SAMIR MARDOLKER reflects on how entrepreneurs can seek inspiration from the trials and tribulations faced by Olympians
How might we work differently as business professionals if we were to draw inspiration from the Olympics and sports professionals?
Sports as an activity is inspiring and a medal at the Olympics is an apt recognition of the professionalism that sportsperson strive to achieve. Business professionals should try to emulate sports professionals even without having a yardstick like the Olympics.
1. Business professionals should start with ensuring mental and physical fitness in the same manner as sportspersons do.
Fitness feels less relevant at work when you start your career and by the time we realise its worth, you may have already done a lot of damage.
2. Business professionals need not live by the myth that you should be born with the skills required – whatever they are – from math to creative. Learn from what Judith Polgar was able to achieve in a sport dominated by men. Apparently, the biological structure required to visualise future scenarios (required to play good chess) is more prominent in male brains likely driven by the caveman need to figure where the hunt will be in 5 seconds of spotting one. And yet, as a woman, through sheer grit and discipline, she was able to excel in a previously male dominated sport.
3. Business professionals realise the need ofa coach when they are in the 40s or when their employers can afford one for them but there is hardly any sportsperson who does not have a coach or believe in one from the very start. An objective assessment of how and why we think the way we do is critical for professional success and a coach can be an excellent partner to show you the mirror.
4. In many sports, teamwork very clearly is the key and it is so blatantly obvious in ‘team sports’. Unlike business professionals who have to pay trainers to remind them that team work is important. I can’t tell you how many times we have had briefs that cite a decline in sales and the management hypothesis is everything other than ‘my team is not being a team’. Team issues are the most ‘accessible’ issue to fix, less expensive, most impactful; but require the same reverence for teamwork as we see with team sports.
5. Cheerleaders matter but if you don’t have one, your focus on your game also will suffice. If not obvious at Olympics, Wimbledon has many stories of how sportsmen have become their own cheer leaders. If you are in the service industry as I am and in Asia, you have to cheer yourself up unless you have clients like we do who root for us like Visa, McDonald’s, Haleon and Google
6. Business professionals should refrain from explicitly leveraging ‘relationship currency’ for growth. It is clear that professional growth, especially at senior levels, is contingent on who speaks up for you and how strongly. Of course, I respect that building relationship currency is a capability in itself and it is relevant in businesses as it is all about people and relationships. But relationship currency is best earned and not chased to ensure that it is, in a way, capability in itself. That way we can come closer to the Olympics in its fairness and objectivity in judging the best.
7. What is very sad about sports though, at least in some countries in Asia, is that those sportsperson have scant respect if they are not in the top list. In fact, some less popular sports are not even on the radar for recognition. The Olympics should help in ensuring every sport is recognised and extending the respect beyond the top 3 medal winners as every Olympian is a winner if not every sportsperson. Business leaders (and clients) should respect and recognise the effort first and then provide constructive feedback and encouragement that every deserving professional needs. I hope you enjoyed the Olympic Games and found inspiration in what they mean for you personally as a professional and for those you work with.
