All managers agree on one fact: the world of business and the world of sport have many similarities. Facing the competition, preparing for major deadlines, managing stress, so many situations are found in both environments.

In addition, more and more leaders are involving top athletes and coaches in seminars.

What if the manager found in the practices of sports coaches methods that would allow him to give his management a fresh look?

Similarities between business and sport

1) Overcoming failure

All the best coaches in the world have a career marked by failures, sometimes stinging. When success is not there, the coach must re-motivate his team and succeed in getting them to learn from the failure.

In the same way, the manager must manage to overcome the difficulties and crises through which his company may go through. He must be able to transform failure, study it to make it the foundation of future performance.

2) Choosing the right people

Passion is at the center of sport. When on a team there are players whose achievements are motivated primarily by gain and fame, this is reflected in the cohesion of the team and subsequently in its results.

The coach feels this and prefers to work with those who give their all and who put their ambitions at the service of the team and the objective.

In his book From performance to excellence, Jim Collins says he did not find a significant difference between the compensation schemes of top managers from excellent companies and those of comparison companies.

The manager who wants to lead his company to excellence puts in his boat not those who will give the best of themselves for what they will get as glory, but because they do not imagine doing less.

3) Have internal relays

A coach must have one or more people on his team who can motivate his teammates and maintain the vision. He was one of the key elements of the French team that won the World Cup in 1998. Aimé Jacquet could count on Laurent Blanc and Didier Deschamps to establish his strategy within the team.

In the same way, a manager must surround himself with trustworthy people who understand the company's project, who adhere to it and who echo it with other employees. It is on these relays that the manager can rely, even in his absence, to carry the vision and ensure its sustainability.

4) Focus on complementarity

On a soccer field or on a basketball court, the coach clearly distributes the roles of each person, according to their talent. There are some whose main role is to score goals, while others are supposed to make assists.

If some fail in their duty, others will not be able to complete their mission and the whole team will suffer. A good coach must know how to combine talents and not simply add them up.

In the company, everyone must know what their place is, what they should give to the other as support. The manager must be able to highlight this complementarity between the various collaborators, to make them converge towards the goal.

By directing the entire team towards a clear objective, individualities are put in the background, to the benefit of the common project.

5) Assume responsibility in case of failure

In the world of sport, in the event of a team's failure, responsibility is primarily attributed to the coach. Likewise, a good leader should look within himself for the causes of failure, and not in his team.

Jim Collins, in his book quoted above, calls this The mirror. Great leaders look to the mirror to take responsibility for a malfunction without ever blaming others, external factors, or bad luck.

Integrating the values of sport into business management

Managers would benefit from integrating certain sports values into the daily management of the company.

In addition, the practice of sport between employees is itself a vector of social and psychological proximity, particularly team sports.

Apart from the benefits that this provides to the body and the mind, the practice of sport between collaborators will allow everyone to indirectly integrate these values of sport into common relationships.