Corporate lessons we learn through sports !!!

Once upon a time, when you first suited up for a youth sporting event, your parents probably weren’t expecting you to become a pro athlete. They signed you up for skating, Badminton, football or gymnastics despite your butterfingers or ox-like agility, in hopes that their kid might learn lessons about winning graciously, losing with dignity and sticking to it when things got tough. Yes, playing games was good exercise, but it was the life lessons that mattered most.

For too many of us, as recess became a distant memory, so did the idea that sports can transcend fitness. Instead of looking to improve our minds and spirits, we began gauging progress solely by the size of our muscles or the numbers on a scale.

And yet there’s still strong evidence that “sports strongly reinforce certain personal characteristics, things like respecting your opponent/ tools, responsibility, persistence, risk-taking and self-discipline. The benefits of participating in a sport can seep into your professional life, too.

In Football, for example, “getting everyone to play the right role on the ground is the key to success. That certainly translates to the corporate world, where everyone understands their role in the organization.”

Career benefits notwithstanding, playing games like soccer or engaging in individual pursuits such as Scuba Diving can also improve your emotional well-being. On the following paragraphs, I have tried to draw parallel into the corporate life and Outdoor sports; these are some of the experiences which I believe helps you horn your skills to excel in both Personal and professional lives. Here’s my 9 commandments to be a successful in the Corporate world.

• Prepare, Prepare — and be Aware

Changes in your environment will affect you, whether you’re enjoying extreme sports like Scuba Diving or Sky Diving — or in a job that’s vulnerable to a volatile economy or changing technology and markets. The better prepared you are — and the more aware you are of your surroundings — the better you can adapt to change. It’s not so much about being able to do one thing proficiently, it’s about learning how to be flexible and preparing for different scenarios so you’re not caught off guard.

• Sometimes You Have to Move Backwards to Move Forward

You always want to move up the mountain, but because your body has to adapt, you have to spend time at lower altitudes. On Mount Everest, you may reach 20,000 feet one day, but have to descend to 17,000 feet right afterward for your body to adjust. Then you climb to 24,000 feet the next day, only to go back to 17,000 feet again. It’s easy to get discouraged and think that you’re losing ground, but acclimatizing is making progress. Same thing in the business world. 

I worked for a Dell International and wanted to be in Operations. I interviewed for what I thought would be my dream position — a ticket to a big job in an IT Company holding the P&L. But I ended up in their Analytics teams as Program/ Project Manager where I worked on huge volume of data and build logical and strategic business outputs for the Leaders to take measured and insightful decisions. I really learned the Business Model, Customer base, their habits, I built relationships and learnt through interactions with leaders — from that I developed a much stronger foundation of skills and experiences to help me succeed when I did get that big job eventually.

• Assemble a Team of People with Big Egos

I learned this lesson from my football coach (Brian D ’costa), back in my college days and it gelled with what I learned in the corporate world. He told me that you want people who are good and know that they’re good. You don’t want to be stuck behind someone who isn’t confident. You want to be behind someone who thinks, “I got this.”

You also want someone with a “team ego” — people who are proud to be part of something that is collectively more important than any single individual. That’s what I look for in my team. Everyone put the team before themselves.

• Solidify Relationships Before You Need Them

No matter how good you are, things can still go wrong. That's when you may need to rely on people outside of your team to help you. When you read the accounts of rescues [While Diving], which are dangerous to carry out, you’ll hear again and again that someone decided to attempt a rescue based on the fact that they knew the diver in danger. It makes a difference.

Developing strong relationships is critical to success in any environment. It’s important to take the time and make the effort to connect with people at every stage of your career — people who will rally around you and support you. Maybe they’ll even save your life.

• Complacency Is the Devil

In an environment that is constantly shifting — be it in a sport or in life — don’t assume your position is safe. During Scuba dive, making a descent you realize you're a wee bit heavy, so you try adding air to your BC. Nothing happens, and instead you get that sinking feeling as you begin to accelerate toward the deep blue beyond. You are in danger of exceeding the depth limits. If the low-pressure hose is disconnected, reconnect it and your problem should be resolved. Plan “B” is to use the oral inflator to add air to your BC. (This is a skill that should be practiced – Key is Practice even if you think you are pro) Finally, if you've got that sinking feeling and can't correct the problem quickly enough, ditch enough weight to establish neutral buoyancy.

Fear is a good tool; it keeps you awake and alert. You have to be able to act and react quickly when you’re in a constantly moving environment — like the business world today.

• Sometimes Weaknesses Can be Strengths

During one of my Cross country cycling event which needed us to cumulatively cover 450 KM with min distance covered by each cyclist to be 80 km. I was going to show up and be the most prepared person on the team. To train, I added weights on my cycle and rode on the hill thrice a week. Tried to cover 70 KM everyday against the target time. I wanted to be as strong as I could physically be. But I realized I was still the slowest among the other riders and I could slow the team average down. I couldn’t keep up; I was slower and weaker.

This made me think about my leadership style, when I had a slow person on my team and I wished they’d drop out. But you can’t drop out in the race — you have to keep moving on with your limitations or strength.

My team were willing to take a risk for me because they wanted me to succeed and be part of the team. I wanted to help them in return and noticed that they were having trouble on Mountains and elevated terrains. They were excellent and fast on the plains however I was much more comfortable and quicker on the mountains, So I did offer to ride on the mountains and elevations and let them cover more distance on plains — and turned my perceived weakness into a strength. This changed the way I looked at weak team members, in business or on an expedition. Be creative in finding their sweet spot. If you can help them, you’ll often end up getting more out of them than if their skills had been on par with the rest of the team.

• Sometimes You Have to Break the Rules

If you train people to follow rules, they forget to think for themselves. Take the case of Private Channing Moss, who was serving on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Pvt. Channing was hit in an ambush by a grenade that lodged in his body, sinking through, but didn’t explode. Army rules state that someone with live ammo in them should be given painkillers and left alone to die — lest it explode and kill everyone around. But everyone from Channing’s friend who radioed for help to the helicopter with a medical team to the army surgeon who decided to proceed with an operation ignored the rules. And they saved his life.

In most cases, chances are, you’re not risking a life, but sometimes doing the right thing means breaking the rules and using good judgment. It means doing the right thing for the customer and doing the right thing for the team. If it’s morally and ethically sound, your action makes sense.

• Set a Good Example

On the plane before the jump, you always have bunch of anxious people about to experience their first jump. It’s never a calm moment – with crazy thoughts and fear, feeling sick to your stomach. But you still have to keep going. In these environments, everyone is going to feel like crap. As a leader, you can’t expect that people on team endure what you’re not willing to endure. You have to suck it up, and do it for your team. Period. 

Failure is good

Our society places so much emphasis on being the first, the best, and the fastest. But people with perfect-looking resumes haven’t taken on a lot of risk. You get beat up and bloodied when you’ve taken risks.

During my last sky dive in Thailand; I was all set to have another dive from 14000 ft. with beautiful weather and the perfect environment for a great experience. All geared up and strapped with my partner (Kevin). I leaped down the plane after an approx. 45 sec of free fall – time to open the parachute – as the parachute opened and it pulled us back up. I realized that one of my Harness on the left has broken and I am tilting towards right in a most awkward way. Thanks to my tandem instructor I was quickly strapped on to the back-up. I am sure there would have been many more such fatal or non-fatal incidents in past with many other sky-divers. And I am sure the sky divers have benefited from collective information and past experience. This helped them to build more robust equipment’s and processes to counter the past learning.

Being the best or fastest or the first isn’t that important. It’s having the tenacity to get up again when you fail.