The end of an athlete’s sporting life is a scary and very real situation. This unsettling time of change causes such anxiety that many of my athletic friends have chosen to ignore the possibility rather than confront it.
Chat is thrown around about how they’re doing university degrees alongside training, so they will be able to get a job when they make the transition. What must be confronted though – is our lack of work experience. Sport teaches us a range of life skills, all of which are transferable both in life and business post our professional eras.
I’m more interested in what sport doesn’t teach us though.
Why it’s necessary…
Recently a great man, a man whom I held a lot of respect for, took his own life. This tragedy confused me. Here was a man who had reached the pinnacle in his sport and then in retirement had become very successful in business. This man was ultra-intelligent having studied at Cambridge, he had a strong group of friends and a beautiful family. Yet leading up to the event he spoke of his struggle to adapt to post sport life. What went wrong? Here was a bloke that seemed to have all the tools to succeed post sport, but obviously was missing something.
This situation upset me terribly, especially after reading a friend’s blog. I’ve always had a brazen arrogance that as a sportsperson I had experienced so much hardship and physical and mental endurance – that I would be able to take any challenge around my post-sport life head on. It became clear I needed to ask for help on this matter.
I spoke to many people I’ve met throughout my sporting career for their opinion. I asked them a simple question, with no explanation and let them answer it however they wished. ‘In your opinion, what is the most important life skill that sport did not teach you?’
What is the most important life skill that sport did not teach you?
The responses I got were incredible. Here were athletes that had achieved many great things through their sporting life, yet were happy to give honest outlooks upon their struggles. One thing became apparent, there is nothing comparable to a sporting environment. I received answers from athletes now in big business, media, hospitality, teaching and a range of other careers. It seems that these career segments, all with their own challenges and rewards, required skills not learnt from sport. Or as one respondent put it:
‘Say I go for a drastic career change. Stop being an accountant and become a graphic designer. Two fields on the opposite end of the spectrum. All the business skills I learnt whilst being an accountant are transferrable. I’ll still be in an office all day, I’ll still have to deal with office politics and I’ll still have to deal with deadlines and self-management. Although completely different jobs, the skill-set required, not including job specific knowledge, is essentially the same. When finishing my time with soccer, I soon learnt I had none of these skills.’
The Three Skills to Learn…
Communication
I was 20 years old, my first training with the National Rugby Sevens team, and I was seriously nervous. We were doing a simple passing drill. I dropped the ball by no fault of anyone but mine. Now growing up in sport you’re always taught to be positive. I was expecting a:
‘You’re alright Figgy, next one mate, you’ll get it.’
Instead I got something along the lines of:
‘That’s not good enough mate, if I throw you a pass like that I expect you to catch it. Be better.’
Although at first shocked, I soon figured out what was happening. You see I wasn’t being attacked for making a mistake. Quite the opposite really, my teammates knew I had the ability and they were pushing me to constantly be at the best of my ability. Dropping a pass or losing a dribble isn’t a lack of skill, it’s a lack of concentration. You’ve done it a million times. It’s like when we trip over nothing whilst walking down the street. We know how to walk, our brains just weren’t concentrating.
In a highly competitive environment, there is an understanding that teammates and coaches will dispense with the niceties and tell you how to be better. As the recipient, you know this and accept it as constructive criticism. This can be brutal at times, and the delivery of said constructive criticism to the outside listener can appear harsh and undeserving. Within the team though, it’s seen as a crucial part of personal and team development.
Communicating in Sport vs. Business
How does an athlete who has spent 10 years at the top of his or her sport then communicate with people outside of this environment?
“When I played, we had [to be] very direct and to the point feedback, honest – blunt. Outside of a high performance team sport, you must manage personalities, genders and a process to get an outcome.”
Through my brief time in business, it’s my opinion that getting the most out of employees is a constant game of personality and ego management. Leaving sport at the age of 30, these athletes are often given management titles due to their age and ‘life experience’. How can we expect them to manage employees effectively if they’ve never had to play this ‘game’ before? How can they expect to manage females if they’ve been in a boisterous rugby team all their lives?
Training and friends
I want you to think back to your schooling days. If you were anything like me, and if you’re a sportsperson my guess is you are, then recess and lunch time was the best part of the day. Here you sat around and chatted to friends, grabbed a ball and ran around the oval, plain and simple, you just had fun. Sport is like this every day. It’s awesome. Yes, there is hard work during training and gym, but between those times it’s a constant time of jokes and stories where much of the day is spent outside laughing. This highly social, competitive environment is constant release of endorphins.
Get someone to do this for 10 years and then put them inside and in an office environment for 9 hours, Monday to Friday. They must now sit still for extended periods of time and often in silence. This juxtaposition understandably causes unrest and lack of enjoyment.
I asked some of the respondents how they handled such a change, and sadly it seemed there was no magic bullet to fix it. Instead, answers ranged from gym or running pre-work, joining social teams after hours and interestingly one bloke tries to have catch up meetings whilst walking around the block to, ‘just get outside a bit more.’
Lack of support
The biggest difference between sport and what many call, ‘the real world’…
Nobody wants you to succeed in business. Everyone has their own motives.
In sport, everyone wants you to win, it’s in the best interest of teammates, clubs and fans. Athletes therefore receive the best care, advice and coaching. We are told where to be and when, for how long and what to do during that period. We are high value assets and are accordingly managed as such.
Once you turn pro, it is no longer a question of, ‘it’s up to me if I want to succeed. ’It’s a case of ‘if I want to succeed I need to follow the programs and advice given to me.’
What happens when we are no longer a high value asset and brushed aside? Each day for the past 10 years you’ve been told exactly what to do. People have cared about your wellbeing, gone out of their way to assist you and made sure you’re primed and ready to go.
Ignoring the obvious sense of rejection and lack of feeling ‘special’, an athlete now must take ownership of every aspect of their life, including their thinking and planning.
This may seem obvious and some of you may be reading and thinking that this is stemmed from athletes having it far too easy during their career. I challenge that thinking however; athletes need to be, especially in team sports, trained and managed together, told where to be when. This allows athletes to have the same understanding of sporting situations and training requirements. If this was left up to interpretation, success will not be achieved because of athletes not having the same direction as one another.
My Shock
The biggest shock for me was that none of the respondents mentioned ‘lack of achieving goals’ as an area of struggle. I’ve always loved sport because of its competitiveness and the constant striving to achieve a given goal. My biggest fear in finishing sport was that I would not find this feeling in anything else. Upon reflection though, I’ve come to this realisation:
Having a goal is what pushes us down the path of success. Whatever our interpretation of ‘success’ may be. Goals are not exclusive to sport. I should not be afraid that the future will not hold any goals to accomplish. Rather, excited that the goals I’ll face will be different to that of what I am doing now.
Goals are not exclusive to sport.
https://www.athletenetwork.com/blog/doesnt-teach-life-after-sport
