Leadership Lessons from our Sporting Heroes

Whether you were glued to the Women’s Football World Cup, fascinated by the Tour de France or followed this summer's Ashes series, it has been an exciting few months of sport, and there is plenty more yet to come this year. But sport isn’t just exciting and fun to watch. There are a number of leadership lessons businesses can take from our sporting icons. Here are just a few that strike a chord with me:

 1. Winners are good delegators: it took more than good players for the United States women's national soccer team to triumphantly lift the World Cup last month. Winning teams and sports stars require excellent managers and coaches, and the best coaches and managers are brilliant delegators. Clive Woodward, a rugby world cup winning coach and team GB director of sport, was an absolute master at this. He ensured that his coaching and management team each focused on the specific tasks, whether that was fitness coaching or defensive tactics, that would best prepare the team to perform to the best of its ability on the pitch. He put experts in charge of each dedicated area and then let them deliver. In business we can often find ourselves trying to micromanage everything, especially the more senior we get. But just like in sport, we need to empower teams by delegating roles and responsibilities to ensure tasks get the focus and expertise they deserve.

 2. Look after your talent, on and off the pitch: it’s essential that any team, whether in sport or business, is not only hiring the best talent across all roles and disciplines, but also creating an environment in which they can thrive, focus and be successful. As Official Recruitment Partner of Manchester City Football Club, we have seen first-hand the impact this can have in the world of sport. The club’s Player Care Function, which supports players and their respective families in anything from driving lessons and education to visas for international players and housing, is worth three points each season, according to Patrick Vieira, head of the club’s Elite Development Squad. Large, global organisations might spend a month or two (if you are lucky) settling someone in overseas, but then it often stops. That support network is essential to ensure talent performs well and consistently, and its importance should never be underestimated or ignored. 

3. Know your competitors, but don’t get obsessed: knowing your opponent’s weakest shot or where they hit most of their boundaries is key to outperforming them. Boris Becker once said, having just lost to Pete Sampras in a tennis final, that he now knew how he could beat Sampras, and beat him he did in the future. This is even more so in business; it’s essential if you are going to develop that new product or win the new business pitch. When you lose, make sure you've learned how to win next time. In both sport and business, however, it’s important that leaders and their teams don’t lose sight of their own strengths and what makes them unique. If you spend time in the dressing room worrying about your opponent, you'll be in a losing frame of mind. Let them worry about you instead. In business, decide which members of your team need to focus their time and energy on what your competitors are doing, and the rest of you should concentrate on being the best in the business.

4. Strength of character: to be a good leader you need to be more than just the fastest runner or the best strategic thinker, you need to be mentally robust. This is vital to make the right decisions when the pressure is on, learn from failure and bounce back from criticism. As his recent interview in Sports Illustrated demonstrated, Seattle Seahawks head coach, Pete Carroll, knows all about this. Back in February he made a call in the Super Bowl XLIX, which resulted in his team having a pass intercepted and then losing the game. Despite this, he has found the strength to overcome the incident and focus his energy on preparing for the new NFL season next month. In fact he is quoted as saying, “We’ll come out of this better than if we had won.”

5. It’s not only about the big wins: we all know when a big win happens, it might make it onto the back pages or into the business section of the paper. But, in both business and sport, these bigger achievements are just the pinnacle of a series of smaller wins over time, from across a team or organisation. It’s just as important to celebrate and relish these smaller victories, as setting and hitting plenty of small goals and targets can help to keep the team on track and motivated to work towards the next big one. Success breeds success and when we consider the very best sporting teams we have ever seen, the current All Blacks rugby team springs to mind for example, they didn't just appear overnight. They were formed over a long period of time. 

In business, I think it’s always important to look for inspiration and lessons from other walks of life and there is no better place to find it than in sport. While none of the above happens without sheer hard work and determination, leaders and managers from all walks of life would do well to remember that motivating and inspiring teams requires more than just personal raw talent. So whether you are already looking forward to the start of the NFL season or the 2015 Rugby World Cup, spare a thought for the coaching staff on the side of the pitch and the players wearing the captain’s armband. You have more in common that you might think.