What can the business world learn from the world of sports?

People in business often look at the sports world and find inspiration therein, for their business. And rightly so, there’s a lot we can learn from the world of sports.

Look at TEAM sports specifically.

If you are part of a sports team, you would be foolish not to give it your all. In fact, if you didn’t give it your very best, being 100% present, being a team player, you wouldn’t get to play, it’s as simple as that.

Yet, in the business world, we often accept that people don’t give 100% and there is no-one else to replace that person with anyway (we normally don’t have a whole bunch of people sitting waiting on the benches, eager to play!). Well, admittedly business is rarely as fast-paced as a game of for example ice-hockey, so the urgent need to be 100% focused may not be there – but just because it’s not urgent doesn’t mean it’s not crucial.

Make no mistake about it, it is crucial to business success.

Simply demanding that people give 100% rarely works though, as the results may be short lived. A better approach would be to work on creating the right setting, the right circumstances for people to want to truly get involved and engaged, to get people to understand the role they play in achieving team success and more, to understand the impact they have on their team members and the results. The sports analogy could be – if you’re not paying attention, noticing what’s going on, what your team members are doing, then the puck will pass you by and go to the opposite team, your competitors – that’s how important you are.

The Team Formula outlines, both in the story and in the formula itself, the key ingredients, the things that need to happen to get individuals in a team working together. Use it to identify which pieces your team are doing well in and which ones you could start doing or do more of.

Thanks for reading,

Elisabet and Mandy

Author: Mandy and Elisabet

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