The Player-Coach:
How to Build a Sibling Team By Barb Dartt, DVM, MS BILL RUSSELL IS AN ALL-STAR NBA BASKETBALL PLAYER. HE HAD A 13-YEAR CAREER, DURING WHICH HE WON 11 NBA CHAMPIONSHIPS. THROUGH HIS LAST THREE PLAYING YEARS, 1966-69, RUSSELL WAS BOTH A PLAYER AND THE HEAD COACH OF THE BOSTON CELTICS. HE WAS AN NBA ALLSTAR FOR EACH OF THOSE THREE SEASONS AND THE CELTICS WON TWO NBA CHAMPIONSHIPS. BY ANY MEASURE, PRETTY STELLAR PERFORMANCE WITHIN BOTH THOSE CHALLENGING ROLES.
I’ve been supporting a lot of sibling teams within my family business clients lately. One of the key areas we work on is their coming together as a team of adult professionals. When you’ve grown up together and have lots of memories of your partners as snot-nosed kids, it can be awfully hard to shift perspectives! One of my colleagues says, “Siblings know how to push each other’s buttons – because they installed them.” In addition to getting to know and appreciate each other as grown-ups, siblings who own or manage jointly must also learn to make decisions as a team. This contrasts with the common past model where one senior generation member called all the shots. Bill Russell moved from being “just” a player for the first 10 years of his career to successfully playing AND coaching for his last three. How did he make the switch? Bill said his approach was to, “…cut all personal ties to other players.” He then “seamlessly made the transition from their peer to their superior.” Cutting all personal ties isn’t a very viable option for sibling teams that work together in a family business. So, Bill’s advice about how to handle the dual roles isn’t that instructive. But if you’re on a sibling team, it’s helpful to note that you’re in the dual role of BOTH player and coach. And, how much time you spend on each of those roles is shifting. You were in a system where you were a player (worker) and the head coach (senior generation leader, manager or owner) often made the final call. Now (or sometime soon), you will be in a system where sometimes you’re the worker (player) and sometimes you’re the decisionmaker (coach). Many of my sibling teams recognize their roles are shifting and haven’t really talked about what that means for each of them. Unless you and your team create a new structure to clarify when you’re the worker and when you’re the decision-maker, confusion, division and inefficiency are certain to follow. How do You Become an Effective “Player-Coach”?
Since Bill Russell’s approach isn’t feasible for siblings in business together, consider the two practices I believe are the hallmarks of effective sibling teams. They embrace 9
Summer 2019 — Partners