# 36 - Boost Your Workplace Success: How a Sports Culture Can Transform Team Performance

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Far too many workplaces and businesses operate with an attitude of, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And people only receive feedback if something's gone wrong. What difference would it make to your workplace

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or to your business

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if you had a high performance culture,

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if you were able to have those tough conversations, if you build each other, up when things were going really well and set your sides and continuing to improve. I'm Ian Hawkins,

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and this is sport. Is life.

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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. You a chance before it's all over.

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I worked at Fox Sports for 18 years. Is a fantastic place to work. There's full of other people who love their sport, fans, people who played, of course, in front of the camera. There was a lot of people there who were former elite athletes, sometimes people who are still playing

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interestingly, probably about

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as well past halfway in my 18 years there, I started learning this concept of living like an athlete. And what that suggested was is athletes walk tall. Athletes walk with confidence. They're happy to have the tough conversations. They're not only used to receiving praise, but also used to receiving constructive feedback. They also made sure that they lifted other people up, gave other people praise and and validation, acknowledgement their teammates when they were doing well. And this same piece that I was reading talked about how little that happens in a workplace, how little it happens in other parts of life. And I think back to my days there at Fox Sports and and in other workplaces I've been in, and from talking to other people, is that usually what happens is when you hear nothing, that means things are going well. So silence quite the opposite of that sports culture. And that was true there too. You'd hear about it when things went wrong, but generally, if things were quiet, then you knew you were doing the right thing. So there wasn't that same positivity and building each other up and and validation of where things were going well, and while tough conversations had to be had when things went wrong. They weren't necessarily those tough conversations to improve things. It was more reactive, rather than proactive. Again, not necessarily how athletes live, particularly those high performing ones, they're always looking at ways to improve. Now, at the point I learned this, I was at that point myself, when I was wanting to improve myself. I was sick of Despite the success that I had, I was sick of feeling mediocre and feeling average and feeling like I wasn't doing well enough when I knew I had so much more potential. So to learn this concept, I was actually really excited about bringing more of that to the table. Definitely something I could see from terms of a team building perspective, is, how do we get them more out of each other as teams like we do in a sporting environment? I was leading a number of teams at that point, and I was thinking, okay, how can we bring more of this to the table? And I really enjoyed throwing myself into that,

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and it got results.

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I was already coaching as a manager, so coaching my staff, because I was learning all about coaching through a sport lens, but also from a personal coaching perspective, I was getting good results with my staff as well. We were putting processes in place, all of these sporting concepts. Well, making sure our process matched, processes matched up with the other departments we were working with. So making sure that we had everything in place to make sure we were high performing. What I know is that so many workplaces don't do this one, because it's not really something that you get taught. You go into a work environment, and typically the culture is exactly like I described. Is if things are going well, then we just don't talk about it. Now I will say that businesses are certainly getting better at this. But from the people I speak to. So in general, this is still not a culture of this sort of high performing mindset, of putting these processes in place to get the best out of everyone and to create connected teams. Now, whatever your workplace is, whether you have your own business, whether you work in a job, you work with other people. I imagine at some point you're coming across other people. So my question to you is, are you bringing those same things that you know work in a sporting environment? Are you bringing them to the table?

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Have a think about it for a minute. What?

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What is it that you know when you're playing? What is it that works, or if you're coaching in sport, what does it you know works? If you're an admin, if you're someone that's volunteering your time, what are the things that you know work, and are you bringing them to other areas of your life? I often have this conversation with the people I'm coaching when they they're talking about work, and I'm and I'm saying, Okay, let's let's find that area at in your work that's going really well, and let's apply that to the your personal life. And often the reaction is, oh, but I don't want to bring work home. I'm like, you're not bringing work home. You're bringing those same high performance processes and systems that you do get working in those environments, and you're just mapping them across. And it's the same with sport. Can you map things across it, you know, work to other areas and vice versa. Because when you can get the key elements of those processes and then map them across, you can be successful in any area. Start to have a think about you, the athlete, you in sport. What can I do? What can I take across now, for me, I'm the sort of person that I love. I love to be vocal, I love to be conversation. I'm that sort of person in sport. I am that, that cheerleader. I naturally do that. I'm naturally building people up. It helps me to play better when I'm operating like that, you might be more of a go and do your thing at the best of your ability, and let everyone follow you by the example you're setting. Maybe it's a creative aspect, whatever it is. Well, how can you map that across? What are the key elements of what you bring to the table? You can map across to other areas. Now, in a corporate environment, me the conversationalist and the cheerleader. I struggled at first with that, that idea, because where I was hard work or working well, meant being there for long hours, sitting in front of a computer, churning out all the different detailed processes that needed to be applied. But that just wasn't me. Once I learned that I could add the most value by operating in a workplace the same way I operated best at sport. Changed everything. I started to work hard, and I do that in sport too, with lacking skill in certain areas, and made sure I was one of the hardest working people out there, because I knew that was a difference maker. So still did that, but I was doing it in a way that actually suited who I was naturally, to start to have a thing about that, start to really look at those areas of success. What is in place when you are operating at your best, when you're being a high performer, when you are living like an athlete. I thought about when I was going through this process is when, when I was at my best, I would be in that change room before we went out, and I would just love how it felt to have my football uniform on to like, feel like I was standing standing taller and and stronger, and then going out there and and not intimidating, but by being that presence, and I was thinking, Is there a reason why I can't do that elsewhere? And the answer was no, there wasn't. So that's what I started trying to be. And at first that was challenging, but the more I did it, the better I got. And sometimes when you start operating in a different way, like I started up being how I dressed, I started changing how operated, then sometimes some of the people that maybe you operating at the same level at before can make a few jokes about you and maybe maybe make a few comments and maybe try and cut you down. And that can be challenging when you've been in that comfort zone for a long time, but you want to raise the bar. You got to do things differently, and you got to be prepared to wear whatever comes didn't bother me in sport, I'd have said as a challenge to go well, I'm going to show you. You can say whatever you want, but I'm going to give my absolute best here. I started doing that in a work environment as well, and soon enough, not only did my performance improve, my results improve, but. That rippled out to the teams that I was leading and to everyone I came in contact with. My team members would then tell their friends who worked in the business to come and get some coaching from me, because they knew that it was working. They knew they were in a environment that was positive, that they felt good about what they were doing, that they were going above and beyond, because they felt so connected and and so purposeful, and they wanted the same for their friends as well. And this is what's possible when we bring that to the table. Be the athlete, be the high performer, and watch that flow through. And of course, you map it across to family life. How can you be more in that space there as well? Not the emotional reactions that sometimes we get from sport, but those high performance processes, more of that sense of connection, more encouragement. Have the tough conversations, but not from a emotional perspective, but having them after the game, or in the example of home, let the things die down and then have the tough conversation, then sweep it under the rug, because you'll keep repeating the same patterns.

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I'll leave it there, but I'll

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just

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ask the question again for you to pose to yourself is, where

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can you be living more like an athlete. Where can you apply that more to the day to day, to your workforce, to your workplace, rather, and start getting better results for you and your whole workplace. You've taken the time to listen to this whole episode. Now it's time to take action, commit to one thing you learned today and make it happen and to avoid any obstructions you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai