Introducing the ‘Player-Coach’
As firms cut back on managers, some are asking workers to follow the “player-coach” model once common in sports. Does it work?
Curly Lambeau. Bill Russell. Pete Rose. And now… your manager?
The player-coach model, once common across professional sports, is start to show up in a odd place: the corporate workforce. As firms, especially those in tech, eliminate managers and flatten org charts, they are tasking remaining managers or experienced colleagues with something akin to a player-coach role: They’re asking them both to manage team members and also to function as active individual contributors.
It’s a model that experts say can have its advantages, by “giving the team a ‘we’re all in this together’ feel,” says Jenna Young, a senior client partner in the Culture, Change, and Communications practice at Korn Ferry. But while it can sound great in theory, experts say it can be hard in practice. “It’s always more challenging for individuals to go down this path than it is for the firm,” says Liz Bickley, chief operating officer for Korn Ferry’s Healthcare practice.
Taking this approach, she says, can create a situation in which individuals are good at a lot of things, but great at none of them. To be sure, in US sports the player-coach model went out of style in the 80s as coaching became more analytical and complex, and athletes got bigger, stronger, faster, and more specialized. says Bickley. Another challenge of the player-coach model is that it can create friction within the team instead of fostering collaboration. For instance, player-coaches might appear to be promoting their own work or reserving resources for themselves.
Budget cutting, in conjunction with AI, is driving this trend, says Paul Dinan, a senior client partner in the Global Technology practice at Korn Ferry. At the corporate level, the practice enables firms to drive productivity with fewer people; meanwhile, the automation of administrative and other tasks frees up managers to take on more hands-on work. “The player-coach model is really a symptom of the deeper redesign of organizations through an AI-first lens,” says Dinan. “Managers are being pulled closer to the work itself, instead of just managing through layers and processes.”
History has shown that firms struggle to provide the support or training needed to help pure managers or individual contributors succeed as player-coaches. “Management tends to become an afterthought, and broader talent development gets crowded out,” says Korn Ferry senior client partner Mark Royal. He notes that the model works better with smaller, experienced teams, but gets harder to sustain as firms grow and coordination becomes more complex.
Ironically, the player-coach model is returning at a time when firms are struggling to find leaders with strong communication and people skills, as well as to redesign jobs and train employees for the AI age. Against that backdrop, experts say the trend could backfire. “It could work,” says David Napeloni, a senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Recruitment Process Outsourcing practice, “or it could be a disaster.”
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