High-Performance Leadership Skills: "Drawing Leadership Lessons from High-PerformingSports Team Coaches for Corporate Executives"
An accomplished sports team leader understands that victory entails more than just individual prowess. It demands teamwork, strategy, communication, and a shared vision. Likewise, corporate leaders should recognize that their success hinges on their team's combined efforts, goal alignment, effective collaboration, and motivation to excel.
During my career, I have had the privilege of meeting and collaborating with proficient team sports coaches. In this article, I would like to discuss three crucial skills that leaders of top-performing sports teams share. These skills encompass interpersonal and intrapersonal abilities, as well as presence. By incorporating these skills into their leadership style, corporate leaders can also reap significant benefits.
1. Interpersonal Skills
Three critical and intricate interpersonal skills are communication, impartiality, and cultivating enjoyment.
A. Communication
Human language is often considered the most remarkable creation of our species, and interpersonal communication is a fundamental aspect of how we interact with each other. Even when we aren't explicitly communicating, we constantly send messages to one another. Effective communication is essential for leaders to connect with their teams and is crucial for achieving excellence. Leaders can use communication to guide team performance, establish goals, provide reinforcement or punishment, shape specific behaviors, foster high productivity levels, and create a positive team environment.
Leaders should strive to improve their communication skills to boost both their own and their team's productivity. It is essential to cultivate and strengthen these skills to attain this goal. Those leaders who identify deficiencies in their communication abilities should seek appropriate training to address and surmount these limitations. (1).
B. Impartiality
Maintaining impartiality is a vital interpersonal ability for leaders, as it enables them to treat all team members fairly, offer objective feedback, and focus on enhancing team performance. Leaders who exhibit favoritism may jeopardize overall engagement and struggle to achieve goals.
According to research by Weinberg and Gould(2), a team's perception of its leader's impartiality and fairness can be enhanced by:
• Ensuring compatibility between the leader's assessments and the team members' self-assessments of competencies, performance, and contributions.
• The leader's communication approach with the team members.
• The team member's perception of the leader's efforts to assist them in achieving their goals, improving their performance, and creating a positive work environment.
C. Cultivate Enjoyment
Obtaining peak performance and meeting objectives is not enough to make an activity long-lasting. High levels of daily enjoyment are needed as well. Many leaders are in the habit of only enjoying positive results. They forget to encourage actions that increase satisfaction from being part of a team and experiencing the pleasure derived from daily tasks and meeting challenges.
The need to plan actions that facilitate enjoyment applies to any group and particularly to the “new” Generations Y and Z.
Both generations place a high value on social responsibility and seek employment with organizations that align with their values(3). They continuously look for enjoyment and new distractions, grow up clicking the "Like" button, and are accustomed to exchanging what they do not like for something more attractive.
2. Intrapersonal Skills
Interpersonal skills are critical for managing teams and individuals, whereas intrapersonal skills are vital for self-management by leaders. The top three intrapersonal skills include positive self-talk, activation regulation, and attentional flexibility.
A. Positive self-talk
"Positive self-talk is the language of triumph; it empowers the mind, strengthens the spirit, and propels us towards success."
Positive self-talk is essential for high-performance leadership. It involves acknowledging progress, avoiding absolute terms, and not being concerned with others' opinions. By refraining from catastrophic thinking or dwelling on unsuccessful outcomes, leaders can remain emotionally stable and better equipped to manage daily challenges. This requires distinguishing real threats from perceived threats induced by stress, allowing for intuitive problem-solving and avoiding self-criticism or blame. Leaders must practice positive self-talk until they can maintain a stable and optimistic state to derive satisfaction from daily tasks and maintain high performance.
B. Activation Regulation
Activation regulation is a technical term for the skill of "remaining in control of yourself."
Activation regulation is a critical skill for leaders to intentionally control their level of cognitive activation and avoid disruptive behavior. Over-activation is common in stressful situations, leading to volatile reactions. However, leaders can also experience under-activation due to exhaustion, fatigue, or boredom. Training is necessary to develop activation regulation skills and ensure positive outcomes in high-pressure situations.
C. Attentional Flexibility
"Attentional flexibility is the art of adapting our focus, enabling us to navigate life's complexities with grace, tenacity, and steadfast resolve."
Leaders need attentional flexibility, which refers to their ability to control their focus of attention. When leaders cannot clear their minds, they may turn their attention inward, hindering their ability to connect with their immediate environment. Adverse outcomes, unexpected news, or sudden changes in the environment or the team they lead can cause mental interference.
High performance requires the ability to change course in adverse situations, but leaders do not have much time to dwell on past problems. Instead, they need attentional flexibility to adapt quickly.
Attentional flexibility is equally vital for maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Leaders who can set aside preoccupations can lead a fulfilling life beyond work, aligning with their environment's expectations. Cultivating attentional flexibility can also offer benefits such as maintaining different perspectives.
3. Presence (Visibility and Operational Distance)
A leader's management style is determined by their degree of engagement and presence. The contact distance between the leader and their team is a crucial aspect to consider.
Positioning oneself above the team, overseeing and managing each member's development, may provide immediate access to the team's output, but it often hinders the team’s growth and exposes the leader's insecurities. Similarly, excessive distance generates ambiguity among team members; thus, the leader should maintain an optimal distance and adjust it as needed for the team's evolution.
To foster a high-performance environment, define roles, and set standards for collaboration, the leader should remain approachable and close to the team. Gradually, as the team gains competence, the leader should become less visible and serves as an enabler. In teams with advanced technical proficiency and experienced members, the leader's role becomes almost imperceptible.
In Conclusion
High-performance sports teams require leaders to possess essential interpersonal and intrapersonal skills and visibility. Key interpersonal skills include communication, fairness, and fostering enjoyment, while essential intrapersonal skills encompass positive self-talk, activation regulation, and attentional flexibility. Leaders must sustain an ideal proximity and modify it as required for the team's progression. Although these skills are indispensable for sports team leaders, they can also prove advantageous for corporate leaders. By integrating these skills into their leadership style, leaders can cultivate a high-performance environment that promotes growth and achievement for both themselves and their team members.
NOTE:
(1) Essential communication skills for high-performance leaders encompass the capacity to: Convey clear and direct messages; Set objectives; Persuade on an individual and collective level; Speak with the use of data; Let the team speak for itself; Listen to the team and identify the team's message; Customize messages that are geared towards different generations; Reward and punish(principles of reinforcement); Provide criticism as "opportunities for improvement"; Accept criticism; Give and ask for feedback; Carry out effective personal and group meetings; Confront without conflict and resolve conflicts; Slow down the conversation.
(2) Weinberg and Gould (1996). Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology.
(3) People born between 1981 and 2000 belong to Generation Y; they are typically online, defiant, independent, and distracted. They are known for multitasking, a driving style geared towards results. Those born after 2000 belong to Generation Z; they are digital natives, hyper-stimulated, and not very reflective. They are consumption leaders, described as collaborative, impatient, and creative. They tend to be competitive, career-driven, and highly emphasize diversity and inclusion initiatives.
(4) There are many strategies to increase enjoyment at work. One of the most effective strategies is to create a sense of belonging for the individual team members. It brings enormous benefits to any organization, and, in this respect, I highly recommend the brilliant book "Belonging" by Owen Eastwood.
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