As some of you know, I have been a competitive athlete for most of my life, and for the last 20 years I have been a competitive triathlete, racing nationally and internationally. Over this period I have had the opportunity to represent Canada at the World Triathlon Championships.
Racing with some of the best elite-level endurance athletes in the world has given me the opportunity to learn and use a variety of high-performance skills. As an organizational high-performance development specialist I am always amazed how many performance skills in the area of athletics are transferable into many situations organizations in our fast-paced, ever changing work world deal with.
I have been asked to do a series of blog posts examining some of the qualities of elite-level athletes, and how professionals can use these skills within their organizations.
One of these qualities elite-level athletes posses is the desire to learn. Like most professionals who are committed to their profession, elite-level athletes never want the feeling they are in the dark. They always have a desire to learn from new experiences and from formal studies.
I once worked with a VP of Sales trying to discover innovative ways to sell our products and services within a very competitive marketplace. Knowing that our clients were well educated and always seeking to learn new skills and tools to help them perform better, I suggested to my VP that we create training and coaching services to complement the products we were selling.
Just like the elite-level athletes, our clients found great value in the training and coaching service we started providing, which enabled our company to become a valued and trusted business partner. This performance learning experience gave our clients the confidence to renew their contracts with us for multiple years instead of going with the standard one year renewal. This was an early example in my career of organizational performance learning and ROI.
Turn Your Knowledge into Action
1) As a leader or manager, how are you creating a performance environment that includes continuous learning, both formal and informal?
2) What are the current areas within your role where you can learn more and improve your performance?
NEXT STEP
If you would like to learn more about how I can assist your organization to elevate performance, please contact me at 416-429-1247 or email at paul@actusperformance.com.
All the best in achieving your highest performance.
Paul