Are the values that drive great athletes similar to the values that drive successful entrepreneurs… and can these values be taught? There is no doubt that great athletes are born with natural abilities but I’m not talking about natural ability or even the skills learned from good coaching. I’m talking about core values like the unbounded determination to win, that differentiates a great athlete and separates great athletes from merely good athletes.
Values like determination, risk taking, and the ability to overcome obstacles that move great athletes ahead of the competition. Many athletes develop skills and become good at their game but lack the drive needed to make them great… just as in business, where there are good managers who seem to lack the drive that could turn them into successful entrepreneurs. An athlete’s desire to win can be seen in the determination they bring to their game.
In most of the motivational sports stories we hear it’s hard to tell where the athletes skills end and their determination to win begins. To understand how an entrepreneur might apply these same values to achieve success we need to separate the athlete’s technical skills and natural ability from the core values that drive him.
We have all heard stories about athletes who overcome great obstacles to achieve their goal. Unfortunately, when you hear these stories you only hear about a small part of the athletes life. These stories often leave you with the feeling that something is missing… sports stories tend to be “cliff hangers” that don’t tell you what happened to the athlete later in life.
You hear how the athlete accomplishes their immediate goal but you’re left to wonder what will become of his life once he moves beyond the sports arena. The implied ending in most sports stories is that the athlete will go on to achieve other great things in his life but we know that is not always the case. Because the story is limited to his success on the court, you can’t tell whether his success was due solely to his athletic skills or to the determination that drove him.
To gain insight into the role values like determination played we have to see what happens to his life after his athletes skills fade. Will his determination to succeed bring him new accomplishments in other areas? We know that some athletes go on to find great second careers in business while others, sadly, never find further success in life and some even fall to crime once their athletic careers end. What are the core values that continue to drive some athletes forward and enables them to succeed later in life? These are the values we want entrepreneurs to learn.
Jim Grebey is a business operations specialist and the President of Diligent Inc. He is the author of “The Determined Entrepreneur – The Story of Dr. George Tinsley and the Values that Guided his Journey to Success” and “Operations Due Diligence – An M&A Guide for Investors and Business” by McGraw Hill. Follow him on Twitter @Grebey
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