Why Every Leader Should Think Like a Coach: The 5 Principles of Collective Leadership

Speaker A: I believe that every leader should understand the principles of how to coach an athletic team if you want to be effective, if you want to ensure that your team wins, I have a 2026, 2027 prediction. Most corporations are going to start bringing athletic coaching concepts into their organizations to train their leaders. And I believe that if you want to be effective as a leader in 2026, going into 2027, you need to learn the principles of athletics. Welcome back to Leadership beyond the Title podcast. My name is Tichina. I'm your host. And this summer I am doing a series called Leading Through Every Season of Life. This series is looking at leadership from many different perspectives and looking at how people step into leadership, how they lead their homes, their organizations, their friend groups, their teams, their families. Because I believe that leadership is not just one size fits all. So if you haven't heard any of the episodes, go back. I started in June and I guarantee that you are in for a treat. But in this episode today, I want to talk about more organizations utilize sports analogies in order to train their leaders and to train the teams that those leaders serve. And so let's get into it. So one of the things that I had started doing, I would say about three years ago, is I started to get teams on the same page by offering an analogy where I use football. Now, as y' all know, if you've been listening, I am both a basketball mom and a football mom. I was a volleyball mom for, uh, a little bit of a minute because my daughter played, but now she's in college and so there's no longer any volleyball. But I am still actively in the, the deep end of football and basketball. I have been bringing this same analogy to multiple organizations, county groups, government groups, things like that. And every time that I bring it, it is like a grand slam. And when I talk about teams and I talk about collective leadership, or sports for that matter, I am literally talking about sports where there's a bunch of different players on the field or in the court. On the court. I'm not talking about sports like tennis or golf, where it's just like kind of a one man show or one woman show. I'm really talking about those sports where it takes a couple of people in order to get a win. So soccer, um, is another one. We're in the midst of the World cup right now. So soccer is a big thing. And it's something that after listening to this podcast, you can go back and you can really connect and you can see exactly what I'm talking About. So I want to start with the football analogy that I use on multiple teams. Now I started using football because I was working with a team where the leader was really into football and he was new as a new leader to that team and he was bringing kind of his story and what, who he was, what he appreciated, how he got to become the leader that he is today. And this was about three years ago, I would say. And so I've been doing this for a number of years and over time I'm starting to bring it to more organizations, county offices, government, nonprofits, things like that. And I'm starting to see how much people appreciate understanding and knowing what it looks like or feels like to be on a team by using something that everybody loves, which is sports. Now, yes, I am a football mom and I also want to caution that I'm not an expert in football. Um, it's something that I always thought was boring. I'm sitting on the side, uh, in the bleachers on the side and I'm just like, what is going on? It's just start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. It doesn't just keep on going. And so I'm not going to say that I'm like the biggest expert when it comes to football. However, I have a husband who was a hall of Famer in high school for football and he was able to teach me so much about football because my sons play football. And so he's been able to teach me a lot about the different positions and what they do. Now here's what I know. There are several different positions on a football team and football is made up, uh, with so many men. Like where I'm even thinking about now, like My son, my 16 year old is playing. Football is not his primary sport or his primary love. His primary love is basketball. And I just want to say you could also use sports like basketball to, you know, speak to this point of teams as well. But just make sure that you're using a sport where there are multiple people either on a field or the court, and you're not using different sports like golf or tennis. So we have started to think about my son because there's so many positions on a, uh, football field that he's more likely to get some type of college offer if he goes the football route or not. Just more likely that he'll get it, but it expands his opportunities to not just basketball, but football as well. At the end of the day, we just want him to get in a good college and we want him to have some scholarships. To match. Because that will be a chef's kiss for my family and for our financial pockets. So anyway, as we were talking about football, I learned that there's several different positions on a field, from the quarterback to the offensive line, the defensive line, the receivers and the special teams. And each one of those have very specific jobs that they have to do. From calling the plays, from creating pathways for the receiver to run through, to defending the line so that nobody from the other team can get through and tackle that team. But that's not the