Top Leadership Lessons from the Olympics
As a training and leadership development consultant, I'm always wondering what we can learn from things around us, like the Olympics.
The Olympics brings together top athletes from around the world as they compete against each other and their best selves. It takes years of practice and dedication to achieve something like this.
We can learn a lot about leadership from the Olympics and I want to share that with you today with special guests Kirk Spahn and Sara Daum.
Listen to the episode or scroll down to read the blog post ↓
Key Points:
02:06 The process that athletes and leaders follow
04:41 Taking the time to celebrate
06:11 Tools that can help shape the future
08:27 Commitment to learning agility
15:40 Connecting to your bigger purpose
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Top Leadership Lessons from the Olympics
Were you an athlete?
I really wasn't much of an athlete growing up. I played a few sports, but none very well. So I'm always amazed when the Olympics roll around.
The Olympics brings together top athletes from around the world as they compete, not just against each other, but against themselves. Their very best selves. It takes years of practice and dedication to master your sport and achieve something like this.
And as you know, only the elite few do.
I couldn't have been more excited to watch the Olympics this year. As a training and leadership development consultant, I'm always wondering what we can learn from things around us, like the Olympics.
In this blog post, we’re covering some leadership lessons from Olympic athletes:
I had two very special guests contribute to this episode: Kirk Spahn and Sara Daum
Kirk is a fourth-generation educator with more than two decades in the field. In 2001 Kirk co-founded the Institute for Civic Leadership, an award winning youth educational nonprofit organization.
Sara serves as the Director of Philanthropic Engagement Strategy at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. Before this, she spent a decade as a fundraiser within the Olympic and Paralympic movement, working for the USA Shooting Team Foundation as well as the US Olympic and Paralympic Foundation.
1) Creating Good Leadership Habits
Kirk starts by talking about the process that great athletes and leaders follow.
I love that this is where he starts. There is so much to just creating good habits, sticking to them, and creating a process that works for you and your team.
“There's something that sometimes gets overlooked in leadership and with great athletes - that really is the process that great athletes and leaders follow. It's a dedication to creating the right habits and the right rituals to achieve success and achieve their goals, even if there are setbacks along during the process.” - Kirk Spahn
Kirk highlights that although that process can differ between leaders and athletes, they're very single-minded in the way that they approach it.
“They set out on a course and map it out, and then go at it with a dogged sort of attack mode that nothing will stop them from getting there. They'll take in advice, they'll get great mentors, but everything is calculated and part of the process. And in that process, they gain perspective. And great leaders and great athletes take in as they get older, more of that perspective that helps them build to make a better process to achieve their goals.” - Kirk Spahn
2) Taking the Time to Celebrate Your Accomplishments
Another important leadership lesson is taking the time to celebrate your hard work and accomplishments.
“They show up at practice when they're sore and tired. They lift heavier weights than they ever have before. They get in that one more rep that they haven't done in the past. And every time they hit those things, they celebrate. Just a little mini celebration, just a quiet moment to, you know, pump a fist or pat each other on the back. And by doing that, they create the habit of having that attitude, of having that ability to look and see what they've done and to recognize it.” - Sara Daum
I love Sara's focus on celebration because I think it's really what helps with so many of the other leadership lessons that I see like resilience and discipline which we’re talking about next.
3) Building Leadership Qualities: Belief, Resilience, and Purpose
If you watch Olympic athletes, they go through so much adversity. There are so many things that could set them back, so many things that are just hard, and yet they continue to persevere, even when things get hard.
They show up and they put in the work, no matter what.
“Over the last 20 years, I've had the opportunity to spend time with a number of great Olympic champions, and they all possess similar leadership qualities that can correlate to what exemplifies a great leader. That's a combination of belief, vision, and resilience.” - Kirk Spahn
Kirk explains that they all have very similar attributes and ways that they go about their training.
“It starts with passion. They make it their purpose, and they all create the right process to follow. Then they hit walls, they have setbacks, and each one of them is able to deal with these setbacks in a different way, but they all share the ability to see a higher purpose and get back up and really go after their dreams.” - Kirk Spahn
When you have a clear purpose, it's much easier to get back up and lean into that resilience. And the same is true as a leader.
4) Committing to Learning Agility
One of the other things that I see when I look at Olympic athletes is this commitment to learning agility.
They're always looking to learn from themselves and from each other.
Kirk explains what it means to be surrounded by other people who support you.
“There's a very distinct connection between elite leaders and elite athletes, not just the process they follow, but actually the team in which they surround themselves. And the team doesn't just consist of other athletes or other leaders. It's actually the people who make the process available and support that process for the athlete. It's a coach, it's a funder, it's somebody who believes in them.” - Kirk Spahn
Kirk explains that both leaders and athletes have to understand the importance of the lessons given by other people who came before them.
