In the spirit of Olympics

Just sharing a short note from my HR lady. Although targeted for workplace, I think these points are applicable to other aspects of our life as well.

Creating the Spirit of the Olympics in the Workplace

In the Olympics, we see a lot of the same human issues that confront us in the workplace. If you look carefully, you will find that the ways world athletes behave before, during, and after the Olympics offer us a lot of lessons we can learn from to improve people's performance in the workplace. After all, sports have always offered us metaphors and models for coaching and leadership. Here are ways to create the spirit of the Olympics at work.

• Every Four Years, Not Every Quarter: Most organizations put too much focus on the quarterly reporting of results. Real change in human performance requires a longer view of things.


• Coaching for Performance: To perform at their peak, people need to be coached, not managed. The Coaching process of tough yet friendly feedback, modeling of desired behavior, constant guidance and continuous, incremental improvement is a model that works well at work too.


• Practice Makes Perfect: No athlete will perform in the actual competition without years of rigorous practice. At work, people cannot suspend work to practice. They must work and practice at the same time.


• Build Teams, Not Individuals: Even competitions that do not involve a team require effective teamwork between the coach and the athlete, and perhaps other people as well such as the managers, administrators, and the medical team. No Basketball team or Soccer team can achieve much without effective teamwork. How much training on team building have you participated in at work lately?


• Motivation and Rewards: The motivation for the Olympic athletes is never money. It's the global recognition of being the best. It's the satisfaction of beating the previous world record, and going just a notch beyond what was previously possible. That's the kind of culture you need to create at work.


• Failure Is The Beginning, Not the End: No athlete will strive to participate in the Olympics just once in a lifetime. Most keep going back and trying more. If they fail, they strive harder to win. If they win, they try harder to break their own record and win even bigger.