only positions that are important. You have the people on the sideline, so you have the coaches and sometimes the trainers are there, you have the medical staff that's on the side and they are just as important for the health and the well being and for extra eyes to see what's happening on a field. And then you have the general manager and you have the back operations offices. And so all of these positions are so important. And I use this because in a corporation and an organization, a corporate environment, you're going to have so many different positions that are important for many different things. And it's important that you know what those things are or what those positions are. Because if you are not clear on what those things are, there is a real possibility that you're either going to step on someone's toes, you're not going to do what you're supposed to do, and you're going to leave other people at risk for something happening, or you'll put yourself at risk because you're not doing the thing that you're supposed to do. You will have work that is due and you just won't be able to get it done. And so all of these positions are super important. Which brings me to my point of collective leadership. Now I use this specifically because collective leadership is such an important concept that I've been teaching for the same number of years. And um, it's a way to help teams realize that in order to reach the goal, the one go, the one thing that they have to do to win, which is in football terms, to make a touchdown, is that they have to learn how to come together as a collective leadership body. And so using football, using sports, is my prediction for 26, 27. Because I believe that more people are going to want to take their teams out to do things in real time, to actually embody the process of being a teammate or being a, uh, leader of a team in order to get people to really feel what it's like because there's too many people out here. In their silos, there's a lot of fear and scarcity that's happening. So people are showing up into the workplace and they're not really trying to come together. They're like, I gotta get my promotion, I gotta get my raise, I gotta get my visibility. And it's my, my, my. And quite honestly, if anybody on a football field thought of, uh, my, my, I need to get the ball, I need to get to the touchdown, I need to make sure, you know, I kick the field goal, that team wouldn't win. And so when I think about collective leadership, there are a couple of principles that are so important that I want you to know, because it is literally the thing that is going to help you to be successful in your role as an individual stepping into a team. So here they are. So the first principle that I want to share with you is step systems thinking. And this is literally understanding how all the parts of a system fit together. If somebody doesn't understand their role, if they're not put in position in the right way, if they're not moving in the direction that they should go, the entire system will break down. If you are in a corporate environment and you are working with a team and you guys have a goal of maybe increasing budget and, and somebody goes off and does something else, they make a decision that is off from what they wanted to do, the entire system breaks down. So it's important not just for one person to understand systems thinking, but for everybody to understand systems thinking. Because this tells you exactly what you're supposed to do, where you're supposed to focus, what is yours to own, what is someone else's to own. Um, and so the first principle of coming together as a team has to be systems thinking. You have to know how all the parts fit together so you can make a thriving system. M that moves forward towards the goal. Now, the second principle is you have to build the network. And I'm not just talking about the people. I'm also talking about the resources, who needs to be aware? So, for instance, we know all the players, we know all the parts, right? We have a system thinking, we know all the positions. I'll say. But we don't actually know who actually holds those positions. We don't actually know what resources they need. Can you imagine a CEO who doesn't understand their business and they don't know who they should be handing things off to? Can you imagine a quarterback or a coach who doesn't know how to call the play and doesn't know who it should go to, like, they don't know the positions. They don't know who stands in that position. They don't know who can come on as a special teammate. Like, only come in for a purpose. That's what the special teams are for. They come in only for a purpose. Can you imagine that happening? That is the issue with not being aware of the system, but also not creating your network. Because you want to get the best of the best. You want to have the best resources, the materials that you need. And so the second principle is to build that network. It's not just the people, though, folks. It's also the resources, the things that you need in order for it to thrive. You can have all the people you want, but if you don't have the money to purchase the tools and the resources you need, what good, uh, what good is it? Right? And so that's what I mean. So we have systems thinking, and then we have building the network. And the third thing is you gotta prioritize relationships. So in the movie Him, I don't know if you guys watched it. It is a movie from last year. Marlon Wayans was in the movie. I think he was so underrated. And there was a point in the movie where he was told at the training