Now that the big game is over, many of you may have moved onto other things. However, have you considered the great wealth of knowledge that you may be leaving behind?
There are many career strategies hidden in the world of sports that can help you increase your competitive advantage. Captured in the Black enterprise article, Four Lessons Women of Power Can Learn from the Super Bowl, this idea actually sets the tone for my career strategy book, What’s In Your Sandwich? 10 Surefire Ingredients for Career Success, aimed to help those who find their careers stuck in ruts, or needing to start over.
The Super Bowl can help women set the proper foundation for career success by incorporating some of their tactics. In my book, I call it “Setting Up Your Kitchen for Success”.
Nuggets you can learn from the game are as follows:
Adopting a competitive mindset: women seldom think of their careers as a competition. Instead we believe that our work should speak for itself. The sport teaches that you must do what it takes to win, learn from setbacks and know when it’s time to change your strategy. This is all part of a competitive mindset.
Understanding the playing field: Every team knows the importance of knowing whom they are competing against, their strengths/weaknesses, as well the rules of the game. Knowing the job market and unspoken rules, known as office politics, of corporate America are important to succeed. Women must get in the game by understanding the rules and when to abide by them or break them.
Knowing why others fail: Sports teams study their own failures and those of others, attempting to avoid repeating them. This is also critical to successful careers. You can’t be afraid to take risks. However, taking a risk informed helps increase your changes of success as well as learning from mistakes. This is part of a continuous improvement strategy that helps teams advance.
Next time you watch the big game, don’t think of it as just football. Instead, think of all of the strategies you can gain to take your game to the next level.
This is a great take on the Super Bowl, Jocelyn. In reality, once you enter the workforce, you are just another player in the game. It takes strategies and planning to set yourself a part from the others. While confidence in our abilities is definitely a must, combining that confidence with a competitive mindset is a useful too. I also think learning not only from our own mistakes, but the mistakes from others is an important skill to have. One of the main ways in PR to prevent a client from experiencing a crisis is studying the mistakes/actions of similar companies. Keeping up with your competition’s mistakes allows you to plan in advance for when you face a similar situation. Overall, cool post. It has given me a more resourceful way to view the Super Bowl from now on.
– Cherese
Cherese,
Thanks for your comments. Sounds like you think competitively.