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107 - Know Your Role: Why the Best Teams Don't Have One Leader
106 Plays19 days ago
Most teams hand one athlete a title and expect leadership to follow. It doesn't work — and now there's research to prove it.
In this episode, Tex breaks down why the traditional captain model sets athletes up to fail, what social network analysis reveals about how leadership actually operates inside teams, and why distributing leadership across multiple players — with defined roles and real development — consistently produces stronger outcomes than concentrating it in one person.
You'll learn the three questions every leader has to answer honestly, why your role doesn't limit your leadership but defines it, and what it looks like to build a leadership system instead of just picking a captain.
Whether you're a coach designing your team's culture, a captain trying to figure out what the role actually requires, or an athlete who leads without a title — this one's for you.
*NEW* Education - Captains & Coaches course, "Why They're Not Listening - Coaching Today's Athlete": http://listen.captainsandcoaches.com
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Research referenced: Fransen et al. (2014), Loughead et al. (2006), Vella et al. (2013), Price & Weiss (2011), Gould & Voelker (2010), Mertens et al. (2018)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Captain Education Series
00:00:00
Speaker
Action. Your role doesn't limit your leadership, it defines it. Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast where explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond.
00:00:10
Speaker
I'm your host Tex McQuilkin and today we are continuing my Captain Education Series, the lessons that I'm giving to my team captains for the lacrosse season weekly right now.
Misconceptions About Captain Roles
00:00:21
Speaker
And we're going to tackle today this Superman myth that when you are named captain you have to do everything right now we have five team captains the focus of this lesson is the importance of roles and then leaning into strengths and weaknesses to help paint this superman picture i want you as coach to recall your experience whether it was an athlete or leading teams and then when you had an amazing athlete an amazing player and then you name them captain
00:00:55
Speaker
So you've got this team, you picked your captain, maybe they're your best player, they're the senior, they win the popularity contest with the team voting, they're the loudest person in the locker room when everyone assumed that they wanted the job, and then you put the C on their chest.
00:01:12
Speaker
Then you walked away, and here's what happened next. They tried to be everything, the voice, the enforcer, the motivator, the connector, The mediator when two guys stopped talking. The one who set the tone when you were losing by three.
00:01:28
Speaker
Then, throughout the season, they burnt out. Their teammates got frustrated. The culture didn't improve. And at the end of the season, you probably said something like, we just didn't have the leadership.
Research on Distributed Leadership
00:01:40
Speaker
Or they weren't the leader that I thought they were. But that's not what happened. What happened is you built a system around a single person and expected them to carry it and be that Superman, that Captain America.
00:01:52
Speaker
And that's not a leadership problem, it's a structure problem. And today, we're going to fix it. I want to dive into science. So I'm currently embarking on a doctorate in organizational leadership. So every single morning they want you to build this habit of leading research. So I'm leaning into a lot of fun, athletic based, sport team based leadership research. So I got some fun stuff that I want to share. So these are science about leadership and athletics that nobody's talking about. So I'm going share some exciting ones to you.
00:02:25
Speaker
Before we get into the end government give us some practical tools, so before we get into those, here's some fun stuff. And this isn't just a coaching opinion. These are something researchers have been documenting for years, and a lot of you have no idea that exists.
00:02:43
Speaker
So in 2014, a researcher named Franson and her colleagues did something fascinating. They mapped leadership inside sports teams using social network analysis, basically drawing a diagram of who actually influences on a team.
00:02:59
Speaker
Not who has the title, who has the influence. And what they found changed how I've been thinking about capitancy this year.
00:03:09
Speaker
And here it is. Leadership in teams is not centralized. It's distributed. Different players lead in different domains. Some lead the task. They drive execution. They hold the standard.
00:03:23
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Shout out Deuce Jim. Some lead motivation. They bring the energy. They keep the belief alive when things get hard during practices and games.
00:03:33
Speaker
Some lead the social side. They hold the room together. They notice when somebody's checked out, they call them out. Or they're leading the social gatherings. They're holding court before and after practice, telling stories, jokes, and keeping everyone engaged.
