Olympic Insights to Elevate Your Leadership Game
Beyond the athletic feats, there's a wealth of leadership lessons we can all learn from the Olympic experience. Whether you're charting your career path or leading a team, these lessons—like the Olympic rings—are interconnected and essential for anyone striving to reach new heights in leadership. Let's dive in and explore how the Olympics can inspire us to become better leaders:
Unlocking Success Through Strategy, Resilience, Teamwork, Coaching, and Fun
The 2024 Olympics have arrived, and I’m all in! Not that I possess any remarkable athletic ability—my skills are pretty much limited to nailing the Matrix move in my Zumba class. But there's something incredibly joyful about watching individuals whose blood, sweat, and tears have brought them to this global stage. In addition to the athleticism, I’m struck by the lessons in leadership we can all glean from this Olympic experience.
Lesson 1
Propose a Solid Strategy
The plan for winning the highest Olympic acclaim didn’t begin when the plane landed in Paris. For some, their vision to become an Olympic competitor began as a young child. And between their determination and breadth of view, they crafted a plan that in most instances took years to realize. As leaders, are you devoting as much time to ensuring you have a solid strategy as you do in managing more tactical duties? While there’s no magical ratio, strategic decisions are fewer, so you won’t devote all your energy there. The work of leaders is to solve complex problems. It doesn’t mean you must solve them on your own. Never underestimate the criticality of having an inspirational strategic plan and sharing it with your team.
Lesson 2
Resilience is the Fuel that Enables Teams to Press On
Resilience is the ability to withstand, recover, and grow in the face of stressors and changing demands. Although success is rarely achieved in times of ease, resilience is not a pretense that you’re superhuman while ignoring the challenges around you. Athletes constantly challenge themselves to get better. Shouldn’t our employees take that same approach? Resilient people are better able to deal with stress and in stressful situations remain calm, manage emotions, and guard against burnout while remaining productive. Resilience is a personal attribute that individuals choose to build accordingly. However, as a leader, your role is to continue to take risks, analyze problems, address them quickly, and ask what we learned.
Lesson 3
The Path to Success is Rarely Taken Alone
My favorite Olympic sport is synchronized diving. The duo of competitors looks eerily alike in their matching outfits. Every movement must be in lockstep, or they risk penalties. As a leader what’s the make-up of your team? Does it include a diversity of experience? Are there a variety of skills? Do you encourage broad perspectives on issues that will serve the team and the organization when challenges arise? Do you discourage group think in the times when doing so might yield a quicker solution? If everyone looks alike, sounds alike, thinks alike and acts alike eventually someone might not be necessary.
Lesson 4
“Put Me in Coach!”
Although success is that of a team, the responsibility to achieve that success is that of the leader. Coaching for performance is a critical skill in both business and athletics. As a leader, do you put a high priority on coaching the team as a unit while simultaneously putting a higher value on having those one-on-one coaching conversations? Coaching gives the opportunity to actively listen and ask powerful questions that enable others to adopt the best solution. What’s your response when an employee asks, “What should I do?” Do you give them YOUR solution, what YOU would do? Or do you listen to understand, offering a resolution that aligns with the employee’s skill and experience and leads to the best path forward for them? Your role as a coach is one of – if not THE most important skill a leader should possess.
Lesson 5
Make a Little Music
Have you ever noticed how often music is sprinkled in during the Olympics? Whether it’s synced within a routine or blasted as the team enters the area, it’s hard to overlook. Music has a way of adding a bit of fun to every event. Fun, you ask, in a work environment? Yes, the two can both exist! As a leader how do you ensure your team is not always heads down, laser-focused on their deliverables without the opportunity to look up and look around? Scheduling a team building event is a way to build trust and cohesion. Plus, something as simple as introducing quick icebreakers at the start of your team meetings helps to learn more about each other which also can promote camaraderie.
Leadership isn't something you're born with, nor is it something you can simply learn from a book. It's a skill that must be developed over time. Just as the five Olympic rings are interconnected, so are the key lessons in leadership development. There's also a strong connection between continuous leadership growth and achieving new heights in your career. Whether you're new to leadership or a seasoned professional in need of a refresher, it's important to seek out opportunities for ongoing development.
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