What happens when your traditional leadership model is no longer relevant for the environment you find yourself in?

That was the situation General Stanley McChrystal found himself in when he was appointed to command the Joint Special Operations Taskforce in 2003. The traditional military approach of hierarchical, top-down, command and control, where decision-making power sat with senior leaders, was no longer suited to the modern warfare they were facing in Iraq.

As McChrystal wrote in his book Team of Teams:

“Our teams were crafted to be chess pieces with well honed, predictable capabilities. Our leaders, including me, had been trained as chess masters, and we hoped to display the talent and skill of masters.”

This chess-master approach was no longer viable in their new, complex environment. The enemy the Taskforce faced was dynamic and unpredictable, unencumbered by bureaucracy. They moved quickly, adapted fast, and by the time information had travelled up the chain of command and decisions were pushed back down, the situation on the ground had already changed. Decisions that once made sense were now outdated by the time they were implemented.

Normally, I try to avoid sport/war analogies. Sport is very clearly not war. However, military approaches to leadership have been hugely influential in coaching, and the chess-master model is one such belief that has quietly embedded itself in our practice.

This leadership approach treats players as extensions of the coach on the field — there to execute exactly what the coach wants. On game day, the coach’s role becomes about control: attempting to manage the flow of the game and dictate the decisions players should make.

But much like the environment McChrystal found himself operating in, sport is chaos. It is complex, fast-paced, dynamic, and unpredictable. Players are required to make decisions under pressure in an environment that is constantly evolving, where the “right” decision can change from moment to moment.

Add to that the reality that, as coaches, we often have very limited opportunities to interact with players during the game itself. We are rarely able to influence decisions in real time. Most of our interventions come after events have already occurred. In this context, the chess-master approach assumes a level of control that simply doesn’t exist.

McChrystal faced this exact dilemma and realised they needed to take a different approach. As he wrote:

“We [leaders] felt responsible, and harboured a corresponding need to be in control, but as we were learning, we actually needed to let go.”

So they flipped the traditional leadership model on its head. Rather than leaders in the war room controlling decisions, responsibility was pushed to those on the ground. Leaders became a central point for shared understanding — ensuring everyone had access to the information they needed to make the best decisions in the moment.

McChrystal described this approach as “Eyes-on, Hands-off.”

With leaders taking on this new role, those closest to the action could adjust in real time, leading to better decisions under pressure. McChrystal also noticed that the nature of his conversations changed. Instead of instructing people on what to do, he found himself repeatedly asking a different question:

“What do you need?”

England Rugby first five-eighth George Ford captured this same dynamic when speaking on the For the Love of Rugby podcast about game-day collaboration between players and coaches:

“I think the thing the brilliant thing from coaches is they can see what we can't on the field. So, they're up in the stands, they can see the whole game. They've got the laptops; they can watch it back… like that is so helpful. But we can feel what they can’t, in terms of the feel of the game and where the state of our own team is, [and] where the state of the opposition team is. So it's like always a combination of both I think that comes into it.”

Taking an Eyes-on, Hands-off approach to game-day coaching shifts the role of the coach away from trying to control what happens on the field, and toward supporting players to adapt to whatever the game is asking of them.

That distinction is critical. Instead of game day sounding like, “What I need you to do is…”, it becomes, “What do you need?”

If you want to take this approach, some questions to ask yourself as you prepare for game day might be:

Game day forces us to be honest about what our coaching role actually is. As McChrystal discovered, leadership isn’t about controlling everything, it’s about creating the conditions for better decisions to be made closer to the action. In fast, complex, and unpredictable environments great coaching isn’t more control, but better support - Eyes on, hands off.

England Rugby first five-eighth George Ford on the For the Love of Rugby Podcast -talking about coaches and players on game day. The last chapter of the episode - The impact of coaches during games gives some great insight on how game day coaching can support players and a specific bugbear Ford has with reviews!

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