Sports & Organization Building - is there a link?

Mirabai Chanu, Neeraj Chopra, PV Sindhu, Avani Lekhara, Bhavina Patel – just a few of the many names who made India proud at Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics held recently. Sports is hot right now and my whole content library is incomplete if I don’t write on this one. No kidding!

Nothing unites us like sports does, nothing cheers us up more than winning does, nothing makes us fall in love like the six sixes that Yuvraj Singh hit on 6 consecutive balls. Oh, it’s all so refreshing to just think about. I may need a cup of coffee to dwell on these, reminiscing all those stories that I lived as a player or a spectator.

One thing that has ignited optimism, togetherness, pride, and dignity among people from everywhere in these extraordinary times, is Sports.

Put simply and subtly, Sports builds

• Character & Temperament
• Culture & Pride
• Engagement & Camaraderie

Being the son of an Army Dad, sports have been very crucial for me. Playing different games, all games were ingrained in me from when I wasn’t even born probably!

You must be wondering what this all has to do with character, culture, and engagement in organizations? With over 15 years of experience behind me, I can say with sheer conviction that Sports can influence your organization in means and measures that you wouldn’t have imagined. It does so much more than it stands for.

I. Character & Temperament

The biggest lesson that I learned from Sports and that I think I say it for many others –?

“No matter how great we are, there is always someone better than us.”

This teaches us humility.?

This is one of the reasons why I keep telling people to hire someone better than them, no matter what the designation. After all, we become part of the people we spend time with.?

When we play against a better player, we learn excellence. When we play alongside a better player, we learn collaboration. When we play with or against someone who is yet to catch up, we learn the most important skills – patience & the ability to share what we know.?

In all the cases, we LEARN – the foundational unit of success and growth.

What makes sports such a promising aspect of an organization’s character?

The most beautiful and intimidating aspect of sports is that it strips away all pretenses. We perform, we win and we fail in front of others. We can’t hide emotions, reactions, and skills. And it’s OK because we are all in it together. We win some, we lose some, but we learn it all. We learn to embrace defeat, criticism and keep moving forward with or for our team.

Sports are a great way to build LEADERSHIP.?

Many times, working for years in a department in an organization, leaders lose sight of who they are and what they need to do to make their teams successful. Their roles become more about directing and mentoring than participating and engaging. Sports change those dynamics. It establishes a crucial aspect of leadership, which is that one has to be willing to get their hands dirty and work along with the team in the trenches to run a well-oiled organization.

Sports enables leaders to restore vision and values in the system.

II. Culture & Pride

The culture of any institution stands on relationships and bonds. There are very few professions in the world that bond people together like Sports. Or wait, it could be the only one!

On a fine evening of 2011, I was sitting in the cafeteria with 2-3 young colleagues, discussing random sports stuff. It was a few months before the Olympics were to begin. One of us, who was an enthusiastic footballer, made a comment along the lines of – Why don’t we do something like the Olympics at our office? It will be so much fun!

It was at that moment when I realized there was some idea to go after. So we did it. We divided the whole organization with an employee strength of around 300 into 6-7 teams. Every team had a SPOC and about 18 sports events were identified. 5 p.m.-7 p.m. every working day was allotted to games as on the Olympics calendar.?

Apart from winning and losing stories, a few highlights that reaffirmed my belief in the power of sports were –

• Employee engagement was at its peak. Every employee from the entire organization was engaged for those 2 hours (5-7 PM) for every single working day. Adding to our surprise, not a single person took leave in those months
• The level of camaraderie grew multi-folds. The most beautiful thing that happened was everyone got to know everyone. And not just by names, by their strengths, by their behaviours, and their uniqueness. There was a stark difference between pre-games and post-games camaraderie levels in teams, to say the least
• Quality of work improved beyond measure. With better knowledge of people and a better mental state at work, employees had no reason to not do great at work. The endorphins hit them with the emotions and encouragement that led to enhanced collaboration and productivity

That sports rally was such a huge success that Beroe made it an annual affair and they ran it for many years even after I left the organization. It’s amazing. I remember they had invited me as a company alumnus in 2016/17 where they made me present trophies to the winning teams. It was an unforgettable experience for me.?

It’s not so easy to define and arrive at common objectives in any other team / individual activity than it’s in sports. The whole process of establishing common goals, and rewards for great performance is so rewarding itself. Being involved in all of that, being able to define objectives and tie them to individual goals enables individuals to build and hone many skill-sets including the ability to understand people’s strengths and emotions, the ability to visualise the bigger picture, ability to empathise with goals and ability to make people associate with vision and goals. It’s surreal.

Culture is about inculcating all of those skills and more. When a group of people come together, they associate the group with PRIDE. So, it’s important to define the pride quotient of the team. Where do I see myself with the team? What do I achieve with the team? How does the team support my personality and my success?

What better than SPORTS to bring PRIDE factor in teams!?

III. Engagement & Camaraderie

Human beings are wired in a way that they want to see results of their efforts instantly. In life, it’s not that straightforward. Some experiences don’t even follow the cause-and-effect models. Hard work and determination can lead to strange experiences in surprising ways, not necessarily how and when we expect them, at work or in personal lives. It may get disheartening at times.?

Sports are a savior in those times. No matter what sports we watch or play, we get to see results almost immediately (discounting the sweat bled in practice and preparation). Whether one wins or loses, one thing is for sure, they keep moving forward. In my experience, that allows people to engage in inexplicable ways.

Along with that, sports gives people a meaning to their journeys? by bringing together so many relatable stories – stories of winners and those who did not win the game, stories of perseverance and persistence, stories of discipline and courage, stories of love, fights and misunderstandings.?

Love, friendship, camaraderie, sports brings out the truest of emotions in us. And nothing nurtures engagement than relatable emotions.

Before I sign off, I want to share an anecdote with you. At Beroe, we had introduced a? cricket club, as part of which we had a team that would participate in Inter-Corporate Competitions and represent the company. When we started, we lost almost every time. But soon enough, the company started winning tournaments. However, that’s not the important part of the story. The important part is that people loved the whole act of participating and playing and even watching the game as an audience that it became more about spending time with one another than about winning. Winning was always a plus that generated a pride factor for the whole organization – connecting hearts and engaging people at work.

I understand that it’s difficult to bring people together in off-the-field sports events. But it’s worth the effort. Covid19 may have put conditions on how we met before, but nothing stops us from bringing sports online. HR Teams can think of innovative ways of redesigning and redefining sports in the pandemic era. Share your thoughts :)