As Method in Madness completes 25 episodes, we will bring some key learning from these episodes, that can help leaders and change makers lead change and transformation initiative successfully. Here is the 1st edition : Top Athlete Mentality for Change Makers.
On my podcast channel, “Method in Madness,” I had the chance to speak with and interview some of the greatest minds in their fields. I especially enjoyed interviewing athletes, and I loved their journey to perfection. Athletes put in a lot of hard work consistently and acquire the top Athlete mentality.
What is a top Athlete’s mentality? How can corporates and change makers get that kind of mindset in their current jobs?
- Ambition – While speaking to an Olympic athlete Afrodite Zegers OLY on my podcast, she told me that when she was preparing for the Olympics in Rio, she had only one goal: to win the gold. Months of training and preparation were aimed at one ambitious goal. This focus helps them to go above and beyond in their work.
Imagine changemakers with that kind of focus, discipline, and drive toward a single goal. To be able to install that athlete kind of ambition in changemakers, the first thing the leadership needs to do is define that one goal to the team. Once the goal is clear, concrete, and realistic, then you can give that athlete’s kind of ambition to your changemakers.
2. Positive realism – Every sports person fails at least one thousand times before they finally win. But the beauty of that failure is that each time they make progress towards winning. Step by step, they are moving closer to that finish line.
This is an important mindset to have because with this mindset, even with failures, roadblocks, and delays, you know if you are making true progress towards that finish line. You also know when and where to cut losses. My 1st guest Neal van de Kamer – sales recruitment the Judo legend in the Netherlands, shares his bounceback story, and even in low moments he knew when to continue and when to transition from judo to a corporate career.
If management could adopt this mindset, they would be able to judge which projects should be continued and which should be abandoned. In the absence of this skill, you will see decisions being delayed or kicked down the road because the leadership has no idea which delays and failures are show stoppers and which ones are steps towards that final success.
3. Coaching – Behind every successful athlete is a coach. My podcast guest Ankita Bhambri, a successful tennis player from India mentioned her coach as one her key success factor. Today she is a coach, helping to bring the next tennis legend in action.
In fact, behind every successful leader and entrepreneur is a coach. However, when it comes to corporate, we hardly see the coaching culture.
Your manager is not your coach, and even if you are assigned a coach, this person is usually extremely content with little ability to groom, motivate, or inspire the protege. To achieve this top-athlete mentality, coaching is one of the most essential requirements. While following this quest for perfection and perseverance, the coach can help the team overcome self-doubt, vulnerability and low moments, etc.
4. Productive pain – The one thing every top athlete told me is that in their formative years, it didn’t matter what day it was or what was going on in the world, nothing could come in between them and their preparation.
Each one of them would exercise and practise their craft each day, even on days when they felt reluctant or wanted to do something else. This is called “productive pain,” and it stops these top athletes from procrastinating on the important task at hand. In the corporate world, what we see is that urgent always supersedes important.
As a result, the changemakers have expended all of their energy on the urgent task and have no motivation left for the important task. This is where productive pain can help. Helping these changemakers finish the important task by pushing through the reluctance and resistance.
An organization with such changemakers and such a mindset will have a clear goal and team members working towards that goal. It is not hard to get such a mindset, but there needs to be a sincere desire from the leadership to achieve this mindset.
Here is the Spotify link to to Method in Madness. https://open.spotify.com/show/07b5GXKqJIgeZ8TnRwx5rk