“Listening is a huge aspect. Listening to constituents, listening to people that are giving advice. To study and analyze other competitors. What's the competition doing? How can I understand that? How can I get an edge in any way possible? And leaders are the same way. What can I hear from different people that may add to my campaign, that may add to my leadership causes?” - Kirk Spahn
Sarah talks a little bit more about celebrating each other during the competition because they are learning from and being motivated by each other.
“Athletes celebrate each other in the competition. So if you think of watching women's gymnastics, it's a team competition, but those athletes are also fighting for individual medals. But despite the fact that they're competing against each other, you'll see our Team USA athletes cheering wildly when one of their fellow competitors hits a tough skill or does something that no one has ever done before, they still cheer for each other.” - Sara Daum
Sara explains that they celebrate together because they know better than anyone else what it took to get there.
“When we see someone accomplishing amazing things, it shows us what's possible and it lifts our sights to set even bigger goals for ourselves. So that means that we as nonprofit leaders should celebrate the people on our teams and people in our professional network when they accomplish something great because it actually helps us in the long run.” - Sara Daum
I mentioned learning agility because I think this comes up a lot as leaders. We're always looking to be able to learn from our own and other people’s mistakes, but also from our successes and other people's successes.
It really is about leaning into learning and being coachable.
As I'm working with organizations and they're thinking about what competencies they might want to focus on, there's always some focus on this ability to learn, on this kind of growth mindset.
What Kirk and Sara have shared is so related to this:
We have to be able to learn from our own mistakes and our successes.
We have to be able to learn from other people including our “competition.” The other people in our organization or other organizations even.
We have to be coachable. We have to be someone who can receive feedback and continue to lean into that and grow and get better and better.
5) Learning from Our Failures as Leaders
What Sara talks about next is something we don't talk a lot about - we have to celebrate, even when we don't win.
Sometimes, as a leader, we aren't going to succeed. We aren't always going to have the best possible outcome, but if we've learned something, if we've given it our all, that's okay. We can still celebrate that.
“When you step on the Olympic stage and maybe you don't win - most of the athletes at the games aren't going to win, after all - that's a hard moment. But the athletes who can still give themselves credit for everything they did to get there, for how hard they fought during that competition, win or loss, that ability to celebrate at those hard moments is built through years of practice celebrating that small stuff, and we can do the same.” - Sara Daum
6) Being Committed to Team Building
Another thing I see when I look at Olympic athletes is this really good sense of teamwork.
What we see is really good group dynamics.
We see people who can set expectations for themselves and each other.
We see people who can communicate.
We see them committed to the practice.
We see them committed to celebrating their accomplishments.
We want to make sure that as a team, we can be clear about what we expect and communicate clearly.
What I see when I see an Olympic team is a true model of what teamwork could be in an organization as well.
“When you celebrate, not only does it become a habit, but you also create a culture that empowers your team and empowers everyone around you. You show them that you see their hard work and their skill and you're giving them permission to be proud and to celebrate themselves too. As nonprofit leaders, creating and maintaining a healthy culture is literally our job, and this element of celebration is such a big part of what we can do to create a healthy culture.” - Sara Daum
7) Connecting to Your Bigger Purpose
Many of these lessons come back to connecting to your bigger purpose.
Is there something bigger for you than just this one event?
And the same is true in the workplace.
Is there something bigger for you than this one particular situation that you're facing?
And if there is, we can connect to that bigger purpose, and that can help drive all the ways you engage in the organization and all the ways you engage with other people in the organization, which helps make you a better leader.
“One of the most important skills that I think nonprofit professionals can learn from Olympic and Paralympic athletes might actually surprise you, it is celebrating yourself and the people around you.” - Sara Daum
Sara gives the Olympic opening ceremony as an example.
“That celebration happens before anybody won or lost. Yet those athletes are celebrating the fact that they made it to this moment.” - Sara Daum
Sara explains that celebration is what keeps you going in between the moments of triumph.
“Athletes who have the longest and most successful careers know that you can't be head down and work all the time or you burn out. For athletes, it's physical burnout, it's mental burnout, and in the nonprofit world, we experience the same things.” - Sara Daum
Kirk explains that impact is what drives great athletic champions and great leaders.
“There's not a quest for a medal or a trophy. Both leaders and athletes have a quest to really see the impact, the most amount of impact that they can make, whether it's through their body, whether it's through how they can get people together, how they can galvanize groups for causes. [...] They're doing it to be able to impact others around them and to test themselves to see how far they can get.” - Kirk Spahn
To hear the full conversation I had with Kirk Spahn and Sara Daum on the Learning for Good Podcast, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 94.
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