Basketball Coach & Scrum Master: Same person, different roles | Part 2

This is the second part of a two-part blog series, where Kimmo, a Scrum Master, basketball coach and our employee, tells about some roles he has identified in his work. Click here to read the first part, and then come back for this second, and final, part!

In this second part, Kimmo presents the last two roles, the Participant and the Commander. He also shares a real-life example from his work, where he accidentally took on the wrong role for the situation — and how he recovered and mended the situation. 

Kimmo is a former professional basketball player and current basketball coach and Scrum Master.

The Participant: Contribute meaningfully

The Participant is a hands-on contributor who immerses themselves directly into the team’s daily activities to build trust, maintain momentum, and drive continuous improvement from within the ranks.

With my background as a player, I rarely stand on the sidelines like a more traditional coach would. I enjoy the physical, active side of training. On the basketball court, I like to spark energy by jumping directly into drills, sparring with players, acting as a passer, absorbing contact with pads, providing vocal encouragement, and injecting a necessary sense of urgency when things slow down.

Like coach, like Scrum Master. It was easy for me to bring this same hands-on mindset into my role with an Agile software team. Also, the best way for me to learn is by doing.

From facilitation to full participation

At first, my participation focused heavily on taking full responsibility for team facilitation. My philosophy was simple: the team should focus entirely on their core work, not on the logistics of coordinating meetings. However, I balanced this by ensuring they still maintained the routine and capability to facilitate independently if I wasn’t there.

As my experience and trust with the teams grew, my confidence to suggest changes to our actual processes grew with it. I found myself returning to logical, systematic thinking and analyzing what we were doing step by step, often asking what value does this bring to us. During Retrospectives, I would ask the team for solutions, but I also made sure to bring concrete options to the table to help solve problems or improve our workflows.

When it comes to introducing or suggesting a new change, execution matters. If I strongly believe an adjustment makes logical sense and am fully willing to own the outcome, but the team still feels hesitant or unsure, I use a subtle approach: “Let’s test this setup for a week or two, and then we'll decide together if it’s worth keeping”. It lowers the barrier to experimentation and keeps the team moving forward without friction.

The Commander: Lead decisively 

The Commander is a decisive leader who balances strategic guidance with a firm presence that cuts through indecision. While this role often involves quiet observation, when they do choose to speak, their word carries heavy weight.

Structure leads to efficiency

Historically, sports coaching relied on an absolute, dictator-like mentality, which I have personally experienced to the point of abusiveness. But the trend has moved towards a player-centric approach. Too much freedom, though, can lead to chaos and individualism, which leads to lower team performance. When someone tells you exactly what to do you can focus fully for maximizing effort towards that. Junior players don’t have the experience yet, so they need more direction. It’s very rewarding to notice during the season when players understand the system and discover new ways to solve situations. As this happens, the structure can flex to accommodate player development. 

Going back to my previous point about making the best decisions most of the time, if you have less options to choose from, you are more likely to make the right one. This clear structure and unified direction explains why a truly cohesive team feels like the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. 

Cutting through analysis paralysis

As a Scrum Master, I was not in a position to take responsibility for high-level decisions. But I feel that sometimes things lose efficiency when teams get caught up in endless debate. I prefer a straightforward approach. Step in, make the call, own the result. My role usually was to step in when the discussion strayed off topic and guide it back, so that our time was spent efficiently. If we cannot find a solution in a reasonable time, it might mean that we don’t have enough information at that point and it’s not necessary to spend any more time on it. Sometimes more time has to pass and more information needs to be gathered. Finding the point where those are in balance is important, and then a sufficiently informed decision can be made.

In my experience, the business environment could learn something from sports. More structure and strong leadership is not always negative, as I feel it’s nowadays viewed. Not everything has to be a negotiation, and in the adult world, sometimes you just have to execute an instruction and not second-guess everything. There is a time and place for discussions. Balancing between the Observer and the Commander is what makes great leaders.

Storytime: Switching roles unintentionally

In many cases these roles support each other but there are also situations where they clash. To finish this text off with a lighter note, I want to tell a story involving roles and an unfortunate slip of one role overriding another unconsciously.

In a planning meeting with one of my teams, two people were discussing priorities for the next sprint. In the meantime, another pair of people started an unrelated discussion, although in hushed tones. Either way, this caused me to switch to my commanding tone and I raised my voice to these two, who were filling the small space with unnecessary background chatter, which made my concentration crumble. 

You see, in practice, 16-year-old boys are notorious for not having the patience to focus on listening to the coach and they often need strong vocal guidance to keep their mouth shut and focus when coaches are giving instructions.

The room went silent immediately and snapping back to my work role I embarrassingly apologised for the inappropriate behaviour but, jokingly blamed my coach persona that was forced out. Luckily it was shaken off with humour.