# 30 - Melbourne Cup Jockeys & Business Leaders: Surprising Similarities in Winning Strategies

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So trust is the single most important thing for you to have within your organization. If the people in your organization are not getting the best out of themselves at the moment, where do you need to add more trust? So on Tuesday in Australia, one of the most significant events on the Australian sporting calendar, the Melbourne Cup, the so called race that stops the nation. So as a business leader, someone that has their own business, the CEO, someone that manages groups of people, leads groups of people. What can you learn from those Melbourne Cup jockeys, the best of the best who have to navigate those high pressure environments every year to try and get the best results for themselves and for their team. I'm Ian Hawkins, and this is sport. Is life. The purpose of sport, as I see it, is to see your vision become a reality, find your voice, create strong connections and learn to trust your body.

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Back Did you know that horses

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actually have two pretty significant blind spots, not significant in terms of the width of that view, but in terms of where they are. So they've got an eye on each side of their head that see different things, but work in unison. So it allows them to cover nearly the 360 degree spread, but directly in front of them, they have a blind spot, and directly behind them, they have a blind spot. So if you look at the Melbourne Cup, the biggest race in Australia, from in terms of popularity and and I'm sure the race racing aficionados will go into more detail about maybe, why it's not, but in terms of like, culturally, it's the biggest race of the year. So the best, of the best jockeys are on those horses, and those jockeys have to build trust with those horses so that they can be the eyes for those spots, so they can navigate, help navigate that Horse around the track and be the eyes have that trust with the horse, so the horse trusts them to know that they're going to be able to help them. And you think about those horses also, they've got blinkers on so that their vision is even, even less, and that relationship is so important. Now, as a business leader, your role is to help make sure that those people that you are leading,

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that you've got their blind spots covered,

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to have enough trust between you and them, so that they're comfortable, So they feel 100% safe, that you've got them covered for their blind spots. Now, whether they're a man or a woman, in their own unique way, which is different, right? We all operate differently, they need to know that you've got those blind spot covered, those blind spots covered. So trust is the single most important thing for you to have within your organization. If the people in your organization are not getting the best out of themselves at the moment, where do you need to add more trust? Where do they need to know that you do have them covered where perhaps they don't feel that at the moment, or where do they need some help for those blind spots where things aren't going so well?

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A lot of the time,

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those people in your organization are a lot like the horses, apart from their usual role of going on whatever path that is going around the track the same cycle of whatever they do each and every day,

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they can't see a lot outside of that.

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Now, of course, there are people that naturally throw themselves into a whole lot of different areas of the the organization, and they're the ones that stand out, but for most people, they're just running the same pattern. And if you continue just to run the same pattern, then you're not helping them in this space. Then you're going to have a trust issue, and you're going to have a performance. Tissue, and you're gonna have a results issue. So you need to be that Melbourne Cup jockey. You need to be the best of the best to help make sure you've got that level of trust so that your people always feel safe. Because when your people feel safe, they're more likely to push themselves to the limit, to perform at even higher levels, to go outside of the day to day, and go above and beyond their normal role to create something or to build something that's going to be beneficial to them, to you and to the whole business, because there's that level of trust. They're not worried that if they make a mistake, you're going to come down hard on them, or proverb the proverbial whip. But they know that they can go and do what they need to do. They can try things that they can if the business allows it, take risks, or whatever it is that you want them to do, to go above whatever the day to day is. So you need to be their eyes where they can't see. And you need to build that level of trust so that you give yourself the best chance of when the whips are cracking in your business that you know that there's this relationship that's so safe that you know your team are going to give their absolute to make sure you're hitting that when you post with everything you've got, you've taken the time to listen to this whole episode. Now it's time to take action, commit to one thing you've learned today and make it happen, and to avoid any obstructions, join the sport is life movement by clicking on the link in the show notes you

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