What makes a great sporting leader?

When you look at the characteristics of leaders and their teams, there are several parallels that can be drawn across the most successful. Mia looks at the six traits that form the building blocks for elite sporting success.

Trust
What makes an environment good for any kind of an employee and athlete? There was some research recently that highlighted trust as a component you must possess in order to feel safe and to feel good. That trust enables you to explore, to take risks and try out new things. In sport, as with any kind of company, you need to explore to improve and, sometimes, you will make mistakes doing that, so the environment needs to be friendly and feel safe enough to speak out, try new things and just be yourself. 

Communication
How do we enable trust? Good dialogue. Trust itself is based on many things, good dialogue prevents problems but also helps us to have a good dynamic, allowing people to understand where the other is coming from. Also, if you have excellent dialogue, you can throw ideas in and you can say what does and doesn’t work and you can give feedback – not just positive feedback but creative, negative feedback too. This is something that allows you to find or evaluate how good a team is. When everything is going well, we are good at giving feedback, we can give praise, but then when we end up having problems, or our team loses, that is the moment when your ability to talk and have a good fruitful dialogue is measured. Learn to talk, communicate and have a good dialogue when it is needed and it will be vital to success – and it’s always needed most when you’re having difficulties.

Structure
Everybody needs to know their roles and responsibilities within a team – if you have three people or more, it’s classed as a group or a team, and you need to figure out what their position is, what they are responsible for, what they need to do. If there isn’t a structure for people it’s really risky and problems will arise from that. 

For instance, you may know what is asked from you but you also know what your responsibility is – for instance if you’re the player that needs to carry the team – you need to know that. How can you call yourself a leader if there isn’t any structure? You don’t want to get feedback from someone you don’t value or look up to. If you’re at the top of the food chain, act in a way that people can respect you and follow you. In traditional sports and egaming, if a respected manager says ‘come on guys, I know you can do this’ that’s sometimes all they need as they’re looked up to.

Wellbeing
This is so important – ensure you consider the general wellbeing of the humans that are doing the job. By improving the wellbeing of the individuals in the team, we can maximise the performance, prevent issues, we can help them have better mental and physical health and that affects the dynamics within the group. If there’s one burnt out, tired person in that group of, say 15 people, that toxic behaviour or disappointment might start affecting the other people as well. They need to rest, sleep, eat, take care of their personal lives, they need to be balanced. Although we’re living in 2020 I’ve never seen a situation where someone didn’t need support, help, medication or sick leave. 

Goals
There’s no use getting out into the field if you don’t know what you want and what you’re doing it for. We need to have goals and targets, things that we’re reaching for, the steps that we’re taking to come closer to what we’re after. It needs to be clear. If I ask an Olympic athlete what are your goals and aspirations, they may say ‘I want to win an Olympic gold’. Do you have any other goals or things you want to achieve on the way? ‘No’. It’s too big to say that and unreachable. It needs to be broken down. You need to tell me that this year, I want to be the best one in my country, next year I need to go to the Europeans and need to be top 10, the year after that, the world championship and then hopefully I’ll be in the world championships in the top ten and then in my fourth year I will be in my first Olympics and hopefully there I will reach this and that… 

People have too abstract goals. You don’t go straight to a marathon, there are five to ten steps to lead you there otherwise you’re going to be demotivated by not achieving it. You need to map out what you’re doing and have clarity in where you’re going. Having those steps and goals helps people stay connected, motivated and committed to the target. It makes things very clear.

Positivity
Finally, you need to give praise, positive comments – this is the glue that keeps people together, but it’s also the fuel that keeps people going. Being super-critical and demanding stuff, even being harsh on yourself – you can conquer the world by being nice to yourself – and you can see what happens to people [if you are harsh to them], they don’t enjoy it so much anymore, they seem sour, they start thinking it’s too much travelling, they lose some of the enthusiasm. Positivity means you have good self-confidence, it means you have good self-image, you’re a good team-mate, a good leader and maintain people’s motivation.