 |
Author/Athlete/Professional
Speaker "Think of yourself as an athlete. I guarantee you it will change the way you walk, the way you work, and the decisions you make about leadership, teamwork, and success."- MBN |
          
|
In my speeches, I often ask the audience, "How many of you think of yourselves as athletes?" Just a few people raise their hands. Then I ask, "How many of you did not raise your hands -- but swim, lift weights, dance, or walk for exercise?" Many more raise their hands. "Think of yourself as an athlete," I tell them. "I guarantee you it will change the way you walk, the way you work, and the decisions you make about leadership, teamwork, and success." Why do I want people to claim an athletic identity? Athletes walk with pride. They try new things. They persist in the face of doubt and defeat. They practice, they discipline themselves, they know who their teammates are and how to help them. When you think of yourself as an athlete, it affects how you view competitive challenges, how you view opponents, how receptive you are to instruction from a coach or mentor. When you see yourself as an athlete, you take your own needs for physical fitness and athletic expression seriously, making conscious choices about nutrition, stretching, strengthening, resting. You set realistic goals -- and off the playing fields -- then strive for them. You achieve more than you otherwise would. As an athlete -- and author of three books about sports -- I show people how to lead and succeed with courage and compassion. Here are five essential lessons I've learned on the playing fields; five ways you can implement sports lessons as a leader in your association: 1. Be a Champion, Not a Conqueror or Cheerleader There are three types of competitors: Conquerors, Cheerleaders, and Champions. Conquerors view sports -- and business -- through a military lens. A quarterback's arm is his weapon. Opponents are to be feared, destroyed, annihilated. Teams battle for honors; they blast, beat, and defeat each other. Rivals are mutilated, slaughtered, humiliated, pummeled. Competition is about defeating, subduing, displaying dominance. Ross Perot, writing in his autobiography about competing for a computer service contract, said, "I am going to kill those guys, then I'm going to bury them, and then I am going to dance on their graves until the stench gets so bad I can't stand it." Cheerleaders, by contrast, stay on the sidelines and celebrate other people's victories. They compete mostly over beauty, boyfriends, and popularity. They disavow their competitive strivings, avoid competitive situations if they can, and temper their efforts with smiles and denials. Their competitiveness gets expressed in underhanded ways, like gossip. Neither Conquering nor Cheerleading feels fair or healthy to most working people these days. We don't want to play those games. Fortunately there is an alternative. Champions compete openly, without hostility or embarrassment, in the main arena. They respect their own ambitions -- and those of their opponents. They do not apologize for their desire for excellence. They refuse to conquer anyone, but also refuse to accept the second-class status of Cheerleader. In the workplace, you can recognize Champions because they have high self-esteem, faith in their own competence, and a generosity of spirit. Unlike Conquerors, who are insecure about losing their status at the top, and unlike Cheerleaders, who are insecure about losing popularity, Champions know how and when and why to compete. They compete openly, even joyfully, the way athletes do. The word "compete" actually comes from the Latin "competere," meaning "seeking together." This is how Champions compete: seeking excellence together with others who share their dreams and goals. To become a Champion, accept your own competitive desires - and those of others. Use competitive situations -- a job application, a performance evaluation -- as opportunities to test yourself against others who share your goals. What athletic Champions know -- and association leaders often forget -- is that competition, when welcomed as a challenge -- can be incredibly fun. 2. Define success for yourself. How do you know when you -- or your association -- has won? Whose definition of success are you using? Athletes know what success means, and it's not always winning. Sometimes it's a setting a personal best, such as swimming 100 meters freestyle a half-second faster than you swam it yesterday. Sometimes it's grabbing ten rebounds. Sometimes it's placing in the top ten. Despite the cultural emphasis on gold medals, the best athletes decide ahead of time how they'll define success, then strive for that. Cheryl Haworth, a high school weightlifter, wants to become the strongest woman in the world. She's close: She's the strongest woman in America, having recently set American records in the snatch (264 pounds) and the clean and jerk (318 pounds). Not only is she strong, she's fast and flexible: she can run the 40-yard dash in 5.5 seconds, leap 30 inches, and do a