The “Olympic mindset”: Do elite athletes make elite employees?
- It’s common to read articles or social media posts comparing sporting success with business success. It’s often argued that elite athletes make good workers.
- To explore how true this is, Big Think spoke with Dom Broad from the Olympic Mindset Podcast.
- Broad explains that there are many transferable and useful skills you learn as a sportsperson, but there are also a few key areas where they diverge.
You yawn. It’s your third yawn in as many minutes. Your eyes are dry, your wrist is tired, and you’ve been sitting for so long, your legs feel like dead weight. You’ve interviewed fifteen candidates for one job, and none of them is any good. Sigh.
“Bring in the next one,” you mutter. In walks the interviewee archetype. Nice suit, winning smile, firm handshake.
“So, why do you think you’d be good for this job?” you ask.
“Well, first, I’m determined. I’ve had to wake up everyday at 5 a.m. to train for three hours for the last six years. Second, I perform under pressure. I’ve competed in front of crowded stadiums and to billions of people worldwide. Third, I’m a team player. My entire life involves coordinating my efforts with my squad and my coach. Finally, I’m resilient. I’ve lost and I’ve failed a lot. I’ve been down, exhausted, and defeated. But here I am, sitting here, holding this.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s my medal from Rio. I won.”
That’s quite the answer. It’s quite the candidate. You think it’s about time you hired an Olympian.
The Olympic mindset
A lot has been written about the connection between sporting success and business success. Retired sports stars make for great event speakers and it’s been argued that the skills you learn in sports are easily transferable to the workplace. There has been so much written about this connection that it risks turning into noise. It’s so generic that it’s pointless to read and boring to sit through. Likewise, the modern workplace is littered with sporting clichés. If you put your game face on, and go the extra mile and bring your A game, you’ll slam dunk that deal. But if you dropped the ball, don’t worry. Remember it’s a marathon, not a sprint and to take it one play at a time.
How much truth is there in all this? How much wisdom lies hidden in those clichés and how much is just vacuous? To answer this, Big Think spoke with Dominic Broad, the host of the Olympic Mindset Podcast and founder of OMP Coaching. Broad’s podcast interviews dozens of Olympians and professional athletes. They share their stories and reveal what life is actually like for someone at the end of their sporting journey. So, here are realities behind the sports-business narrative.
The selfish Olympian
Dominic Broad: “Okay, so I’m going to say this. Now, I’ve hired a number of the Olympians that I work with, and so I’m okay saying this because they can accept it. Olympians and highly successful sportspeople are extremely selfish. And they have to be. They miss weddings, they miss funerals, they miss birthdays, they miss Christmas. They put everything into achieving their career goals.”
Almost anything truly great will come with a price tag. To be the best in the world at anything, or to make millions in your job, or to become the CEO of some huge company takes a lot of effort. But what Broad is talking about here is just what that effort means. If your colleague puts on social media a quote like “Nothing worth having was ever achieved without effort,” you might find yourself liking the post and nodding aggressively at your screen. But if that same colleague put, “The only way to succeed in life is to miss your son’s first birthday, your dad’s funeral, and your best friend’s wedding,” you probably won’t be nodding as much.
As a society, we like the idea of trying hard and doing our best, but only within certain parameters. Don’t endanger your health, don’t ghost your friends, don’t undervalue your family.
Most people are unwilling to give the effort needed to be truly great in life. As a society, we like the idea of trying hard and doing our best, but only within certain parameters. Don’t endanger your health, don’t ghost your friends, don’t undervalue your family. When we celebrate the Olympian, holding their medal aloft to a nation’s collective cheers, we do not see the sacrifices they’ve made along the way. It might be a partner, exhausted from keeping the household together. It might be a friend, who’s needed to depend on someone else. It might be a child, who’s seen more of her parent on TV than in person for the last three months.
This is what effort means for a lot of Olympians. It’s what “going the extra mile” means for elite athletes. Now, it takes a certain kind of pedant to say, “Well, you can’t actually give 110%” but it’s true in the sense that the “extra 10%” is the bit most people in society aren’t willing to do. It’s something most people look down on and sneer at. It’s selfish to miss your kid’s birthday. It’s deranged to train or to work past your breaking point. It’s disturbed to miss your dad’s funeral. Possibly, but that’s often what it takes.
