Learning management and leadership skills through sports

Abstract

This paper is a decent attempt to tell the readers how sports can help in learning important management lessons. There are people who perform well in individual work settings; also there are people who perform well in a group setting. When an employee joins an organization, he contributes as an individual contributor. But as his responsibilities increase, he has to work with other teams, later needed to lead his own team, and then his other capabilities like work as team players, leading capabilities, decision making etc. come into the picture. These qualities are really very important to succeed in professional life. Successful executive came from a range of backgrounds. What they have in common has been a drive to succeed going back to childhood, a drive in the classroom as well as the field of competition. They say their experiences in sports helped them develop skills, strategies and habits that contribute to success in business. Through the project we looked into examples where sports played an important role in achieving success. Many CEOs of large organisations boast of saying about their sports related habits. We studied the real life examples and what and how successful people learnt lessons from sports and drawn conclusion out of those. First half of the report emphasize on the impact of sports on an individual. How sports can help an individual to attain qualities like pressure handling, confidence building, task management etc. A player requires all these qualities to perform well in an event. By playing in sports tournaments/games, a child starts developing these important skills or qualities into his personality. Report describes how these qualities help an individual to succeed in life. Second half of the report focuses on the lessons that help an individual to perform well as a team. There are qualities like setting a goal; leading by example, clear communication with the team etc. are easily learnt through the medium of sports. Last but not the least the report covers most of the characteristics of sports and how playing sports means much needed quality translated in the personality of a successful manager or executives. These qualities keep employees motivated to achieve more in an efficient manner and help organisations grow.