split. She's five-six, and weighs about 300 pounds. In the 2000 Olympics, when women's weightlifting was a new sport, Haworth earned a bronze medal. But reporters hounded her with absurd, sexist questions. "What's it like to weigh so much?" they asked. "How do the boys in your high school react to your weight?" And: "Have you ever tried to lose weight?" Finally, Haworth, a poised and focused teenager, explained patiently: "I'm not trying to be small. I'm trying to be strong." What a great answer! Haworth knows what she wants, and it's not having a flat tummy or wearing a size six dress. To her, success means being strong: specifically, the strongest woman in the world. Once she sets that goal, all other decisions fall into place. In associations, many people measure their success and even self-worth by external goals that are not necessarily their own. To define success for yourself, figure out what's meaningful and realistic for you or your organization, then strive for that. Like Haworth, you'll probably encounter those who Don't Get It. But the clearer you are about your goals, the more likely you'll be to feel good about your success, and all your progress along the way. 3. Give Yourself Permission to Lose My mother used to read to us: The Cat in the Hat; Winnie the Pooh; and Robert Lewis Stephenson's A Child's Garden of Verses: "Oh how I love to go up in the swing/up in the sky so blue/Oh I do think it the pleasantest thing/ever a child can do." Books expressed for me the simple ecstasy of being alive -- and also, sometimes, the silliness, like this, from Ogden Nash: "Shake, shake the ketchup bottle./ None'll come, but then a lot'll." One of my earliest memories is of looking my bookcase and thinking: I want to write a book. By age four I was writing sports stories. One day I proudly showed my brother Peter, two years older, what I had written. Peter said, "This is all wrong." "What do you mean?" I asked. "You started in the middle, with 'Mother Ball said, "Let's do tricks."' You have to start at the beginning, with 'Once upon a time,'" he explained. I have since learned not to take anything the critics say too seriously, especially if they're only six years old. But as a kid, I was crushed. Later, teachers said other discouraging things, such as, "Only five percent of all writers make a living at it." I kept writing, but only in journals that I hid in the bottom of my T-shirt drawer. Even as a college student, I avoided the writing courses, afraid that someone else would tell me that I was doing it wrong. Fortunately, along the way I became an athlete. I swam as a child, played five sports in high school, starred on Stanford's basketball team, then played professional basketball in France and in the first US women's pro league in this country. (I now think of it as the LNEH: the League Nobody's Ever Heard of.) I retired from professional basketball at age 24 and thought: My life is passing quickly. Before I know it I'm going to be 84, looking back, and thinking, I always wanted to be an author, but was afraid to fail. I reflected on what I'd learned in sports – not only how to shoot, pass and rebound, but how to persist, even in the face of disappointment and defeat. I remembered that, even as a very good basketball player, I only made about fifty percent of my shots. So I gave myself permission to fail. But I also sought writing coaches (teachers) and teammates (colleagues). I disciplined myself to write every day, the way I had practiced basketball every day. And, remembering that athletes improve through competition, I started sending out articles for publication, openly competing with thousands of aspiring writers. At first I failed a lot. A thick file folder bulged with rejection slips. Now in my mid-forties, I've written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, USA Today, and hundreds of other publications -- but I still fail. Just last week an article was rejected by a small magazine you've probably never heard of. I've written books for Random House, Harcourt Brace, William Morrow, and Harper San Francisco -- but each of those book proposals was first rejected by Doubleday, Simon & Schuster, or other publishers. "Failure is impossible!" proclaimed Susan B. Anthony when lobbying for the vote, and it was a nice rallying cry, but she forgot to add that failure is also inevitable. It's an integral part of any success. So if you want to succeed, you've got to give yourself -- and your association -- permission to fail. Over time, failure will still be disappointing, sad, embarrassing, sometimes devastating. But getting comfortable with failure -- even accepting it, like an unpleasant cousin who attends family functions -- is absolutely essential if you want to succeed. 