The imposter
Dominic Broad: “The reason the podcast exists at all is because I was suffering with imposter syndrome. As you probably know, around 75% of people struggle with imposter syndrome, typically women or typically academics. But it’s also a very common thing to see in an athlete and in high performing individuals. Lots of these people place all of the stress and strain on themselves. They struggle to share the workload. They struggle to accept praise. They struggle to accept that if they worked hard towards something, it’s their effort, and it’s not just lucky. Which is why we see lots of superstitions in sport. And I think it’s starting to unpick those things and realize that psychologically they can actually be quite damaging.”
There is an unstillable restlessness to the truly successful person. They are often never contented with what they have. In many ways, this is the necessary precondition for being great in the first place. If Usain Bolt was happy with winning only his school athletics trophy, he’d not have gone on to be the greatest sprinter in human history. If Elon Musk retired to a mansion and a yacht with the mere millions he earned from selling Zip2, he’d not be the richest man in the world. The history books are full of people who were not content with “enough” but wanted more. And, as Broad mentions, this can often spill over into a “damaging” form of imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome is a kind of internalised need to be more all of the time. In elite sports and at events like the Olympics, this need to be or get more can often lead to fame and success. The targets are external. The destination is visible. But when you hang up the sports top and put on a suit, that need is directed inwards. No matter how many accolades or promotions you get, you never feel right for the job. You always feel the need to justify your title and to prove your place in the office.
If you put someone who always needs to win the game in an unwinnable game, they’re going to bleed themselves dry. In a work place, there are milestones and achievements. But there’s always more money to earn. There’s always more work you can do. If you race on a hamster wheel, you’re going to lose eventually.
Hexis and virtue
Dominic Broad: “Okay, so there’s one person who I interviewed. The interview is not going live — their interview never launched and never will. This person gave some pretty terrible advice around mental health about how, you know, it doesn’t matter if you’re struggling or if you’re depressed. Just get out there and go. I think that’s just it’s tone deaf at the moment, right? It’s not appropriate. We completely recognize that people are struggling. There are definitely mental health issues that we have to resolve as adults, as parents, as the generation ahead. So, I don’t think it’s useful to have somebody saying, ‘Oh, just get on with it.’ I disagree with that completely. I think there’s a time and a place for resilience and working hard and pushing through. But if you need help, absolutely ask for help.”
So much of what is said about “effective working” or “transferable skills” was said several millennia ago. But it was called “excellence.” It was called “virtue.” And it goes back to Aristotle. When we admire certain sportspeople or successful members of society we are admiring certain virtues that they embody. The Olympics represent the virtues of determination, resilience, fortitude, and respect. An innovator or entrepreneur represents gumption, creativity, energy, and vision. But according to Aristotle, each virtue can morph into a vice when you either take it too far or take it out of context. For Aristotle, a virtue (arete) is a skill (hexis) guided by practical wisdom (phronesis). A hero is someone with the ability to fight against a worthy enemy, not the ability to fight an innocent victim.
Broad is getting at something similar, here. There are certain virtues that Olympians possess because they exist within an Olympic paradigm. “Always give your all” might be virtuous during a training session but it’s not if you’re play-wrestling with a five-year-old. Likewise, as Broad mentions, “pushing through” is necessary when you’re pushing your personal best time, but it’s not when it comes to your mental health. Some things need addressing. Sometimes you need to compromise. You need to know (phronesis) when to apply your skill (hexis).
The verdict
So, do Olympians make for good employees? Do elite sports people make effective CEOs? If we believe Aristotle, it comes down to how wise they are. They will no doubt have the skills, abilities, and resolve necessary to do so. But they will need phronesis to know when and how to apply those skills? And, the difficulty with phronesis is that you only really learn it “on the job.”
Do elite athletes make elite employees? You’ll only really know after they’ve got the job.
You can find The Olympic Mindset podcast on Spotfiy, Apple Podcasts, and Instagram.
