The era of ICs and managers is dying

The future belongs to player-coaches who can do both in order to build, mentor, and multiple

Author

Drew Teller
May 22, 2025

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Hey everyone!

For this week’s piece, I wanted to dig into a leadership approach I’ve seen drive outsized impact, especially in fast-moving product-led teams. It’s not glamorous. It’s not in most management books. But it works: the player-coach mindset.

I’ve built growth engines, managed over $10M in Paid Ads spend, debugged failing data pipelines, led GTM launches, and mentored marketers and growth teams at every level. I’ve learned that the biggest impact doesn’t just come from doing the work or guiding others.

It comes from doing both fluently and deliberately.

In this edition, I’m sharing:

Let’s get into it

The End of the IC–Manager Divide

The lines between individual contributors (ICs) and managers are blurring and fast.

In a world reshaped by AI, the traditional split between “doers” and “leaders” is no longer efficient, necessary, or even relevant. GPT-level tools have aggressively democratized access to knowledge and execution. You can teach yourself SQL, rebuild workflows, launch campaigns, or analyze product usage all without waiting on someone else to do it for you.

That changes everything.

Hiring is slower. Budgets are tighter. Compensation for tech roles has leveled out or dropped. And yet expectations are rising: move faster, ship smarter, make an impact NOW.

In this environment, being only an IC isn’t enough. And being only a manager? That’s even riskier.

The roles that endure are hybrid. Adaptive. Impact-first.

The people who thrive are those who can both build and lead. Execute and develop. Architect systems while coaching people.

This hybrid approach, the player-coach mindset, is rapidly becoming the most valuable leadership model in modern product and growth teams.

So what is the player-coach?

Someone who has a leadership approach where individuals serve as both an individual contributor (IC) and a manager, guiding and mentoring their team while also actively participating in the work.

The impact of the player-coach grows when they can:

  1. Master the tools and skills that matter.

  2. Apply them where they move the business.

  3. Multiply that knowledge through the people around you.

That combination of hands-on execution and active development makes teams move faster, stay aligned, and punch well above their weight.

The Player = skill mastery

I’ve always been deeply hands-on. Even now, I spend a lot of time as a key player, getting into the tools, pulling levers, debugging issues, and going deep until I understand not just how something works, but why.

Maybe it’s a personality thing. Maybe it’s impatience. I like to move quickly, and I don’t like being blocked. But more than that, I’ve learned that this kind of curiosity, the desire to figure things out myself, makes me a better coach in the long run.

Because when things break or slow down, I can step in with real context. I know what’s going on under the hood.

I remember a week during a pricing migration when our Census syncs kept failing. Most leaders might have escalated or reassigned it. But I rolled up my sleeves and dug into BigQuery logs, rebuilt the sync filters, and worked side-by-side with our engineer to patch the webhook logic. On paper, that week didn’t look productive. But in practice, it prevented weeks of data loss and turned into a reusable playbook for the team.

It’s not just about fixing the issue. It’s about building the kind of depth that makes future coaching more relevant, more grounded, and more trusted.

I’ve built that same depth across a stack of growth tooling:

I tend to learn obsessively, not out of perfectionism (okay maybe a little 😉), but because I’ve seen how much faster things move when you’re never blocked. When you understand the tools and systems firsthand, you don’t have to wait for someone else to unlock progress. You can just build.

I remember when our growth team hit a wall trying to attribute self-serve MRR to product behavior. There wasn’t a clear path forward, so I created one. I built the entire pipeline, from digging through BigQuery to standing up Looker dashboards.

This is why I believe doing the work sharpens the strategy.

When resources were tight, I took the lead in building our product-led sales motion. I developed the lead scoring model in Hightouch, pushed signals into Salesforce, launched campaigns for stuck users in Intercom, and tracked it all in Amplitude.

That hands-on work gave me more than just results. It gave me perspective. It helped me refine our activation framework, design more effective growth loops, and prioritize roadmap decisions based on what was happening with our users.

So when I walked into meetings with execs or engineering leads, I wasn’t just offering ideas, I was offering insights grounded in real data and real execution. I could architect because I knew how to operate.

The player mindset keeps you sharp. It builds real technical intuition, strengthens trust with your team, and earns you the kind of credibility that only comes from doing the work yourself.

But over time, I’ve learned that execution alone has limits. If your impact stops at your own output, you can only take the team so far.

That’s where the coach mindset comes in: turning your own capability into something the team can build on.

The Coach = transferring skills + multiplying impact

If the player mindset sharpens your execution, the coach mindset multiplies it by turning your skills into shared capability.

Great leaders don’t just perform. They scale. They recognize that the fastest way to grow a team is to transform what they’ve mastered into something others can own.

My approach to coaching starts with strengths. I don’t try to fix every weakness. I help people double down on what they’re already great at. Tools like CliftonStrengths help uncover how someone thinks, executes, and connects. Once you understand that, you can coach with precision.

One of my top strengths is Individualization, which means I don’t treat people as interchangeable. I see how they learn, where they get stuck, and what kind of support unlocks their potential.