00:03:50
Speaker
Sometimes light, sometimes humorous. And some lead externally. They represent the team to the outside world. They are that lead by example person. there They're leading the classroom. They're leading in behavior and reputation and culture for the team.
00:04:08
Speaker
And here's the part that should stop every coach in their tracks. No single athlete during this research ranked highest across all four of those roles, not one. So when we hand one person a title and say, you're the leader, we're asking them to do something that data literally, it says is impossible.
00:04:27
Speaker
And another study, Longhead, Hardy, and Eyes, foundational work in the leadership, sports leadership field, they took it further. They found that every team already has multiple leaders.
00:04:41
Speaker
Even if only one formal captain is assigned, their team has multiple leaders operating in parallel, and they just haven't acknowledged it or given it a title The player everyone goes to when something goes wrong. The guy who sets the emotional temperature in the locker room.
00:05:00
Speaker
The one who holds standards in practice when the coach isn't looking. Leadership is already distributed throughout many teams, maybe even your team.
Pressures and Need for Structured Leadership
00:05:10
Speaker
We just assign it to certain people and then only hold them accountable.
00:05:16
Speaker
We need to do better job leaders and coaches ourselves by acknowledging these roles, and that's a big part of this lesson that we're handing off today. All right. We're going to get personal a little bit, so continuing with the research, this is from Volker Gold, two institutional names in the sports leadership field, when they looked at high school captains and actually the experience that they're gaining from the role.
00:05:41
Speaker
What they found? Role overload. Social pressure, avoidance of hard conversations. And this is this is something I've seen in real time throughout my 16-year coaching career.
00:05:53
Speaker
Because the impossible tension a captain faces every day, they're being asked to hold their roommate accountable, to a to have a difficult conversation with their best friend on the team about something they did wrong, and to protect the collective while still caring for the individuals on the team.
00:06:14
Speaker
their pressure from above, their pressure from below, their pressure from their co-captains. This is why I love John C. Maxwell's book, 360 Degree Leadership. That represents a team captain for me. You're getting pressure from all areas and you've got to be able to have the tools to lead in all those directions.
00:06:35
Speaker
So they've given this title to do that, but no tools. no training, and no system. So research is identifying the pressure and the responsibility and that no formal lectures, learning, presentations, tools are given to these captains.
00:06:52
Speaker
And they they ran then, Gold and Volker ran a captain leadership program with Michigan High School Athletic Association. And every single captain in their study reported the same thing.
00:07:05
Speaker
They were not prepared for the role, not one. They were handed a jersey, a C on their chest, an armband, and they were pointed at the team, and they were expected to go figure it out on their own.
00:07:18
Speaker
Amazing. the whole Across the whole state, there was no tools that were handed off, no education, no learning that was given to these these athletes. And I'm not surprised that it didn't work out for those leaders, and they expressed that in this research study.
00:07:35
Speaker
Another study, Vela and colleagues, they found when they studied the relationship between peer leadership and team outcomes, more leadership the more leadership voices, not fewer, produced a stronger cohesion, more confidence, and a better overall team functioning.
00:07:56
Speaker
One captain, that's a lot of pressure from one individual. Two, now we're spreading it spreading it out a little bit. Three and four, okay, now we're getting in a better position.
00:08:08
Speaker
I'm curious, what is your to our listener, what is your personal preference for how many team captains are needed for a team? my team currently we're rocking five and i'm gonna explain the different roles that i've assigned to each of those captains that help distribute the research uh distribute the leadership throughout this based off the research i'm reading so not one voice is the big takeaway here multiple voices distributed across the team and yet
00:08:40
Speaker
Now, often we're building systems around one player, the best athlete on the team or the best skilled position, and then we hope for the best going into the season.
00:08:53
Speaker
ah No game plan can fix what is the leadership level of a captain.
Key Leadership Roles and Self-Reflection
00:09:02
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You have more impact. We're practicing 100 times and playing 15 games.
00:09:07
Speaker
That's infinite more opportunities, leadership opportunities, every single day at practice, every single rep, every single warmup that we have to develop our leaders. It's an important role.
