The Importance of Clearly Defined Roles on a Team
On a recent podcast appearance for the show Talking Season, I was asked about the importance of coaches giving clearly defined roles to athletes and the positive effect it can have on the success of any player or team.
Assigning Roles Creates Accountability on your Team
Defining roles for each team member is a great way for leaders to establish accountability for each person’s responsibility to the team within their role. This can be even more profound if a coach is able to define people’s roles in front of the entire team. Not only does it establish what each person is doing in their role, but also puts every teammate on the same page in terms of what each individual’s role will be on the team.
In high performance environments such as professional sports, defining roles in front of the team can be tricky for some leaders because of how certain highly paid performers could react to a reduced role or one less than their expectations. But if implemented correctly, it can be a powerful tool in creating buy-in and understanding from each member of the team.
Doc Rivers Assigning Player Roles in Front of the Team
Philadelphia 76ers head coach Doc Rivers has the ability to do this with the highly paid NBA players he coaches when he calls out each players’ responsibility to the group during practice, instead of assign players’ roles in private. This way, not only does each player know their role, but all of his teammates know his role too.
Kevin Eastman, an assistant coach under Rivers, stated “that wasn’t an exercise where some people might say he was trying to expose people…he was actually trying to prove how valuable each person was. Because if you subtracted any of those roles from the teams, we would be short of that. And his roles I believe are defined as, ‘What are the pieces that need to be together to have a chance at being in a true championship run?’”
Defined Roles Keep Players Engaged
Steve Kerr, head coach of the Golden State Warriors, spent the majority of his career as a key member of the bench on championship teams under Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich. While he was overshadowed playing alongside star players such as Michael Jordan and Tim Duncan, Kerr uses his experience as a career bench player to keep the role players on his team engaged all season long. He does this by clearly communicating with his players how he wants to use them as a players during the season.
Steph Curry on Steve Kerr’s Coaching Style and Engaging his Players
Curry speaks on Kerr’s coaching ability at the 22:45 mark
Steph Curry on Steve Kerr’s ability to keep every member of the team engaged all season long:
“I think that’s the biggest thing in terms of long-term success. You always know who you’re stars are gonna be, but your role players have to be engaged all year long, and it starts in the summer time, and Kerr is the best of painting a picture of how you’re going to be able to help this team, and being real. Like you feel the care factor that he brings.”
Setting these clear expectations with players lets them always know where they stand with the coach and his or her plans to use them during specific stretches of the season.
The honest and straightforward approach of both Steve Kerr and Doc Rivers, backed by their winning credentials as coaches and former players, allow them to clearly set expectations for each player to let them know what their role is, and even letting teammates know as well, to create a collaborative environment where everyone can feel engaged and on the same page.
Everyone is a Role Player
"My philosophy has always been—whatever you are asked to do, try to be the best at doing that." - Kobe Bryant
The success of any given team correlates to everyone accepting their role, and fulfilling their role to the best of their ability, regardless of significance. Every role contributes to the larger whole of the team’s performance, even if some roles are unseen and seem insignificant from the outside. There are times when this means being the star of your team and someone the group relies on for maximum contribution every game. Other times it means supporting more talented and qualified performers, and other times it may be fulfilling a responsibility that is unseen to most fans and spectators.
Scout Teams are Critical to the Success of Good Teams
Take the “scout teams” on any sports team for instance. Younger, less-developed players typically compromise of any scout team, from high school all the way to the professional ranks. Scout teams run the next opponents’ plays in practice that week to give the starters a “scout” look for that week’s upcoming game. The scout team plays a critical role in a team’s preparation to win a game, but hardly a role competition would desire when dreaming of being on a winning team. While scout team players often are not playing in the actual games in a given week, or even season, these players still play a valuable role in the success of the team. The quality of their play helps the starters get better, and at the same time can serve to give young players more time to develop into contributing players on the field. Although they don’t play in the games or show up on the stat sheet, they are vital to the success of any sports team.
“We’re all role players. Every role is essential for the success of this team.” - Shane Battier
The Development of Aaron Rodgers During his Years on the Scout Team
And while all roles are certainly not glamorous or starring, they are important nonetheless. And giving one’s best effort to fulfill their specific role can sometimes result in increased responsibility, it can also serve to develop one’s skills for much larger future roles within a team or organization. Aaron Rodgers is widely considered one of the best quarterbacks in the history of the NFL, and yet he starred exclusively on the scout team with the NFL’s Green Bay Packers for his first 3 season as a pro athlete. While the future league MVP certainly aspired for a larger role and opportunity to prove he could play with the best, Rodgers credits his time on the scout team as a launching point to his great career, saying “those years were critical to my success.”
On Good Teams, Players Understand and Accept Their Roles
"Accepting roles is a huge part of becoming a good team. Until your role changes, accept the one you have and go full force with it.” - Bruce Arians
Playing as a team and realizing potential of a team occurs only when everybody understands what their role is and is working in unison to accomplish the same team goal. The best teams enter each week not worrying about the standings, or what other teams are doing. They go to work with the sole focus on that week’s opponent, and what will be needed to be done as a team to win this game. Sean Payton has talked in the past about Weekly Roles for players on the team, and how jobs can change based on what the team needs to do to win this week. “They need to have a willingness and the ability for everyone to accept and really buy in to their role for that game,” said Payton.
Bill Belichick and the ‘Do Your Job’ Motto in New England
There is maybe no better coach at defining the expectations of each person’s job in order for the team to win than Bill Belichick. The New England Patriots mantra of “Do Your Job” has become a slogan for the New England area over the last 20 years and also serves as the bedrock of the consistent success of their NFL team. For Belichick, one of his many coaching hallmarks is his ability to define job expectations for everyone in the organization, with a singular focus on winning this given week. No Super Bowl talk. No talk of winning streaks. Just a relentless focus on what it will take for the organization to beat the upcoming opponent. This truly step-by-step approach, and sometimes changing job responsibilities for players every week, ensures everyone is on the same page, and working in unison towards accomplishing the common team goal.