In practice, that looks like:

• Adapting to how someone learns, not just how I prefer to teach
• Spotting potential before someone sees it in themselves
• Creating systems that turn individual growth into shared progress

I remember working with a PM who struggled to speak up in stakeholder meetings. They needed more space to think before reacting. So I shared pre-read decks, helped them prep their thoughts, and coached them on how to frame tradeoffs. By the end of the quarter, they were confidently leading roadmap reviews.

Another time, I mentored a junior lifecycle marketer from writing their first drip sequence to presenting a full retention strategy to the executive team. They weren’t sure they were ready, but I saw they were.

Moments like those don’t come from luck. They come from paying attention. From understanding not just what someone can do, but how they work, and when the right challenge might help them step into something bigger.

Techniques for identifying and nurturing talent

Coaching isn’t one-size-fits-all.

Good coaching doesn’t start with a framework. It starts with observations to help you tune into your team’s potential.

Here’s how I try to spot and support potential in practice:

  • Watch how people learn:

    • Observe how they absorb information and process feedback. Some people thrive in async, others in live discussions.

  • Look for energy, not just output:

    • What work makes them light up? If someone keeps volunteering for product deep dives, that’s a signal worth nurturing.

  • Observe recovery, not just delivery:

    • A missed deadline tells you less than how they respond to it. Recovery reveals coachability and growth potential.

  • Pay attention to patterns:

    • If someone consistently stalls on analysis but thrives in execution, don’t force symmetry. Instead, coach to their strengths.

  • Stretch at the right moment:

    • I look for the 70% zone. They’re ready enough to grow, with space left to learn. That’s where confidence builds fastest. Think of it like a rubber band—stretch it too far and things break.

  • Start with small, owned outcomes:

    • Don’t assign tasks, assign impact. Let them run a discrete project from end to end and learn from the full cycle.

  • Build the environment, not just the plan:

    • Growth happens when people feel safe to take risks and know support is there when they stumble.

  • Adapt your coaching style:

    • Don’t default to your preferences. One teammate might need in-the-moment feedback, another might prefer Looms or Slack messages they can revisit.

Coaching well takes intention, but so does knowing when to coach at all.

The Balance: When to build, when to guide

Being a player-coach doesn’t mean doing everything. It means knowing where you create the most leverage.

One of the most important leadership skills I’ve developed is knowing when to lean in and build, and when to step back and guide. The shift isn’t always obvious, but getting it right can accelerate progress, build trust, and help the team scale faster.

Here’s the simple framework I use to decide where I’m most useful:

Step in and play when:

  • The problem is mission-critical or time-sensitive.

  • The challenge demands technical depth no one else has.

  • You need firsthand context to shape the right strategy.

  • The team would benefit from seeing a better approach modeled live.

Step back and coach when:

  • Someone’s ~70% of the way there and just needs support or confidence.

  • The timeline allows room for learning and iteration.

  • The stakes are moderate, and missteps are part of the process.

  • You see the potential they haven’t fully stepped into yet.

Making space for both roles takes discipline. I’ve learned to block time intentionally for each. If I don’t defend each block of time to focus, I start to lose the edge that makes me effective in the first place.

Because ultimately, being a player-coach is about balance. It’s about knowing when your hands will help move the work forward and when your belief in someone else will take them further than you ever could alone.

The results = force multiplication

When you combine the ability to execute with the ability to elevate others, you become more than a leader, you become a force multiplier.

  1. You sharpen your skills. Mastering the tools, the systems, the real levers of impact

  2. You apply them where they matter. Prioritizing the right problems, not just the most visible ones

  3. You pass them on. Turning what you've learned into leverage for the team

This model doesn’t just make teams better. It accelerates your own growth, too.

The impact of any one skill will eventually flatten. But your ability to learn new tools, apply them where they matter, and scale that knowledge across a team?

That’s exponential.

How to build your Player-Coach Mindset?

Like any meaningful skill, this one is built through practice.

You don’t have to master both sides all at once. But over time, becoming intentional about developing both the player and the coach in you will pay off in ways that ripple through your team.

Here’s how to grow into it:

  • Start with depth: Choose one tool, one workflow, one part of the stack, and go deep. The ability to lead well often starts with truly understanding how things work. That’s where your leverage begins.

  • Resist the urge to delegate too quickly: Try solving it yourself first. That friction you feel? Spending hours on one small problem. That’s how technical intuition is built. Later, it’s what allows you to guide with clarity.

  • Share what you learn: If you figure something out, don’t keep it to yourself. Document it. Teach it. Helping others benefit from your effort is how coaching naturally takes root.

  • Create stretch moments: You don’t need a formal program to grow people. Let someone else run the demo. Ask them to lead the retro. Growth happens when you offer small but intentional chances to rise.

  • Protect time for both: Deep work and team development can’t just happen between meetings. Block time for both and defend it. One always risks crowding out the other if you’re not deliberate.

The Bottom Line

Becoming a player-coach means becoming the kind of leader you once needed, someone who could do the work when it mattered and make space for others to rise alongside them.

So ask yourself:

Are you building a career around what you alone can do?

Or around what others can do because of you?

Meme of the day #13

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Thanks for reading!

-Drew

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