00:09:18
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It's not just the game plan going into our opponent. So we need to build systems around a team to put our best team in a position to succeed.
00:09:31
Speaker
So the honest question coaches need to ask, it isn't, do we have the right captain? It's do we have the right structure to allow leaders to lead? So I'm going to help clarify the role of a team captain and how we can spread it out across multiple team captains and develop them throughout the length of a season.
00:09:52
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Time out. Observation, new coaches getting into the field are really smart and intelligent when it comes to programming or understanding practice plans and their sport, and really bad at people.
00:10:05
Speaker
They have high IQ and low EQ. I spent the past 14 years traveling the world, teaching people how to teach people, lifting weights, understanding sport, but most importantly, connecting with people.
00:10:19
Speaker
I've taken all those lessons from all over the world and put them into a new course, Why They're Not Listening, Coaching Today's Athlete. If you want the first lesson free, head to the website, listen.captainsandcoaches.com to learn more.
00:10:34
Speaker
And now, back to the show. Ready, ready, and break. Let's get practical. If leadership is shared, and the science says that it is, then the real question becomes, what's my role? Not what's my title, what's my role?
00:10:48
Speaker
And here's the thing about role clarity that most players miss. Your role doesn't limit your leadership. It defines it. There are three questions every leader, formal it or informal, named captain or just the leader on the team, leader's lead, and they have to be honest about it.
00:11:07
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So here are the questions that I pose to my captains. Question number one, what are my actual leadership strengths? Not what you wish they were, not this grandiose perception of being Captain America.
00:11:22
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What are your actual strengths? What do you consistently bring to the team that they need? Are you the communicator? The one who can say the hard thing without blowing the relationship up.
00:11:35
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Are you the tone setter? The one whose body language and warmups tells the whole team what kind of day it's going to be. Are you the connector? The one who notices when someone's struggling before anyone else.
00:11:48
Speaker
Are you the competitor? The one who raises the intensity by showing up. Every team and needs all of these roles, but no one person is all of them.
00:12:00
Speaker
And that's the whole point. We have five captains. I assign them each one of those roles and lean into their strengths and give them the tools. They get opportunities to work on their weaknesses every single day.
00:12:12
Speaker
But when it comes down to it, we want their strengths to become stronger, accept those roles. So when the going gets tough during games and competitions, People know who to look for and when.
00:12:26
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Question two that I ask my guys, where do you need to grow? This is where most leaders lie to themselves. They believe they're Captain America, believe they're Captain America, and don't want to acknowledge what's hiding in the closet there.
00:12:42
Speaker
And many high schoolers, they avoid tough conversations because they don't want to damage the relationship. They don't have the tools to have the hard conversation and they still want to be friends with these guys.
00:12:55
Speaker
So you, as ah a practitioner, as a coach, as a leader of men and women, we need to give them the tools. So let's help them lead the hard conversations, help them lead the hard practices so they don't disappear in the moments when they need them the most that could
Framework for Distributed Leadership
00:13:18
Speaker
cost their team.
00:13:19
Speaker
And tone, you know I'm big on tone. Maybe the tone gets emotional or the tone is dry and it doesn't match the impact, the the intent of the words, and it changes the impact of your words as a leader.
00:13:34
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So tone gets very, or tone could get overly emotional under pressure. And then teammates start to manage that tone instead of following you or tuning you out.
00:13:47
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because we're getting too loud versus following what your actual words are saying. Leadership growth doesn't start with being better at your strengths. It starts with being honest about your gaps.
00:14:00
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And now we get the opportunity to assign roles and not try to step into somebody else's role. We allow them to be that that strength that is in my gap as well as a leader.
00:14:12
Speaker
Another research shout out, Price and Weiss, like how that rhymes. They studied transformational peer leadership and found that effective athlete leaders are defined not by their position or their talent.
00:14:25
Speaker
They're defined by their relational competence to their teammates, their social credibility, their ability to actually influence the people around them. but you can't build that on pretense.
