What can Olympians teach executives?
I want to be successful. That person is successful. So that person can teach me how to be successful. This syllogism helps explain the torrent of podcasts, books and speeches devoted to the secrets of high performance. It is one reason why executive-leadership courses draw on case studies from well beyond business: politics, the army and even the Roman empire. And it has been much in evidence before and during the Olympics, which end in Paris on August 11th.
Consultancies ask what CEOs can learn from the world’s best athletes. Executives attend events in which Olympians describe what makes them tick. Articles breathlessly assess the leadership qualities of Simone Biles, an American gymnast who pulled out of the Tokyo games and made a triumphant return in Paris. Bob Bowman, a swimming coach, wrote a book in 2016 called “The Golden Rules”, based on his success shepherding Michael Phelps to greatness; the triumphs in this year’s games of Léon Marchand, a French swimmer who is also one of his charges, should give sales a bump.
There are threads that connect sporting success and business success. Getting to the games requires intense dedication and hard work. Sporting excellence rests on the efforts of multiple people, not just a single individual. The people on the podium in Paris are competitive and resilient. It is true that all these things are helpful in the workplace, but so is being able to dress yourself. Some things simply don’t need saying. Not that this stopped one consultancy from putting out research in 2023 marvelling at the fact that “100% of professional athletes and CEOs spend time mentally preparing” before a big competition or meeting.
If some of the similarities between sports and the workplace are the stuff of cliché, many of the differences are too big to be helpful. Sporting contests have the objective clarity of finishing positions; most jobs lack such simple metrics. A four-year Olympic cycle building to a contest that may last only seconds has few obvious analogues in business. Sports-stars-turned-speakers and business audiences both have an interest in pretending that an Olympic final is like getting ready for a big presentation or end-of-year results. If that were really the case, more executives would go to Olympic training camps to talk to athletes about their greatest earnings calls.
The athletes who win medals at the games are blessed not just with prodigious determination but also immense natural gifts. “I got more speed in my little finger than most people have in their whole body, and I was just born that way,” Michael Johnson, a legendary sprinter, recently told “The High Performance Podcast”, a popular show that tries desperately to extract life lessons for mortals from people with superhuman skills. The job of managers is partly to identify such superstars, but their real task is getting the best out of a workforce whose talents will vary and whose jobs will not depend as heavily on genetics. “As soon as I saw that kid log on, I knew he was special,” are words you do not often hear.
The comparisons between sports and business can raise some interesting questions, although they are not necessarily the ones you might expect. In her book “The Long Win”, Cath Bishop, a former Olympian-turned-consultant, describes how a rigid focus on winning can be self-defeating whether you are in a singlet or a suit. Elite athletes increasingly like to talk about trusting in the process –focusing on the performance rather than on the results. Divorcing the way a business decision is made from its actual outcome is a discipline that companies might benefit from, too.
The pressure on competitive sports teams to cut corners in pursuit of success can lead to toxic cultures and outright cheating, just as it can within firms. The way that Olympians get feedback from coaches and the motivation that comes from genuinely mastering a skill: these, too, are things to reflect on.
But these parallels are not really why people listen to the podcasts or turn up at the events. They want a simple formula for success. And they want to hear what it is like to run faster, jump higher and vault better than anyone else. They want to hear stories that can have no conceivable value back in the office (how Mr. Bowman broke Mr. Phelps’s goggles on purpose before a race to prepare him for anything, or why Mr. Johnson ran in that famously upright style). If they can pretend it’s good for their career, so much the better.
