Coaching is a great mental model for mission athletes—the creative, mission driven individuals who keep growing in individual and collective capacity. As coach, you achieve through others based on your guidance and the environment you create (strategies, feedback loops, and purpose alignment). But sometimes you really do need to dive in alongside the team and solve problems.
There is a variety of legitimate reasons for this, from the leadership ethic of everyone sweeps the floors to the value of working together in crisis, to the reality that the principal leader, just like everyone else on the team, has a unique skillset that may be the one thing needed at a particular moment in time. Almost exclusively, every leader should guide their team to increased independent operation over time, and leaders should resist the temptation to “hero” each obstacle as the team’s chief individual contributor. But sometimes, particularly in crisis, it may make sense for a leader to contribute on the field because of the value they provide. In these situations, move beyond coach, and become an ally.
An ally helps others achieve objectives in common cause like an ally in war or in a game or in politics. In the context of intrinsic motivation, an ally contributes effort and ideas, provides inspiration and perspective, and expands overall capacity. Critically and fundamentally, though, an ally always works in service of other people’s wins. Everyone should be undeniably better for the ally’s contributions.
There is a big difference on both the receiving and giving ends between getting in someone’s business and helping someone succeed. We all know what both feel like, and we all know it starts with belief and intent. If you lack critical confidence in those leading in crisis, then give them that feedback directly. Ask them to support you, and go do what needs to be done. But absent of that, step in alongside others, and help them win. You know you are on the right track when people are energized, eager to leverage your input, and start delivering small wins that snowball toward turnaround.
In practice, though, there are not just two states you need to fluidly move between, but three: coach, ally, and captain. Let’s put this in the simplest terms.
There are times when a decision must be made that the team is unable to make. They are often difficult decisions that don’t have a clear, analytical answer, and they are not easily answered by the current strategy, values, principles, and goals. In other cases, the team lacks a critical capability, perhaps one only recently revealed, and needs a leader to break through a bottleneck or crisis. In these and similar cases, leaders need to act more as team captains and just get the job done. But once it’s done, they should switch back to coaching, help clarify the strategy, and level up capacity. In the context of building autonomy, captain must be a short-term role.
Moving between all these states well is one of the key things to master as a leader. Those who live in any state too much create dysfunction.
You must learn to move fluidly between these three states in order to develop a team that can create, innovate, and solve problems with increasing mastery and autonomy. Sometimes you need to move between these states in the same conversation.
It should be clear when you’re in captain mode, and it should be welcomed. It’s the hard call, the person who needs to be exited, the principle that needs to be defined. It also should be rare. In general, expect to spend most of your time in coaching mode, some of the time in ally mode, and once in a while in captain mode. If that’s your mix of engagement, it speaks well to your mix of people and culture.