00:14:39
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This is naturally built in between seniors and freshmen, some upperclassmen and lower lower classmen. Often the upperclassmen underestimate the influence they have just by being an older athlete.
00:14:55
Speaker
Now to question three, are you modeling the behavior you expect of your team? This is the one that cuts the deepest. I call out hypocrisy when I see it, especially for the leaders, because a lot of them, they don't have the self-awareness to see what they're doing wrong and that they're also calling out their teammates not to do. had a lesson a few podcasts to ago about holding up the mirror, a pocket mirror.
00:15:23
Speaker
Keep one here. and have gave these to my captain so they could hold up the mirror to make sure that they, when they're calling kids out, they are also adhering to lessen the expectations that they hold for their teammates.
00:15:38
Speaker
People more so follow examples and actions. If you want effort, they need to see effort. If you want accountability, they need to see accountability. If you want composure and pressure moments, they need to watch you find yours.
00:15:55
Speaker
the most influential research on athlete leadership keeps coming back with the same thing. The captain isn't the most talented player. The captain isn't the loudest.
00:16:06
Speaker
The captain is the one who models the standard daily and doesn't stop. So this is where we're going to lean into a system that I present to my team captain. So the three self-assessment questions, now i start to teach them a system.
00:16:24
Speaker
So we're going to flip that framework where most teams ask, who's our leader? The question now becomes, what's our leadership system? And here's what that looks like.
00:16:34
Speaker
A well-designed leadership system has five roles. First, the standard setter, someone who models the effort and accountability without needing regulation.
00:16:47
Speaker
This is where we hand off that leadership to our team captains versus the coach always being the leader. Next, we have a connector, someone who maintains the social frat fabric. They notice who's struggling and they bridge the gap when relationships fracture or get tested throughout the season.
00:17:12
Speaker
Next, we have the stabilizer, someone who doesn't panic. who the team looks to during adversity and sees calm. Then we have a motivator.
00:17:23
Speaker
there They are loud when we need them to be loud. They bring genuine energy and belief, not just performance. Last, the communicator.
00:17:35
Speaker
Someone who can say the hard thing to a teammate and preserve the relationship at the same time. they're going to have to manage majority of the conflict the arguments whether they're involved or not they can step in and mediate and resolve and get focused back on our goals the sooner we can focus on our long-term goals during short and brief conflicts amongst teammates the quicker we can progress and move on we can't not acknowledge these small weeds these these small dragons
00:18:09
Speaker
that that are observed in season because they start to grow and take over and before we know it then now they are destructive so a strong communicator and whether a coach sees this and hands the task off to the communicator I hand the task often to communicators and give them hey try it try to say this with it so make sure if you do hand it off to communicators you help give them some reference and tools from your experience so I want you to to take a look back at these five, standard setter, connector, stabilizer, motivator, and communicator, and notice something about this list.
00:18:47
Speaker
These aren't positions on a depth chart. They are
Developing Leadership Skills
00:18:52
Speaker
relational functions of a high-functioning team. and research on leadership in sport, it shares this. where all points they all point Everything that I'm going to reference, and ill I'll link up in the show notes here, it all points to the same conclusion.
00:19:09
Speaker
Teams with distributed leadership, where those these functions are spread across multiple athletes with defined roles, consistently outperform teams where those functions are concentrated on one player.
00:19:24
Speaker
Not marginally, consistently. And here's the practical implication for you coaches and team leaders out there. You don't have to give everyone a title.
00:19:35
Speaker
You have to give everyone a role. Name it, develop it, and hold them accountable to it. Define, model, shape, and reinforce. That's not just a philosophy. It's a system of leadership. It's a system I use to teach movement, define, model, shape, and reinforce.
00:19:54
Speaker
For more on that, check out my podcast, Teach Anyone Anything. If we're on YouTube, I'll link it up here. All right. So weekly action plan, if you've been following along with this series, you know that i I give my captains reps to execute each week so we can turn these lectures, lessons, not lectures, these lessons that we're leading our guys into reality on many different levels, individual, team, interpersonal, and then team-wide.
