As the 2016 Olympic Games begin in Rio, 
the world’s attention is focused upon the athletes, their fitness, and physical ability as they strive to deliver personal bests and compete on a world stage in their chosen discipline. These athletes have spent years preparing, requiring the highest levels of commitment, perseverance, motivation and self-sacrifice in their plight to win an Olympic medal. For some, this opportunity will come round just once, this is their time to be at their physical peak, and be mentally ready to achieve new personal bests, break world records and make history. Whilst the preparation of individual training plans will differ, all athletes will have two commonalities; first, they have a strategy, second to be at their best when it matters most!
When talent and commitment is not enough
Working hard, and practising for many hours is not enough to achieve greatness, it cannot be done alone. Athletes surround themselves with a team of experts to support them in their fight to become an Olympic champion. Their supporting teams are made of various coaching experts, nutritionists, physiotherapists and some may argue the most important, the sports psychologist. The greatest distance run, javelin thrown or mile swam that each and every athlete has to overcome is the distance within their own minds, facing the challenges of self-belief and confidence.
Successful athletes are disciplined in the cyclical process of preparation, practise, compete, analyse and learn in order to continuously improve. They are mindful of being objective in their analysis of both successes and failures, in order to identify the contributing factors – to repeat what they have done well and to learn from what has gone wrong.
What does it take to become a Corporate Athlete?
The most crucial factors include: Intellectual Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence. Emotional Intelligence is required for the application of Intellectual intelligence. Daniel Goleman, author of ‘Emotional Intelligence at work’ describes self-awareness as being “often overlooked in business setting, without recognising our own emotions we will be poor at managing them. Self-aware leaders are attuned to their inner signals, and they recognise how their feelings affect themselves and their job performance”.
What can we learn from Olympic athletes?
As a business person we can draw similarities of our own commitments, hard work, and sacrifices made to those of our sports professional counterparts. Countless hours spent preparing for briefings, meeting and presentations alike. The question is how much time, focus and attention do we spend on developing our own mental fitness, developing our own self-confidence, setting ourselves up for success and getting to the mental peak of being in an optimum position to achieve? We need to be mentally attuned, physically at the top of our game and emotionally ready as we scale the uneasy footing of expectation that is placed in front of us as we climb the leadership mountain within our corporate world.
Let us show you how OnTrack International can help you as an individual or as a team to break new boundaries as you aim to conquer the summit of your own performance, through interactive workshops, 1:1 coaching, animated video’s and self-directed learning.
