Leadership and Management Skills That Sports Are Teaching You

By: Jordan Fuller of www.golfinfluence.com

During our younger years, many of us participated in sports, and the experience gave us all a lot of sense about ourselves as individuals, along with teaching us about hand/eye coordination and the importance of exercise in being healthy.

Sports do far much more than just build athleticism. Athletes learn how to push themselves and strive as a team, working together towards a goal and learn the value of sportsmanship. Each player has a role to play that through the direction of the coach determines whether the team succeeds or not.

This all translates very well into one’s social and professional life, and the leadership lessons can be applied to today’s business world.

Time Management

Any football player, at any level, can tell you that practice is a daily occurrence. Teams come to practice and go through preparation, and then get to work. A good coach expects his team ready to practice at a set time, not arriving at that time. Good athletes show up early and are ready to go when the whistle blows.

In a work environment time is money, and balancing your workload between business commitments and personal time, among other distractions is important. Athletes learn to be prepared, on time, and how to have a schedule and a plan that is based on time and resources that are available to them.

Companies effectively manage their daily processes to ensure workplace efficiency, and learning early how to follow a schedule during participation in sports can help to learn early how to manage time and employees’ time, keeping clients satisfied.

Individuals Makeup the TEAM

One of the most popular cliches in all of the sports is “there is no “I” in TEAM,” and understanding the principle that success is better achieved if everyone works together, as a cohesive team, is just as important in the boardroom as on the field of play.  Like how most sports teams know that every athlete on the field is important to success, so is every member of the team putting together a large business deal.

Setting Goals and Expectations

All athletes have goals, whether it’s to win a game, better their statistics, or move into a new level of their game. Goal setting is a skill that is mastered in athletics and can easily be transferred to any business setting. From a client relationship-building standpoint, it’s also useful as by finding out your client’s goals, and what they are trying to achieve you can help them to achieve those goals. Once we know those, we can help to create a plan and develop processes to meet our clients’ goals.

Identifying Sources of Strategy

When playing a sport, the strategy taken by a coach or player can be the difference between winning and losing. Football is all about the style of offense your team runs, or how your defense takes on the approach of stopping the offense. In the business world, much of the time is spent developing strategies and coming up with new tools to implement ways to succeed with a new business venture, or how to market to new demographics to increase sales. 

Much like on the field, time is spent analyzing the competition strategy to ensure that we stay ahead of the game, effectively planning and executing our own plan to get or stay ahead.

The Numbers Tell the Tale

Athletes are driven by the scoreboard, along with the numbers that represent how they are succeeding or failing. Just as a scoreboard or stat sheet will tell you how effectively executing your play of the game, or realizing your goals to succeed, businesses collect similar data. Management teams collect, calculate, and analyze data all the time with respect to how successful their strategies are working, or failing. These results help to keep employees and staff accountable, as well as to motivate them to hit their objectives to do the best job they can.

Professional Representation

Watch sometime if you have the chance to see a college or high school basketball or football team heading to a game, you’ll usually see the players well dressed, sometimes in a suit coat and tie. Representing their school on the road in a respectful, professional manner is something that most of the best coaches try to impress upon their players. In the workplace, making an impression upon clients and customers in a professional manner is important, and usually translates to success. Even in a warehouse environment, a uniform or standard dress code which typically includes the company logo or colors can convey to clients that brand representation and presentation are priorities of the company.

Relationships are Key

In sports, coaches and captains know the importance of building relationships with their athletes and teammates. The time spent together as teammates, learning their interests outside the game and building relationships is a key step to building team chemistry, which leads to success on and off the field. Likewise, the importance of relationships in the work environment is a major factor in the success or failure of a business, creating a perfect team might be difficult but achievable. Having a business that runs like a “well-oiled machine” can make production numbers skyrocket and keep morale among managers and employees high. 

Determination and Empathy

In trying to get people to go the extra mile and enthusiastically jump on board with a project, keeping your level of enthusiasm high can be a big help. Also, show them you care about them, not just as an employee but as a person, and the message can get across that you want them to not only be satisfied with their job but that you care about them as a person. This attitude will be helpful when building a foundation of trust and camaraderie, making your team stronger in the end.

Finishing/Closing the Deal

When setting goals and working towards checking them off your list is all part of the process of improvement. Whether you're at practice trying to move into the starting lineup, or stay in the lineup, or working on a project to bring in new clients or expand the sales demographic, it’s important to keep working until the job is done.