The lessons learned from participating in sports and being on a team have broad applications across our live and careers. This has been an interest of mine since I entered the workforce and over the next several weeks I’m going to put together a few articles about these lessons. The series will include lessons others have shared with me along with some of my experiences in taking things from sports and applying them to our lives and businesses.
I’ll begin with one that hits close to home from this past weekend of college football. There are few activities outside the world of sports, where emotions can go from the ultimate high to the lowest lows in such a short period of time. This happens often. Through the course of every competitive contest, and even during those contests that are not so competitive, momentum often turns quickly and an athlete’s emotions go from disappointment to euphoria or the other way around in an instant. This also happens from game to game throughout a season and the pressure to not only win each game, but perform well in each game may not be felt anywhere as intensely as it is felt in the world of college football. (An extremely brief history on NCAA Football Championships and my argument for why each game is so important.)
As some of you may know, I graduated from the University of Mississippi. For this post, more importantly, you should also know that I played linebacker for the Ole Miss Rebels. Going into last week’s rivalry game against LSU, Ole Miss had an undefeated 7 and 0 record and was tied with Mississippi State (MSU) for leadership in the Southeastern Conference’s Western Division. Along with Florida State, Ole Miss, and MSU were the only three big conference teams with an unblemished record and at the top of the polls. Stay undefeated and you are assured of a spot in the four team National Championship Playoff. Lose a game and you join a host of other one loss teams.
I won’t go into the details of the game, but Ole Miss went to Baton Rouge to play LSU and lost a defensive struggle, 10 to 7. It was a long, hard fought game and one of twenty plays here or there could have changed the outcome. In the immediate aftermath, any thoughts about what can be are overwhelmed with what might have been. These feelings go through all of us when our team stumbles. However, Ole Miss still controls it’s own destiny. You see, Ole Miss plays Mississippi State at the end of the season. So, should Ole Miss win the rest of their regular season games, they win the Western division and play in the SEC Championship game. Win that game, and they are assured of a position in the playoffs. I’m sure the coaching staff is telling the Ole Miss team a detailed version of this story. The LSU game is over. You can’t affect it. It is out of your control. You can affect how you prepare and play against Auburn next week. You can learn from mistakes and get better. Build on the good things you did to put yourself in the position to absorb one setback and get back on track. We know the type of young men you are and we know you will do just this.
They will spend little time talking about the alternative, because in sports everyone knows that is a recipe for disaster. Feel sorry for yourself, dwell on the setback, point fingers, or make excuses and next week’s contest will seem like a hammer fight and you are the only one without a hammer. You focus on what you can control. Now leaving the LSU stadium Saturday night, I’m sure it did not seem straightforward and the positive emotions necessary to get ready for a top 10 matchup were still a few hours away. But getting past the disappointment and focusing on what you can control has to be the mission.
This is very similar to a business losing a big deal or missing the mark with a product delivery or missing a quarter or running into a number of other significant setbacks. You work hard, you work smart, and yet you still lose the deal or you miss a key deadline. These emotional letdowns affect people significantly and how one reacts is primarily affected by two things, 1) their experience in overcoming setbacks before and 2) their determination to succeed, their grit. So, how do you pick yourself up and give the same effort the next week? You focus only on those things which you control.
On the football field, you control the game plan you put in place, the way the team prepares to execute that plan, and the individual work each team member puts into being better at their position. For businesses, it is very similar. You focus on the things that you control: the strategy, the execution of that strategy, how you engage the customer, and how well your product performs. This is not to say you don’t seek out and learn from your losses. Of course you do. You learn from every encounter you have with every customer, partner, and supplier. You learn every time you engage the competition. Often you learn more from the losses than you do from the wins. You seek where you can improve and the changes you can make to provide a better solution, to offer a more compelling outcome. Not to point fingers, not to place blame, not to find excuses, but to get better. You focus on the things you can control and improve. You get past the disappointment by taking a realistic look at where you are today and what is required to achieve your goals.
I look forward to seeing how the rebels bounce back over this next week. I know it won’t be easy for them to go out and prepare over the rest of this week with the same level of energy and excitement. However, I do believe they will. The coaching staff will put together a good plan, and I expect them to play with a lot of intensity and effort against a very good Auburn team on Saturday. And it is my hope, regardless of the outcome of that game, that everyone on the team walks off the field knowing they did everything they could in both preparation and execution to win.