Most Coaches Are Solving the Wrong Problem

By Paddy Upton

When Gary Kirsten and I flew to India in 2008 to coach the national cricket team, we inherited a group that already had everything. The best players, strong data, good strategies. What wasn't working had little to do with any of that.

The players had been operating in a heavily instructed environment. Told what to do, when to do it, and how. The assumption behind that approach — that the coach holds the answers and the players receive them — is one of the more common defaults in sport and in leadership. It is also, in many cases, the wrong problem to be solving.

The knowledge and expertise to take those Indian cricketers to the top of the world already existed within the group. Gary and I didn't arrive with a plan to install it. We arrived with a question: how do we draw it out? The more players spoke and the more we listened, the more team intelligence grew.

One of the early changes was introducing optional practices. Players decided for themselves whether it served their preparation better to rest or to train. If they came to training, they were asked what part of their game they wanted to work on, and how. Most coaches assume that responsibility — they design the session, set the agenda, direct the work. The intention behind that is usually good. The effect, over time, is that thinking stays on the bench rather than on the field.

That matters more than it might seem. A player who has consistently been told what to do is not well-prepared to make good decisions when pressure arrives and no one can reach them. The same is true in any team environment. If the people closest to the action have never been trusted to think, they are unlikely to start doing it in the moments that count most.

This is not an argument against structure, clarity, or high standards. Those things matter. The question is where the thinking happens — and who is responsible for it. A leader who holds all the answers can get results. But that leader also becomes the upper limit of what the team can do.

The shift from telling to asking tends to happen in small steps rather than all at once. The night before the biggest game of those players' lives, no coach attended the pre-match strategy meeting. Fifteen players were asked to discuss one question among themselves. What is really important for tomorrow? We told them they were not required to share what they discussed, and we didn't ask. India went on to win the game, advance to the final, and become World Cup champions.

To this day, Gary and I don't know what was said in that room. We didn't need to.