What corporate Australia can learn from the sporting field
What can corporate Australia learn from the way professional athletes, coaches and sports administrators operate? In February, at a dinner attended by Qantas magazine readers at Higher Ground, Melbourne, three sports stars turned business gurus shared how elite competition can yield important business lessons. It was the second event in the Think. live-interview series hosted by Kirsten Galliott, Editor-in-Chief of Qantas magazine and Travel Insider. Here are some of the evening’s most valuable insights.
Kirsten Galliott: Let’s talk about a significant skill that you learnt through competitive and professional sports that plays a part in your business strategies today. Kate, let’s start with you. Kate Palmer: I learnt that constructive instant feedback is really useful. I was very fortunate to have coaches who cared and were willing to give me feedback. And I was willing to take it on board. I’ve carried that with me and I pay attention to how I give my team feedback. If you do it the right way, you can be helpful and move things forward. That kind of feedback can often be missing from corporate Australia. Kevin, I suspect you’re very good at delivering frank immediate feedback. What are the benefits of that radical candour? Kevin Sheedy: When you have to put it on the table, put it on the table – as long as you’re fair. There were times when I was a bit over the top, particularly after we [the Essendon Bombers] lost the preliminary final by one point [to the Sydney Swans] in 1996. I was very wrong in my approach then but most of the time I wasn’t too bad. Frank feedback is what the players love. They want to know if they’ve got a chance, even though they might have made an error or cost the game. I lost 240 games as coach of Essendon – that’s a lot of losses – but we did win 460! I had to be frank with myself, too; you’ve also got to be critical in your self-analysis. Ian Thorpe: I think there’s an accountability in sport that’s different to what [you find] in business. In sport, you’re very exposed; if you don’t win or you don’t perform well, everyone knows about it. Whereas the attitude that may exist for some – though not everyone – in business is, “Oh, if we didn’t get it right, the sales team blames marketing and marketing blames sales.” In sport that doesn’t work very well. So I think one of the lessons [for business] is accountability – day in, day out. That’s a problem, isn’t it, everyone blaming everyone else? How can we arrest that? IT: There’s a huge difference between critiquing a performance and criticism. One begins with, “You did this wrong,” which is a direct criticism, whether it’s in business or the sports world. Critiquing is asking the question, “Were you at your best today? I feel as though you weren’t and here’s how we can improve.”
(Clockwise from above left) Each guest received a BOSS leather notebook and fragrance; Professor Ian Harper, dean of Melbourne Business School, welcomed attendees; Kirsten Galliott (left) and the panellists all wore BOSS, except Ian Thorpe
KP: I think people are more willing to be accountable if they understand how their role fits in and are clear about what they’re supposed to achieve. Sometimes in business, people aren’t sure where they fit, especially in lower levels of the organisation. It’s easier to be accountable if you know what you’re accountable for.
That clearly comes down to being a leader who’s a good communicator, doesn’t it?
KP: Absolutely. I heard Neale Daniher [renowned AFL player and coach, now a prominent medical research campaigner] speak about it. He was in a room full of businessmen and he told them, “You guys have got it easy because I come off the field and I’ve got 15 minutes to get my thoughts together and give constructive feedback that’s going to help them get through a win or a loss and then move on. In business, I don’t think you do that very well.” I’ve always kept that with me: my role in giving good feedback in a timely, constructive way.
Ian, what’s a learning you’ve taken from sport that you’re employing in your business now?
IT: What motivates each person is different but the one thing I’ve learnt from sport that transfers to business is a work ethic: never giving up, no matter where you are. And part of that is the ability to adapt. It’s not every day that you can create the best athletic performance. And it’s the same in business – you can’t deliver every day. Look at an Olympic performance; imagine you have 1640 days to perform at your very best. I can break it down even further: in a particular minute on that 1640th day, you have to perform at your best and if you’re 0.5 of a per cent off your best, it may be the difference between winning or losing. How many people think they’d be able to do that? So you prepare for it and do everything you can to deliver. That’s what we do in sport, we prepare.
Do you think we can all do that?
IT: Yes. My company, BEON, is all about that. We all have moments of virtuosity – it doesn’t matter whether you’re an elite sportsperson, a fighter pilot or the CEO of a company. We’ve all had moments when we felt as though it was easy and the result was there. What we offer businesses is training in how to get to that state. So if you give us 30 days, we’ll teach you how to do it. We use psychometric testing to assess each individual; we find out what makes them perform at a particular time and what they need to learn to replicate that in the future. You learn a lot about yourself.
An elite athlete is surrounded by the best strategists, mentors, an entire team. Kate, how important is having the right team and how do you choose that team in a business setting?
KP: For me, it’s about their fit and their personal skills. We’ve recently been recruiting and every single person had