camp, as he's the quarterback, and he was at a training camp, and he was told that he's responsible for whether or not somebody got hurt on the team. He had milliseconds to make a decision, throw the ball or run with the ball. And if he did it, somebody could get tackled, they could get hurt. And it was like a really gruesome part of the movie where somebody actually really got, like, their mouth busted and nose busted and all these things because he didn't make the decision quick enough. Now, people think that the quarterback is just a shiny person and he's the star, but people don't know that the quarterback gets the most heat as well. So the quarterback has to make a concerted effort on prioritizing deep relationships because he has to learn how to trust his teammates, and the teammates have to learn how to trust him, because there's nothing more draining, nothing more put off when you are actually on a team and your teammates don't pass you the ball or they don't trust that you're going to defend them, and so they just decide that they're going to do something else because they don't trust you. And so prioritizing deep relationships on a team is so that you can start to build and earn the trust that is necessary for you in order to be successful. I have like a real example. Even right now I'm stepping into this new role as a board chair and, and something that I am making an effort to do is to speak to every single board member and some of the other extended staff members that the board will be supervising. And I am really looking at, uh, how do I build trust in the most effective way? How do I understand what people need, what they want, how they want to develop, how to utilize their gifts and their skills? How do I do that? What? Well, if I don't have conversations with them, it'll never happen. That's why sometimes even on a football team, you'll see the quarterback take their guys out or have parties and throw, you know, thank yous and all those type of things for their teammates. Because camaraderie is important on any team. I think we go into those corporate environments and we think we're not supposed to be friends at work. I know I was taught that, I was taught that as a, as a girl growing up and building a career. When was that? I was not supposed to bring my personal stuff to work. I'm going to tell you, when I worked at the Gap, I was a manager and some of the people that I end up supervising became some of my closest friends. To this day, some of my closest friends because I made an effort to prioritize the relationship. People who trust you are going to work super hard for you. And I just want you to ask yourself like you like, will you work for some hard for somebody that you don't trust? Absolutely not on a football field. The defensive line, the offensive line is going to work super hard for the quarterback when they trust him. And so prioritizing deep relationships is a third principle of really becoming a team. And the fourth principle is you have to have a, ah, vested interest and align interest in the results. So what I mean by this is that everybody has to hold themselves accountable and they have to know where the ownership lies. There is nothing more. Well, I probably said this a couple of times, right, Because I think all of it is important, but this one is really important. Like if I don't know who's accountable and who's supposed to own something, I'm going to step on toes or I'm going to fall into a people pleasing. I, uh, don't want to rock the boat because in my mind I'm like, yeah, I don't want to, you know, make anybody mad. Holding someone accountable could just make things messy. But if we have a vested interest I am going to welcome how you hold me accountable. I am going to welcome you saying you're going to own it over me. I'm going to be okay with that. Because if one wins, we all win. That's the insight, that's the, the thing that you want to walk away with if you don't walk away with anything else in this podcast episode, is that if one wins, we all win. There's too many teams, and I see this a lot in basketball as well, because I watch my sons play basketball a lot where there's only one ball, but everybody wants to be the shooter. No way. You can't have everybody being the shooter. Somebody has to be in the middle to block somebody to play the big man. The big man is the one that's kind of right in front of the hoop and they're playing like that section in front of the hoop and blocking the ball from, you know, going into the basket. You gotta have people who can dribble the ball down the court. If everybody's trying to dribble the ball down the court, there's already a bunch of people that set up from the other team ready and, uh, waiting for you to come down the court. Court. Now you're not positioned and you're not ready. And so they have a vested interest in their results. They have a vested interest in getting some highlight reels and some highlight tapes. However, do you have a vested interest in winning? One of the things that I also see, and I just want to share this, is sometimes it's the coaches who have this look at me type of personality, or they have their favorites and so they'll play their favorites even over the success of the team. And that also is very limiting and is very discouraging because you have players who really want to develop and really want to win. But sometimes even the coach is, uh, in a line and they don't have a vested interest. And I say coach for the team. But this is the team lead. If you're thinking about a corporate environment, this is the team lead who's more