What you can learn from your Swim Buddies for your work.

Today, I would like to complement, reinforce, and share some reflections Diogo (@diogo Galhardo) , one of my incredible Brazilian Swim Buddies, shared in January this year  here on LinkedIn Post Jan 2018. How to come about? First, it’s about exchanging with people we don’t always know very well, and with whom we share a common passion, who are starting to learn and to motivate each other, to professionalize their passion, completely free from any personal benefit.

Having changed my training environment to a better place on the way between where I live and work in order to be able to train more without compromising my dedication to work and family, forced me to connect to people I didn’t know. As it happens so often, making the first step to connect with strangers is not always as natural and as high on our agenda, as it should be. Hence, a lot of credit to Diogo, who has made the first step to share with me some great recommendations, tips, with a lot of enthusiasm at 6 am during our trainings in the pool.

Everybody who tried to swim and progress, has experienced that if you try to improve by your own, it’s very hard to progress significantly in a relatively short time. This, even if you spend 2 -4 times a week during hours in the pool. As in business, swimming is a technical sport, where you require and need to relay on getting feedback from others to improve your technique in addition of driving yourself out of the comfort zone during each training. In summary, a new training environment started with a friendly smile, and honest tips motivating me about the “high elbow” which lead to the read his post about our common passion. Few months later, I already progressed more than the previous 12 months. Hence, receiving feedback is beneficial for our performance.

Back to Diogo’ s  initial posts, It’s was about what executives, managers, employees can learn or transpose from women and men in sports.  Whether they are top Olympic medalists like Michael Phelps, or record Grand slam winners like Margaret Court, Serena Williams, or Steffi Graf. It’s about women and men who can achieve incredible performances with a lot of things and principles in common. Diogo listed 8 specific items he took away from Michael Phelps. Below, I would like to reshuffle them in a bit more personal order and add 2 for me very important ingredients to complete the set of 10 simple guiding principles.

# 1: No one wins alone, success comes from teamwork. Whether in team sport,  in individual sport, or in business, you need not only the obvious teams, but also a great deal of support, professionalism, and dedication from people and experts deep in your organization. People you might not always think off first. Recognize and acknowledge them too. They are a fundemental part of the success.

# 2: Trust in your team and in the leaders of your organization. Nobody, no organism, no organization is perfect. Be open and positive, and take advise from your peers, teams, trust your leaders. Learn together to win, sometimes fail, improve, and get stronger.

# 3: You are the size of your ambition, think big, remove the barriers. Don’t make your dreams, aspirations smaller than they are. Create and nourish them. Barriers will come all alone. They will need to be overcome and anticipated in due time, but don't make them your dream killers.

# 4: Self-confidence and determination is key to become champions. Believe in yourself, your teams, and companions. There are very few superheroes in the real world, and luckily just a enough people who would like to make a difference for the good and to join your ambition. Sometimes they just need someone with the necessary confidence to they can follow.

# 5: Differentiation is key to take the leadership: In order words: observe, learn, innovate, evolve, apply. Constantly. Each and every one has something to teach and something to be taught. In addition, acquiring new skills and experiences is a lot of fun, and it will always lead to better results. Always.

# 6: Be an agent of change and transformation around you. You must always raise the bar. You, your organization needs to evolve to innovate. More of the same will never be the solution. Be the one who helps to change the organization, and not the one to wait for change to occur. Aspire to be a leader, independently, where you are in the organization.

# 7: Being among the bests requires sacrifice, the comfort zone is not for winners. Excellence is not coming from Osmosis and Stasis. It's only achieved through hard and consequent training. Over and over. The corporate world tends sometimes to forget and falsely believe, success happens as consequence of talking about it or planning it in the strategic long range plans. Nothing and no one grows while staying in the comfort zone.

# 8: Be humble, do not let success rise to your head. As individuals, as well as winning organizations, remember that all things are impermanent, and the past successes, while they need to be acknowledged and celebrated, are no indicator/predictor for future success. Thus, anticipate and prepare to overcome the next cycle of difficulties.

+ # 9: Only fair play and strong ethics bring you far over time. For those who truly love competition. Short cuts have no room in sports or  a professional business environment, and only fair play will guarantee your long-term success. Never compromise on that.

+ # 10: Culture & Diversity as the ultimate magic ingredient for success. Monoculture, the same past, the same education, the same experience, the same thinking, the same paths, the same gender, will not lead to the energy, the necessary discussions, the different approaches, etc. we all need to innovate more. Help to shape the company culture and embrace actively diversity while learning to manage and cultivate it positively.