Today, I want to talk to you about a few leadership lessons that go beyond teamwork and translate off of the field into the workplace. Here are six lessons that I learned as an athlete and now as a coach.

Leadership Lessons Learned as an Athlete

The first three lessons come from my view as an athlete, but in hindsight.

1. Sacrifice -> Preparation -> Confidence

Sacrifice leads to preparation, which leads to confidence. Eight-time Olympian and World Champion Usain Bolt is known for his speed and his confidence. On sacrifice, Usain Bolt says, “Dreams are free, but goals have a cost, which are time, effort, sacrifice, and sweat.” He goes on to talk about how he spent years sacrificing to run just nine seconds.

Think about a time you felt most confident. What about a time you didn’t feel confident? Over the years, I have realized that I feel most confident when I am adequately prepared. Sacrifice, preparation, and confidence could have each been their own point. Each is incredibly important, but they are all connected. Preparation breeds confidence and sacrifice is vital if you are going to be properly prepared.

Confidence is critical for effective leadership. In a crisis, a confident leader will remain calm and composed, reassuring their team so that they can focus on solutions and not the problem. A confident leader articulates vision, allowing others to align their goals. Ultimately, a confident and effective leader leads with authority and assurance.

2. Find Your Motivation

It wasn’t until years after my college career that I realized I struggled with motivation. Me, a division one athlete, lacking motivation? However, I realized that my motivation was always extrinsic. There was always a coach with a whistle pushing and encouraging me. In college, there was a scholarship or I had to get certain grades in order to be eligible. The external motivation was helpful, but it’s equally important to have internal motivation as well.

You can cultivate your intrinsic motivation by identifying your values, which will drive your behaviors. In his book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Dan Pink recommends coming up with one sentence to define your life, a sort of vision or mission statement based on your goals and passions. This is not to say that we don’t engage in hard or difficult things. As a leader, it’s important to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. But when you get in those uncomfortable times, that is when you will need to lean on your values to energize you and push you through.

3. Play to Your Strengths

The simplest definition of the long jump is that an athlete sprints down a runway until they get to a board where they then jump as far as they can, landing in a sand pit. As a long jumper, it would be foolish to train for the event by running miles and miles, and in most cases, detrimental to your overall performance as it can negatively affect your ability to bring speed and explosive power.

As a leader, you can’t develop people by focusing on their weaknesses. It’s your responsibility to help your team identify their strengths and then invest in those strengths. Can you identify your strengths? What about your weaknesses? This takes a level of self -awareness that a lot of leaders tend to avoid. If you, as a leader, can identify your own personal strengths and weaknesses, it will allow you a chance to invest in your own growth and you will be able to identify where you need additional support.

Leadership Lessons Learned as a Coach

The next three lessons I learned as a coach.

4. Be a Lifelong Learner

Leaders who do the most harm to an organization are those who think they have arrived. Good leaders are always learning. Hall of Fame basketball player and coach John Wooden famously practiced this. He waited a few games into the season before picking his captains because he wanted to see who was deserving of that position. He held himself to that same standard by saying, “If I’m through learning, I’m through.”

As you continue to achieve, beware of thinking that you have arrived. The moment you become enamored with your success and your position is the beginning of the end. An effective leader is always growing and always learning.

5. Take Ownership of Your Mistakes

I firmly believe that the best way a leader builds credibility with their team is that if they make a mistake, they own it and apologize. Hall of Fame basketball coach Pat Summitt said, “Accountability is essential to personal growth, as well as team growth. How can you improve if you’re never wrong? If you don’t admit a mistake and take responsibility for it, you’re bound to make the same mistake again.”

A leader who owns their mistakes demonstrates accountability to their team. Business owner Chuck Braun famously had a mistake quota in his organization. He mandated that each of the people he trained made 30 mistakes per training session. This cultivated a culture of people willing to take risks, which led to more progress.

6. Accept That You Are a Thermostat

A well-known metaphor, can you identify If you are a thermostat or a thermometer? A thermostat regulates the temperature of a room while a thermometer measures it. As the leader, because of your positional authority, you control the temperature of the room. Whether you like it or not, your mood can affect the moods of others.

Leadership is influence. The best coaches want to see their athletes succeed on and off the field. As a leader in your organization, ask yourself some tough questions. How are you investing in your personal growth? How are you investing in the growth of others? Are you playing to your strengths? If you can’t answer these questions for yourself, ask a trusted friend or advisor for honest feedback and be open to it.

Eryka Jenkins, M.Ed., brings experience in the areas of education, diversity and inclusion training, building culture, conflict management, and team building. Her previous experiences include working in education where she built community among students and partnered with faculty and division leadership to build cultural competency. Eryka has served as a sports coach for over 10 years and is an assistant coach with the Lehigh University Track and Field program. She has an M.Ed. in Educational Leadership from Lehigh University, a Bachelor’s Degree in Hospitality Resort Management and Business from the University of Memphis, and a diversity and inclusion certificate from Cornell University.