Five Leadership Lessons Learned from Sports

Can athletics really build leadership?

We asked successful leaders about the role that sports played in their own development and their opinions about the leadership lessons they learned from sports participation. Here is what they told us:

1. There’s Always a Scoreboard. One high-level executive mentioned that in sports, and in business (as well as politics), an individual’s performance is always being evaluated. While athletes have individual stats, employees and leaders undergo regular performance evaluations. Like athletes, most of us work in teams, so individual performance has to be considered in the context of the contribution to the team and to the organization.
2. Begin with the End Goal in Mind. To achieve great things, it is important to have a challenging goal. Athletes will begin the season imagining some ambitious outcome — winning a division or a championship. For a business or political leader, it is equally important to have your eyes on an aspirational goal or outcome, and then figure out the strategy to achieve the goal. As they say, “keep your eyes on the prize.”
3. If You Aren’t Contributing, the Team’s Not Winning. One of our interviewed executives had played collegiate football and mentioned that it was critically important that each member of the team perform their role. “If the lineman doesn’t block, the team doesn’t score.”
4. You Don’t Succeed if You Don’t Make Your Teammates Better. This is an often-overlooked aspect…