00:20:25
Speaker
So we're making it real this week. Rep number one that I handed off, role clarity, write down, what's my biggest leadership strength? What's my biggest growth area, opportunity for growth?
00:20:39
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Don't overthink it, just be honest, write it down quick. Before I gave them their roles, I presented these roles and had them see if it matched what I wanted to assign them.
00:20:51
Speaker
Rep two, model the standard. This comes from daily check-ins from coach to captain and then captain to teammate. So aim to pick one behavior you want your team to improve.
00:21:05
Speaker
And this is the beauty of positional groups. are For lacrosse, we've got face-off, we've got defense, we've got ah offense, we've got midfield. Goalies together. They can take this into their positional groups and then communicate to their team one thing.
00:21:21
Speaker
behavior standard expectation that they're going to improve then ask yourself and be brutally honest am i doing that every day is the beauty of those positional groups we can hold each other accountable accountable buddies for these these behaviors not most days every day because the team is always watching coaches see it But we can't always be the voice to fix it. I'm going to do another podcast on peer-to-peer relationships because peer-to-peer impact words, expectations, compliments,
00:22:00
Speaker
praise it is so much more powerful coming from a teammate a peer than it does a coach i'll do a solo pod on that because it's some cool research out there it's actually what i'm going to be studying for my doctorate i'm going to be leaning into peer-to-peer leadership you step into a team captain role how do you then go from friend to now leader and still maintain that friendship if you're interested, that's what I'm interested in exploring with the doctor program. So I'm just getting started. though All right.
Conclusion and Further Resources
00:22:31
Speaker
Rep three, ask for perspective.
00:22:35
Speaker
As a leader, it's not just always about telling people what to do. In order for us to bridge a gap so they're more willing to listen to us, I encourage my captains to now ask for feedback from others.
00:22:50
Speaker
No matter the the the rank on the depth chart, the class in school, ask for feedback so now we have a bridge to reach across when I need to give them feedback as a captain.
00:23:02
Speaker
as a leader so find a teammate rep three find a teammate or a coach you trust can ask what do you think ah I do well as a leader so now not just a player for your sport what do you do well as a leader and what's one thing I could do better and here's the hard part just listen don't get defensive don't complain don't deflect just listen rep for Last one, get one leadership rep. This week, choose one specific action that reflects your role.
00:23:38
Speaker
Speak up in the moment you normally stay quiet. Pull up a teammate. who needs to hear something honest. Bring genuine energy when the team is flat. You feel it, say something.
00:23:51
Speaker
Stay calm in a moment that usually gets you. Small reps done consistently over the course of a full season. That is leadership development and growth.
00:24:03
Speaker
And that's how leadership turns into an identity that you are a leader. And that's that's the goal that I want from captains, that they finish their athletic career as seniors, not as these players that then lose their sport, but as leaders that learn those lessons, that gain the confidence and the experience through their sport.
00:24:26
Speaker
They identify as a leader. right, bottom line, the myth about one great captain, Superman, Captain America, the player who carries the whole culture, that's not what the research shows.
00:24:41
Speaker
And it's not what the best teams do. The best teams build leadership systems. They distribute the functionality and responsibility of a leader.
00:24:52
Speaker
They develop multiple voices. They define roles and then reinforce them. And within that system, every individual leader does one thing above all else.
00:25:03
Speaker
They become excellent at their role. They tell the truth about their growth. They model the standard.
00:25:14
Speaker
Know your role, own your role, and lead through your role. That's how teams actually win. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Captains and Coaches podcast. If you want to learn more about my mission, head captainsandcoaches.com. If you want the research, the show notes, more writing on this stuff, I encourage you to sign up for our newsletter at newsletter.captainsandcoaches.com. I've got a great lesson out there, whole online course I'm very proud of. That is about connecting and building confidence for leaders, developing situational awareness so they can take over the teams.
00:25:53
Speaker
That's found at listen.captainsandcoaches.com. Thank you again for tuning in up to this point. Like, subscribe, rate, review, share this with your team if you're leading a team. Share this with your coach if you're a member of a team.
00:26:09
Speaker
And thank you again for tuning in and helping us raise the game. And see