Are you a Coach or a Player?

Today I’m going to talk about a very interesting topic: Maradona and his goal.

I love Brazil and I supported Brazil throughout the World Cup. Unfortunately they lost, but my emotions were with Maradona. This is the man who single handedly won the World Cup for Argentina and that goal we remember. But in this World Cup he was standing on the sideline. He was the new manager, he was the CEO, he was the coach. One thing he could not do for his team was score a goal. A lot of us, managers, CEOs, new young leaders in different departments, in different countries, in different business are like Maradona today.

We are standing on sideline because it is impossible to continue scoring goals. Our teams have to score the goals. How many leaders, how many CEOs realize that they are no more Maradonas but they are coaches, the managers, or the Maradona’s of today.

Once that realization really comes into a CEO’s mind or young manager’s mind then the question we need to ask is: Does Maradona as a player and Maradona as a coach need two different aspects to be successful? Maradona as a coach within us, needs to enable, enthuse, encourage and bring the spirit to the skills of our teams to deliver the World Cup to us.

How many of us really think like that? How many of us are actually in command and control and still believe we are the players? How many of us do not believe in enabling, enthusing, encouraging? How many of us do not see ourselves as coaches but as players?

And that is a big mistake happening across corporates around the world. The CEO and managers refuse to give up control because they still think they are Maradonas. It is important for us to pause for a minute as young managers and think about two critical questions:

What business are we in?
We are in business of creating value and scoring goals.

Who is creating the value and scoring the goals?
The players and not you.

If those answers are very clear then what it takes for you as a coach to be successful is very different than what it takes for you as a player to be successful.

When you think about that clearly I’m sure you will find the answers as I discovered the answers over five years by making many many mistakes, being Maradona as a player. Once I realized that I’m not Maradona as a player, but a coach not as good as Maradona, I think things started falling into place. Think about it and I’m sure things will start falling in place.