Football, Trust, and Code: What Retro Bowl Teaches Tech Leaders, Coaches, and Teams​

🏈 Welcome to another episode of the Mob Mentality Show, where we explore the intersection of software development, leadership, and real-world lessons—from the unexpected to the game-changing. This time, we're talking Coaching Credits—as seen in the addictive mobile football game Retro Bowl—and how they map directly to trust, influence, and leadership in software teams.

🎙️ What are Coaching Credits? In Retro Bowl, Coaching Credits represent the respect and trust you’ve earned from players, staff, and fans. They let you upgrade your team, hire top-tier talent, and level up your environment. In software development, we argue Coaching Credits are just as real—earned through Extreme Programming (XP), Mob Programming, Test-Driven Development (TDD), Continuous Delivery (CD), and strong relationship-building.

👶 Austin kicks it off with a story about trying to stay awake helping his wife with their new baby—turning to Retro Bowl as a late-night lifeline. That sparks a deep dive into what the game teaches us about:

• Building trust and respect through small wins

• The balance between performance and relationships

• Using “credits” (influence) wisely inside and outside your team

• How to upgrade your environment and talent pool over time

• What happens when you try to “spend” influence you don’t actually have

👨‍💻 In Dev Culture Terms: Earn trust by delivering value. Spend it by coaching others, refactoring code, upgrading environments, or influencing org-wide decisions. Just like in Retro Bowl, you can overreach. Think: trying a big move when your trust bank is empty = a bounced check.

📘 We also tie Coaching Credits to Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits—specifically, the idea of an emotional bank account—and reflect on how these lessons align with the origin story of mob programming.

🚨 Key Questions We Explore:

• Can you go into Coaching Credit “debt”?

• Is quick wins and trust the only way forward when you're starting from zero?

• Are you too transactional in how you lead or code?

• Should someone build a Software Dev Sim game like Retro Bowl? 😅

💡 If you're a software engineer, tech lead, or engineering manager, this episode offers a fun but surprisingly deep framework for thinking about how trust, respect, and influence shape the way you build products and teams.

Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/ZWgOkphBFNI