Good morning,
For this year’s Olympics and years past, I wondered what we might gain from a leadership perspective. Here’s my take.
Teamwork takes the pressure off.
Research suggests athletes performing in Olympic team sports have a less difficult time than individual athletes. Swimming or track and field relay events, for instance, help take the pressure off an individual and place the burden to win on the entire team. Giving each team member a role and a voice is one of the most crucial leadership lessons from the Olympics—and the same goes for business, too.
Keep good coaches near; learn from the greats so that you can be great.
Michael Phelps’s coach Bob Bowman helped one of the finest swimmers in the world win a whopping 22 Olympic medals (18 of which were gold) before we count the 2016 Olympics. Bowman’s advice for teams—whether athletic or in the workplace? Identify your own “gold standard” as a company, grow from your past experiences, power through life’s daily challenges, and don’t treat team members as cookie cutter versions of each other. His words have formed some of the best leadership lessons from the Olympics. What’s your own standard of success as a business? What can you learn from challenges faced as a team? Keep excellent mentors and leaders on your team to guide everyone through choppy waters and toward success.
Push through any obstacles in your way to get what you’ve been working for.
Go for the gold: one of the greatest leadership lessons from the Olympics. During the 1998 Olympics in Atlanta, U.S. gymnast Kerri Strug performed a complicated vault and fell upon landing. She heard a snap in her left ankle—two torn ligaments—and powered through to the second vault. As painful as the second landing was, Strug scored a gold medal for the U.S. team and finished perfectly on her badly mangled ankle. Her willingness to keep trying, despite her injuries, embodied the ultimate perseverance every leader aspires to practice.
Failures foster growth and improvement.
During the 2012 Winter Olympics in Sochi, downhill skier Bode Miller reacted to his eighth-place finish with an excuse that his loss was due to cloudy skies. The very best leaders make no excuses. Instead, they review failures to see precisely what they can control and work to improve for the future.
Sure, a business’s numbers are important—but purpose, values and personal success may mean something bigger.
In July of 1976, Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci earned the first 10.00 score in Olympic history. The scoreboard, however, didn’t compute the perfect score and simply read “1.00.” It only had space for three digits, since a 10.00 score was assumed to be impossible. In the business world, this translates into two things. First, you should shoot for a perfect 10 when it comes to honing successful leadership skills. Second, the numbers only tell one story, and they happen only after everything else aligns within your business. Most of all, you should work with a purpose, be the best leader possible, and know what team success means.
Stay focused.
U.S. track and field athlete Jesse Owens knew exactly how to be totally present, and to not allow challenges to get in the way of success. Owens, an African-American, earned four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. This was a big win for the U.S., since they were competing in Hitler’s Germany at a time when race tensions soared. Owens stayed focused on achieving his athletic goals, despite the hostile discrimination he endured. He also showed the true colors of a leader: courage, humility and perseverance.
Use your resources wisely. Stay organized.
The 2004 Athens Olympic Games have often been labeled the “biggest mistake” in Greece’s history. Why would the city where the original Olympics began have undergone such devastation from the games? For one, the competitions cost them around $12.2 billion—only a sliver of Greece’s subsequent (and massive) $460 billion debt. The 2004 Olympic sites in Athens now sits in ruins, abandoned. Nothing became of them after the Olympics. Structures intended to cost the country only a few million blew out of control. Some of the best leadership lessons from the Olympics: Stick to a budget, use your resources wisely and keep organized.
Make it a great day!