On Monday, the woman shared this example with her employees. She explained that the boy could have run down the field and attempted to be the star. Instead he considered the whole team and passed the ball to someone else.
Team sports provide good lessons in interdependence, claims Dr. Allan Drexler, a behavioral scientist and organizational and management development consultant. "On a sports team, you can't have everyone being an independent great star," says the president of Drexler & Associates, located in Rockbridge Baths, VA, and Annapolis, MD. "It's very rare that you have a Michael Jordan who can just run down the court and score. You have to pass it to others. You learn that you have to give up a little in order to get the most."
Those are some of the lessons learned through sports play, Drexler says in Emerging Practice of Organizational Development. "On a sports team, you learn to manage within the rules. You may use destructive words such as 'let's kill them,' but you stay within the rules," he says. "I play racquetball, and I'll play as hard as I can to get the point, but I won't cheat. You learn that you'll win a battle or two, but you'll lose the whole war. That doesn't mean that you can't push the envelope and bend it a little bit, but you can't cheat"
Experiential training programs led by Dr. Larry Kokkelenberg, a psychologist based in McHenry, IL, teach team-building first-hand. Kokkelenberg takes employees outside, where they may do a high ropes course or an Outward Bound-type of activity. As he prepares employees for this, he teaches them the value of team spirit and interdependence. Once outside, employees find that many activities just can't be done without cooperation. "We point out that when they're not being cooperative, they're being competitive," says Kokkelenberg. Thus, employees learn new ways of working together.
But Kokkelenberg and others point out the downside to competitive sports analogies. If an employer sets up a win/lose environment, employees may become more independent. They might also become so obsessed with winning that they'll sabotage other employees' efforts. And because sports have traditionally been male-dominated, some corporate managers believe that team sports serve as sexist metaphors.
That's less true today, says Dr. Darlene Bailey, associate director of athletics at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, MO. "The opportunities for little girls to play sports have increased 100 fold, and we'll see more of that," she says. "Certainly there are more opportunities for women to play sports at the college level. Sports give women confidence to pursue careers that they might not have thought of pursuing."
"Involvement in sports at the high school or college level," Bailey continues, "leads to team building, cooperation, and leadership." She also finds that athletes become societal role models.
Bailey, who holds a masters degree in sports administration and a doctorate in higher education administration, says that people obtain "a lot of transferable skills" in pursuing sports administration degrees. "A lot of the courses are similar to what you take for an MBA," she says. While some people with sports administration degrees pursue sports careers, others find that they can use the same skills in sales and marketing.
Maybe pursuing a degree in sports administration isn't for you, but there are other ways to improve your team skills. You might join an after-work baseball or bowling team, or read one of many good books on the subject. Experiential workshops, such as those offered by Drexler and Kokkelenberg, also offer ways to enhance team thinking.
In many respects, the sports team is a microcosm of the business office. The team faces the adversary head-on. Players work hard to win, but stick to the rules. In the end, they square off and shake hands. "I like that," says Drexler, who sees this timeless ritual as reiterating an old truism: It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.
