|
|
|
|
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Skills for a Lifetime
Greater Louisville, KY
|
|
|
Team sports provide benefits for athletes well beyond their playing days.
I know from personal experience that participation in team sports provides opportunities for communication and socialization, as well as the development of skills for handling success and failure. Sports also teach workplace values like teamwork, shared commitment, decision-making under pressure, leadership, time management, mental toughness and focus. In working with several Fortune 500 companies, my research proves that athletes make better employees because of their self-confidence and competitive natures--some of the most influential traits of successful business leaders.
Athletes are a good fit in today’s workplace, which values emotional intelligence over academic intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the “soft skills” that enable smooth running interpersonal relationships at work, such as the ability to read peoples’ nonverbal cues and the ability to manage oneself within a team. These skills are not taught in a classroom. However, someone with athletic experience is likely to have picked them up. This is especially true for female athletes. According to a recent national study by MassMutual Financial /Oppenheimer Funds, “Eighty-one percent of women executives played organized team sports growing up and these women attribute their success, in part, to the fact that they learned the values that these sports teach.”
Sports entail all elements of human life--physical, emotional, cognitive, and social--but in a simplified, orderly form. Sports boil life down to competition governed by agreed-upon rules. The opponents are known, the goals are clear and quantifiable. Athletes practice the skills necessary to excel and gain a sense of control and confidence.
So here’s my career advice: If you’re in school, be a part of a team and approach it with dedication, because it’s an integral part of your education. Your body and your brain are connected, so the benefits of sports spill over into other parts of life. The career benefits of being an athlete are not necessarily related to talent, they have to do with focus and commitment.
If you are out of school, there are still opportunities to join teams that cater to adult beginners. If you can’t image doing that, at least go to your local gym or visit a sports conditioning center. It’s no coincidence that two thirds of female business executives and 75 percent of all chief executives exercise regularly. While you do not gain the team-oriented benefits from individual exercise, you do cultivate business essentials such as self-discipline, goal setting and self-confidence.
BIO>The Corporate Playbook, LLC helps student athletes find success in the corporate world. Visit www.thecorporateplaybook.com for more information.
|
|
| Bill - 3:59 pm CDT on Thu, Jun 19 | report profanity/abuse |
|  | Great ideas and recommendations. |
|
|
|
|
™
™