concerned about their promotion than the promotion of the entire team. I mean, the warriors have the slogan like strength in numbers. And there are, ah, too many of leaders in our corporate spaces who are so focused or so you know, managing themselves in fear and scarcity. And that's how they're operating, that they don't even think about the fact that if one wins, we all win. And so I want us all, uh, to win. And I think it's important to understand that if we all have a vested interest, if we all know the one goal we need, we need to cross the field goal. We need to get the most buckets in the basket. We need to, you know, kick the ball into the goalie. Like, that is what we need to do. If we all like sports, give us such a, like, easy, simple, like, there's no gray areas. There's none of that. There's, like, what is the one goal? And sometimes our organizations are trying to make too many goals. There's no such thing as multiple priorities. I'll say, like a, uh, priority is meant to be a priority, but somewhere we've decided that priorities is more than one. How are you actually meeting all those priorities? There's one priority on a field, on the court, there's one priority. Shoot the ball, get the most numbers, the baskets, or get into the field goal and make the touchdown. That's it. Very simple. So how can we make it very simple for people to understand so that we all are in line? We understand the goal, we understand our positions, we understand how everything comes together. We're prioritizing our relationships with one another so that we can win. But last but not least, the fifth principle is transparency. I need you to be clear with me. I need you to share with me what's going on. I need you to be locked in with me where at any given time, I can speak on your behalf. You can speak on my behalf. I know where we are at in the process, in the, you know, project goal, whatever it is, I know where we're at. The good thing about sports, especially football, is there's transparency about how far you're moving along the field. You know where you are at in the end zone, whether you're not, like, at the 10, the 20, the 30, the 40. I can't even think of what it's called. This is how much of an expert I am not when it comes to football, but I could see it visually in my head. But the transparency is there. You know exactly what's happening. The. The referees are another person. They're calling out the plays out loud like, uh. Or calling out like, what's happening out loud. So whether there's a foul or there was holding or something like that, they're calling it out. So there's very much transparency about what's going on and what's happening. We're not transparent enough in our corporate spaces. We're just not transparent enough. We don't share where we are with work. We don't share what failed. We don't share the progress that is being made. And I think it's out, uh, of again, this scarcity and this fear of not doing it right or failure. But if we don't share, we don't get the help we need. And so I just really want us to really look at sports a little bit more. Um, I believe in 20, 26, 27, we're going to see more sports analogies brought into the corporate workspace, because that is going to be the thing that's going to help us see really clearly and really visually what it looks like to be a part of a team. And I believe that every leader should study alongside an athletic coach. They should find somebody, and maybe you are a parent or a grandparent or a caregiver of children, uh, who play the sport, go to those sporting events, learn as much as you can. You don't have to be an expert, you ain't got to be the coach. But learn as much as you can about the sport and, you know, go on YouTube. Like, I'm here on YouTube. I'm here on other different avenues as well. But if you're watching this and seeing this, you're probably seeing me on YouTube. You could go on YouTube and you can find different things about different sports and you can learn those sports and you bring those analogies and those things into the corporate environment and it clicks for people. I can't tell you how much I've come into a room and I don't know football well, but there are some people who don't know football at all. But when I start talking about the principles and the concepts, they get it instantly. And they're like, um, that's how this is supposed to work. This is what is supposed to happen. And so if you are somebody who is looking for more of this, more using the analogy, y', all, I even go so far as I'm bringing a football and a basketball into these team sessions now, and I'm using the football and the basketballs as props so you can be reminded of these principles of collective leadership, of coming together. So if this is something that is of interest with you, feel free to click the link in my show notes because we can talk about it. I could bring this into your organization. I've brought this to so many teams and it works so beautifully. Um, it can be like a substitution for going on these, like, generic team building events, y'. All. We tired of them team building events. Let's talk about real sports, real things inside of our meetings. Let's make it actionable let's make it so that we're actually learning something, and it's something we can use, continue and going forward. Okay? So thank you for showing up for me today. I appreciate you listening to this. If this is something that you felt was helpful, somebody could use it. Please do share it. It's the only way that I can build my audience and I can help more people until, uh, next week. Talk to you soon. Bye.