution. The other is about enabling execution in others.
The problem compounds when the person was ‘too good’ at the first job.
Because genius is a terrible teacher.
Patrick Lencioni (author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team) talks about this in leadership teams:
"The most dangerous person in the room is often the genius who's never had to manage someone less talented than themselves."
Why? Because they've never developed the translation skill.
They've never had to meet people at their ability and coach them to their potential.
Great managers don't just execute brilliantly themselves. They enable execution in others.
The Reflection.
Are you leading from your own experience, or from the understanding of what your team actually needs?
Best,
Daniel Holloway
Founder, Sport of Business
P.S. Know someone building a business who thinks like an athlete? Forward this to them. The best performances are by those who understand the game.