4. See opponents as opportunities. One of my first opponents was the boys' high school basketball coach at Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona. The year was 1972. There was no girls' team. I had just moved to Phoenix. I knew how to play basketball, and had gotten quite good at it back in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, where they offered teams for girls starting in seventh grade. My parents had installed a backboard in our driveway for my brother, but it turned out that Peter was more interested in baseball, so the year I was twelve I found myself alone out there, day after day, working on my lay-ups, preparing to make that seventh grade team. Every day I shot 100 lay-ups with my right hand, then 100 with my left. I was very serious about it, and very systematic. I made the team in seventh grade and scored 21 points in my first game. The entire other team only scored ten. So by the time I moved across the country with my family I was good, and I knew it. But Arcadia didn't have a girls team. So I approached the boys coach. "I'd like to try out for the boys' basketball team," I said. He laughed. "I played at my old school," I said. "I'm good." "You can't," he said. "Why not?" I asked. "Your breasts would get in the way," he said. I took a step back. "Your breasts could get hit with an elbow," he said, pointing his elbow at my chest. "Just let me try out," I said. He said: "Only if I can personally bind your breasts." The term sexual harassment had not yet been invented. I didn't report him. I don't think I even told my parents. But I was already an athlete: competitive, courageous, and committed to achieving my own goals. So I played on the boys intramural team, and there I was scouted by my gym teacher, who invited me to try out for her women's team, the AAU Phoenix Dusters. All of my teammates were in their twenties. We traveled around the southwest, playing mostly against college teams, and won the Arizona State Championship twice. That helped me gain the attention of the dean of admissions at Stanford. My Stanford success - leading scorer and rebounder all four years -- led me to the pros, and to a career as a sportswriter and professional speaker. So in a sense, I won. I should write that basketball coach a thank-you note. Athletes see opponents as opportunities. If they guard your right side, you go left. If they prevent you from shooting, you dribble past them. If they succeed in stopping you, you go home and work on your weaknesses. Opponents test you, and that's why you thank them and shake hands afterward: They have challenged you to rise to the occasion, sometimes discovering strengths and skills you didn't know you had. In the workplace, opponents can be harder to spot, and harder to deal with. Our tendency is to waste energy resenting them, disliking them, or trying to change them. But if you think like an athlete, you begin to welcome opposition because it can challenge you in helpful ways, forcing you to become wiser, more flexible, more committed to achieving your goals. 5. Support your teammates, especially if you're on the bench. Teammates are different from friends. Friends are people who like you. Teammates are people who support you to achieve your goals. They usually share some of your goals too. They may or may not like you, or have anything else in common with you, but they're heading in the same direction, and they want you to succeed. Want a powerful image of teamwork? Just recall the rescue workers searching the mountain of rubble that used to be the World Trade Center. Steel beams on their shoulders and hard hats on their heads, these ironworkers, carpenters, electricians, heavy equipment operators, and other volunteers all coordinated their efforts to haul away debris and uncover survivors. Who are your teammates? Who volunteers -- or would volunteer, if you'd ask -- to help you shoulder your responsibilities? These people might be your colleagues, family members, those who share your religious or political perspective, opera lovers, birdwatchers, whatever. Identify who is on your side -- who would support you in achieving your goals, if you'd only let them know what those goals are. Then be a good teammate yourself. Offer assistance and support, especially when you're "on the bench": not doing so well yourself. Reaching out to praise or assist someone else can feel good to both of you. Request help when you need it, too; many people appreciate being asked for their opinion or advice. And celebrate often. Successful business teams -- like successful sports teams and successful search-and-rescue teams -- celebrate even small successes to keep morale high. Succeeding at work is a lot like succeeding on the playing fields: it requires self-discipline, practice, persistence, and a lot of teamwork. Consciously applying lessons from the playing fields can keep you on the right path. Think of yourself as an athlete. I guarantee you it will change the way you walk, the way you work, and the decisions you make about leadership, teamwork, and success.
Want to read more about
life lessons from the playing fields? Check out We Are All
Athletes. To contact Mariah about her presentations, call 703/276-8323 or write to her at Mariah@MariahBurtonNelson.com Home © Mariah Burton Nelson Site Redesign by ALT
Designs |
5
ESSENTIAL LESSONS FROM THE PLAYING FIELDS