When it comes to identifying the characteristics and traits needed to thrive as a leader of a professional organisation, one of the best places you can look towards is the sporting arena.
Sport in Australia plays a vital role within our communities, particularly at a social level with its unrivalled ability to bring people from all walks of life together.
From the grassroots of junior sport and midweek social competitions to the elite ranks, it helps us build healthy and strong minds and bodies, remain connected to our community and teaches us so many of the lessons we need to not only be successful in life but serve others to a high standard.
No time more than the present, professional leaders should be tapping into the benefits that a strong sports leadership mindset can deliver their organisations, with countless examples of the crucial elements that sporting leaders need to pull together to remain competitive.
The most important of these is inclusiveness.
The sporting field is a melting pot of diversity and it is the job of administrators, coaches, captains and leadership groups to have their players and fans moving in one direction. Be it religion, race, sexual orientation or socio-economic background, the ability to unify a team in the spirit of competition and camaraderie is essential to the success of any team … or professional organisation.
Amid such efforts, the modern sports leader must also balance the competing forces of striving for elite success and remaining connected to the grassroots of their chosen codes, a skill many professional leaders will value given how staff morale – or a lack of it – can impact a company’s balance sheet.
Australia’s love affair with sport means we see our sports leaders, coaches and players as role models, a fact that has not always been useful given all manner of unresourceful behaviour has been on show at times, even to the point of some sports stars participating in antisocial or criminal activity.
And this is where sports leaders really earn their cap via their ability to create a culture that drives members at all levels of their sporting organisations to display behaviours that enable them to be role models to the wider community.
Could there be a more important role for a sports leader than establishing an environment where the behaviours of the team – and particularly the senior players and coaches – can be role modelled? To showcase themselves as wonderful citizens for their fan base and the wider community?
Of course these leaders must do this at the same time as being highly competitive with each other and managing the commercial realities of an ever-increasing field of expenses that it takes to run an elite organisation.
Being a sporting leader is a tough gig but it’s also one definitely worth analysing as an outsider as there is much to be learned from those who succeed in such an environment.
