The athlete leader: Why you need to hire her

By BJ Miller, OLY

Athletes can perform under pressure if prepared. And athletes will prepare.

I stood in front of 35,000 people in an expanded stadium in Sydney, Australia. In a swimsuit. At the 2000 Olympic Games. The weight and hopes of a country not pushing me down, but lifting me.?

It was the second-to-last race of the competition, the 4x100 medley relay, and I was leading off with a 100-meter backstroke. I had a plan. I knew how many kicks I would take underwater. I knew I would swim on the righthand side of the lane during the first lap. I knew where to kick into that next gear.

It was the biggest stage of my career. I had prepared for 22 years for that one minute, and I knew I was ready.?

Do you think an athlete that faces this kind of pressure (and comes out on top) would be able to deliver a presentation in front of a customer, or, generally speaking, not break down when things get hard? You’re damn right she would; you can count on it.

It’s a stat that bears repeating: According to a study by Ernst & Young, 94% of c-suite businesswomen are former athletes.

"When they enter the boardroom, women athletes have a unique advantage by thriving on competition, determination, and a strong work ethic."

As a retired competitive swimmer myself, I can attest to the invaluable ways that my athletic career has helped me in the corporate world.

As athletes, we learn certain lessons from our coaches, from our competitors, and from our competitions. There are other ways to learn these lessons, of course, but being an athlete presents these nuggets in truly inescapable ways; you either learn them or you get washed out.

I believe that every Fortune -ranked company, and any others that aspire to be, should have someone with a high-performing athletic background on their leadership team, and here's why:

Athletes know how to work in teams where they don’t always come first.

As an athlete, you know that no one stands on the podium alone. Even in an individual sport, you have a team around you that helps you to achieve your goals. You recognize that in order to be a champion you need coaching, you need proper nutrition, sports medicine, mental health support, etc. - in short, you need a team.?

Sometimes your role may require being the supporting player rather than the star athlete, and that's fine.

Athletes understand that when one of us wins, the team wins.

We are fiercely competitive. That fervor applies to serving in less glamorous roles for someone else when it means the entire team takes gold in the end.

Athletes know how to commit long-term and can live with delayed gratification.?

Sports have seasons and sports have championships. You know that you have to put in the work to get the reward and that it won’t be right away. So, you mentally break up your season into different parts to focus on training, fitness, strength, etc… physically, you must break yourself down so you can build yourself back up.

From a business perspective, an athlete will lead the charge on long-term business goals and remain a steadfast teammate while working for the eventual big payout.?

Athletes are confident and resilient. Even Michael Jordan lost games.?

Injuries are no joke. When your job requires not only mental alertness but also physical mastery, there are going to be days when one is out of alignment with the other.

What a seasoned athlete won't do when times are tough, though, is give up. They'll seek help, reassess, and fight tooth and nail to get back to form.

At a business, that could look like recovering from a client presentation that went off the rails due to uncontrollable circumstances, or, quickly pivoting to a new strategy when plan "A" turned out to be the wrong fit.

Having the confidence to know that you are greater than your bad days is truly essential in order to take big risks, fail fast, and ultimately succeed.

Athletes are coachable.

Athletes are driven to be the best. We recognize that in order to do that, sometimes we have to break the way we've thought about things. Sometimes that means finding a new coach, or, changing the way we train to get to new levels of excellence in our bodies and minds.?

This translates to the working world in a variety of ways. First, athletes are not only open to feedback but also will sometimes question if they’re even doing the right thing if they don't receive any.

Before and after every race we were required to talk to our coach about two things. First, "What is the plan?," and second, after each race, "How well did I execute the plan?".

Talent will only get you so far. To really succeed, you have to be coachable and humble enough to take feedback... and then, perhaps the hardest part, actually learn from it and implement it moving forward.

To be successful as a woman in sports, at the collegiate or professional level, you’ve had to be better than most because there have been fewer spots available.

At PARITY | A Group 1001 Company , I'm proud to work with others that have first-hand experiences with the lessons that participating in sports can provide. From fellow Olympic and Paralympic athletes to pros in Athletes Unlimited , WNBL , and International Waterski & Wakeboard Federation (IWWF), I'm in excellent company to serve both our clients and 800 talented athletes.

So hire athletes. Hire women athletes. Why? Because female athletes have had to fight harder just to earn a spot and then keep it.?Talk about pressure. We put more on ourselves than anyone could ever put on us to deliver. And we always deliver, one way or the other.