Top Leadership Lessons from the Olympics

The Olympics brings together top athletes from around the world as they compete against each other and also against their best selves. It takes years of practice and dedication to achieve something like this.?

And as a training and leadership development consultant to nonprofits, I'm always looking for the lessons. What can we learn and apply to the workplace?

Workplace Leadership Lessons from the Olympics

I'm going to share my key takeaways, but I've also invited two guest contributors: Kirk Spahn and Sara D. .

Creating Good Leadership Habits

“There's something that sometimes gets overlooked in leadership and with great athletes - that really is the process that great athletes and leaders follow. It's a dedication to creating the right habits and the right rituals to achieve success and achieve their goals, even if there are setbacks along during the process.”

- Kirk Spahn

Taking the Time to Celebrate Your Accomplishments

“They show up at practice when they're sore and tired. They lift heavier weights than they ever have before. They get in that one more rep that they haven't done in the past. And every time they hit those things, they celebrate. Just a little mini celebration, just a quiet moment to, you know, pump a fist or pat each other on the back. And by doing that, they create the habit of having that attitude, of having that ability to look and see what they've done and to recognize it.”

- Sara Daum

Building Leadership Qualities: Belief, Resilience, and Purpose

This is a good one that also ties to the final leadership lesson - Connecting to Your Bigger Purpose. Kirk does a great job explaining this one.

Committing to Learning Agility

“We have to be coachable. We have to be someone who can receive feedback and continue to just lean into that and grow and get better and better..”

- Heather Burright

Learning from Our Failures as Leaders

Ouch. But this is an important one. Sara shares a great lesson here.

Being Committed to Team Building

When we look at Olympic teams, we see:

What we see is really good group dynamics.?

• People who can set expectations for themselves and each other.
• People who can communicate.?
• People who are committed to the practice.?
• People who are committed to celebrating their accomplishments.?

Connecting to Your Bigger Purpose

“There's not a quest for a medal or a trophy. Both leaders and athletes have a quest to really see the impact, the most amount of impact that they can make, whether it's through their body, whether it's through how they can get people together, how they can galvanize groups for causes. [...] They're doing it to be able to impact others around them and to test themselves to see how far they can get.”

- Kirk Spahn

To learn more about leadership lessons from the Olympics, tune into episode 94 of Learning For Good .

About Kirk

Kirk is a fourth-generation educator with more than two decades in the field.? After graduating from Dartmouth College, he worked for Schoolmaster.net , an early online learning platform based in London, and received his Masters from Columbia University. In 2001 Kirk co-founded the Institute for Civic Leadership (ICL), an award-winning youth-educational nonprofit organization that opened up the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2008 and has been featured on CNN, FOX, CBS, WB, Channel 1, and Discovery. For over two decades, ICL has trained thousands of student leaders, supported hundreds of student-led service initiatives, and opened a fully accredited, nonprofit performing arts school in 2015.

Kirk served as Chairman of the Dwight Family of Schools and executive board member from 2010 - 2016. While at Dwight, he oversaw the global expansion of Dwight from NY and London to Seoul, Shanghai and Dubai, as well as co-founding the Dwight Global Online School. He worked closely with the Head of the International baccalaureate to launch programs including Dwight Global Leaders and the IB Open World Program.

Kirk was a competitive junior and college tennis player and a member of the Dartmouth Tennis team. His passion for tennis and working with youth grew as he partnered with players and ICL Champions like Tommy Haas, Monica Seles, and Novak Djokavic.

Kirk’s inspiration is his family and he is passionate about helping youth fulfill their potential as students, athletes, and performers, but all with the focus of instilling character above all else. He lives in Southern California with his wife and 3 young children and the ICL Mascot Flash (cavalier King Charles).

About Sara

Sara serves as the Director of Philanthropic Engagement Strategy at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. In this role, she oversees the campus's annual giving efforts, helps to strategize growth and engagement of the donor pipeline, and manages the campus's cross-system collaborations on data and technology. Previously, she spent a decade as a fundraiser within the Olympic & Paralympic movement, working for the USA Shooting Team Foundation as well as the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Foundation.

Outside of work she is passionate about running, learning new things, and her garden.

Additional Resources Just for You

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