the player-coach
Commonly used in sports and leadership contexts, “player-coach” describes an individual who simultaneously holds two roles. They are hands-on leaders who lead by example and provide guidance, mentorship, and direction to their team members. This dual role involves contributing as a player and providing leadership, strategy, and guidance to help the team achieve its goals.
In UX & Design
In UX & Design, a player-coach who (still) has the skills and experience to produce and can lead and develop others is rare. Over time, design leaders who don’t practice their skills become rusty – their growth has been in favour of strategy and leadership. A dual role is challenging – balancing a design production load with leadership duties requires constant context switching between building and managing a design team from the ground up while also doing the work of a very senior individual contributor. Regardless, early-stage startups' resources are severely limited and design leaders are expected to take on the player-coach role.
evolving the role
I love being a player-coach. I seek out companies that need me to do this. As the company scales, my team grows and my role evolves. Throughout the evolution, I remain a hands-on leader, progressively increasing team and people leadership and decreasing design production.
Examples of circumstances that can trigger role evolution:
A principal-level UX architect or senior visual designer has been hired
Actively recruiting a fourth direct report
Hiring activities take up more than 50% of my available time
Attending meetings for more than 2 hours per day that are not design production-related
Needing to perform design tasks after hours that negatively impact my work-life balance
©️ 2024, Julie Lynn Lemieux