Why do senior executives participate in Striving Sports?

Have you noticed a common trend among senior executives in the corporate world. They run marathons or play golf or do mountaineering or do cycling. All of these are individual sports where they not compete to win but strive for the best version of themselves. These sports are called "striving sports".

Unlike a sport or game which you play for recreation such as cricket, volleyball or basketball where you play as a group and have fun, the striving sports fuel your achievement needs. Where does this achievement needs come from? . We all must be aware of Maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid, which explains the motivations of humans from a psychology perspective. You go up the pyramid as your bottom layer needs are met. This is in general for life.

But do we have some pyramid for work needs. There is one proposed by Late Shri. Chandramouli Venkatesan in his book "Catalyst" and it looks like

Senior executives are the ones who might have achieved a lot in their careers and always hungry to achieve more. But if they just focus on their own achievements they can't be great leaders. In order to be great leaders these executives should operate from higher layers of mastery and purpose, so that they can allow their teams to achieve more. Mastery is a level at which you can guide your teams to achieve more. Purpose is a still higher level where you think of the bigger picture in doing a job and how it fulfils your purpose in a larger context.

It is not like the Maslow hierarchy of needs pyramid in which you move through the bottom layers easily. Moving from achievement to mastery and to purpose is not easy. Somehow the senior executives have to find an avenue to satisfy their achievement hunger. That's where the striving sports comes into play.

Consider for example a senior executive is participating in a marathon and he clocks 2 hours 45 mins to complete the marathon. In the next marathon he would try to better the record by practising and reviewing what could be done better. In other words he strives to be better. Running a marathon is not just like a joke. You should have stamina and endurance to do it and a good level of fitness. The same applies to golf where you reduce the number of handicaps for a Tee and in mountaineering improve your timings. By striving to improve in these activities the achievement needs of the executives are met.

There might be other reasons also for indulging in activities. But the perspective of the achievement fulfilment looked interesting and thought of sharing.