How playing team sports builds better business leaders

(AP Photo: Itsuo Inouye)

"Today's youth will be tomorrow's leaders," says Dr. Rob Haworth, Vice President for the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) in Kansas City, MO.

"Students who participate in athletics are exposed to leadership role models (e.g. coaches) and often are required to exercise some degree of leadership with their peers (e.g. team captains), added Haworth, who is also the Director of the Champions of Character program at the NAIA.

However, Haworth believes that unless coaches effectively link the what to the how and clearly link for the athletes what is being taught and how it will be used beyond the sporting experience, the leadership learning opportunity will be limited.

When Mark Angelucci played intercollegiate golf he said he learned the following leadership skills:

How to relate to people who have different backgrounds and motivations.
How to deal with disappointment personally and in a team environment.

And, his having to balance sport and schoolwork effectively taught him important time management skills. Today, Angelucci is a Vice President and Managing Director at Hartford Financial Services Group in Utica, NY.

"Playing a sport taught me three lessons that I've found useful in my leadership positions" said Ravi Rao, who played high school soccer and is now a motivational speaker and executive leadership advisor in California. Those lessons are:

Ability can be enhanced or negated by attitude. Lack of ability can be overcome by exemplary attitude.
You are not an island. You play selfishly, the team will lose. It's not about you.
Success can heal a hurting community.

Haworth said that research is somewhat limited on the topic of whether athletic participation fosters leadership skills. However, he cited a study done in 1999 by Robert P. Dobosz and Lee A. Beaty that examined the relationship between athletic participation and high school students' leadership ability.

The study looked at athletes and nonathletes ranging in age from 15 to 18 years and included an equal number of males and females. The major finding of the study was that:

High school athletes did, in fact, outscore their nonathlete peers on the leadership ability measure.

The research added to other previous evidence to the theory that the types of personal and social behavior associated with athletic training and participation may indeed increase, or at least strengthen, high school students' leadership potential.

Haworth said a 2004 study he conducted showed that:

Athletes demonstrate a greater appreciation for social reasoning skills, such as the willingness to put others first.

however...

Nonathletes demonstrate a greater appreciation for moral reasoning attributes, such as honesty and justice.

Christine Harris, a manager in HR Information Systems at Saint Joseph's University in PA, started playing sports at age eight. She played soccer, field hockey, basketball, softball, lacrosse and also swam on a team. "Playing organized sports exposes you to teamwork and leadership at an early and impressionable age," she said. Her four lessons learned were:

We are all working toward the same goal.
Everyone contributes and everyone matters.
Being selfish will impede success.
There is a time to lead and a time to follow.

Kim Singletary, now Director of Solution Marketing at McAfee, Inc. in California, participated in synchronized team swimming both in high school and at the University of Michigan. Despite the ribbing she gets from colleagues about her sport, she said she learned many leadership lessons:

You are only as best as your weakest link.
On a team you must support and assist each other.
There is no bench or second string; everyone needs to perform and be prepared.

Perhaps most important, she said, "Nothing in business today is accomplished as individuals and in order to do big things there constantly needs to be a nurturing factor of the team and flexibility to leverage each contributor's strengths."

Haworth reminds us of the importance of the coaches' role in bridging the link between playing sports and building leadership skills. "Many coaches understand the basic formula for coaching: describe what it is that you want your athletes to do. Demonstrate what it is that you want your athletes to do. Direct your athletes toward successful completion of that task, and reinforce your athlete's attempts at what you previously described, demonstrated and directed."

"If we want our athletes to learn how to throw, shoot, run, block, etc....we use this formula. If we want out athletes to learn how to become effective leaders, coaches must also use this formula and model those qualities of leadership on and off the playing field," he added.

NAIA exists to advance character-drive intercollegiate athletics and its Champions of Character initiative began in 2000. The initiative is charged with changing the culture of sports. If you are a parent, coach or athlete and would like to know more about Champions of Character go to championsofcharacter.org.

Runner and Coach photo: iStock