Sports & Corporate World – what is the relation?

For a professional who is spending almost entire month in office, how can he be remarkably fit both physically and mentally?

In the corporate world, any thing and every thing in is measured – like the walking style, handshake, similar to the way sportsmen greet each others especially in football before starting the match!

So, what walk and handshake symbolizes like they are is the question to be asked – let me make it clear, the Walk (Part of body language) symbolizes the confidence and the handshake the firmness.

Does this skills are acquired overnight by being like millions of Indians ardently following and playing cricket, but indulging in sports which are poles apart — marathon and Frisbee. Two games, one which requires enormous amount of patience and concentration to run miles and the other, which requires speed and tenacity, are very dear to me. The patience and perseverance required in marathon running and the speed, timing and sheer competitiveness of Frisbee (other group sports also!), have helped my professional life.

Frisbee is a game which will help you to be patient, “It’s a game where you require enormous amounts of patience. If you are in bad a position, then you have to constantly think how to get of it and if you are in a good position you have the opportunity to score the goal”. These are the abilities which will help you to test when you land up in trouble in the corporate world!

While, Frisbee will keep you dribbling away diligently, marathon will inculcate the competitiveness. Frisbee is a high impact game in which mental agility is a key, while it enables one to be physically fit, another person will be always thinking of outdoing the other opponent. The game will always help you to perform with different people at different levels. You will be in position to play amateurs, while some times you will be position to play professionals – the key here is you have to adjust a level of game depending on whom you will be playing against.

Similarly, in business you have to adapt the strategy while dealing with different people. Let’s take an example here to make the analogy better. The selling of money transfer business proposition to a chairman of a bank will require a very different approach than that for a small retail outlet. “For a bank, the business will be small. So you have to create excitement for him (the key decision maker) to get interested. And while for a small retailer, its big business, you need to challenge him, push him to do better and better”.

One lesson you can learn from both sports is the need to have a positive approach. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel. One should have the grit to overcome challenges.

Finding time for marathon and Frisbee between balancing work and family gets a bit difficult sometimes, though you have to manage.

While I would like to play Frisbee every weekend, coming back home from an overdose work on Friday and hitting the Frisbee course on Saturday doesn’t go very well always because you always carve for good sleep in the weekends but to be better equipped - you should have challenge and some fun and determination to hit it regularly!

Well, if you want to enjoy both the activities and have some fun, sign in to chennai_ultimate_frisbee, Chennai runners, RFL runners ….you can’t get better than these groups!