Sports and Leadership Part I

What does it mean to be a dynamic leader in sports? What lessons from sports leadership can be translated into our own leadership journeys?

As soon as these questions were introduced, our hands were reflexively in the air. Sports and leadership, leadership in sports….sports and leadership……leadership in sports! Tossing modesty out the window for a moment, who better could answer these questions than Alea Gage and Zach Blume: two passionate sports fans and players and two Fellows in the deep throes of leadership training here at the Coro Center of Civic Leadership? Well, here’s our best shot. . .

For a perspective on sports and leadership, we (Zach and Alea) decided to draw from our experience as Coro Fellows. Tuesday evening, November 13th, we had the pleasure of interviewing Lori Shannon, founder and owner of See Jane Run, a chain of running stores focused on empowering women to engage in physical activity. While we appreciate expanding our knowledge of innovation and creativity in the business sector, we identified very strongly with the relationship Lori articulated between integrating sports into her life and embodying the confidence, skills and vision to emerge as a self-aware force in the professional realm and in the community.

Lori recalled the experience of announcing her commitment to running her first marathon. Describing herself as “your average woman but not your average runner,” she acknowledges that for some, like a particular running shoe salesperson she encountered, running a marathon seemed beyond the realm of possibility, given her physical stature. Lori implored us to be bold, to display the confidence to express our dreams to the world in order to make them a reality.

Furthermore, in a sport dominated by images of thin and sculpted bodies, many women who are raising families and establishing careers are left out of this equation. Lori posits that the purpose of sport is not achievement in the traditional sense, but accomplishment in a very personal way. With this thinking, she opened her first running store in San Francisco to not only redefine who an athlete is and what an athlete looks like, but what a winner looks like within the framework of self-accomplishment. Lori shared with us the sense of strength and focus she feels after running, a sense of strength she has internalized and translated into the other realms of her life, both personal and professional.

Lori’s story emphasizes that the traits developed through sports correlate to the qualities of strong leadership: strength, will, focus, sense of self, sense of the possible, a desire to push the boundaries, challenge the status quo and re-envision oneself and one’s surroundings. For Lori, running marathons has taught her that life’s endeavors are endurance events. We heard this same rationale from Larissa Roesch and John Iannuccillio during an interview at Dodge & Cox, who argued that sound investments consider a company’s performance in perpetuity and feeling a sense of ownership in one’s investment leads to conscious and measured risk-taking. Likewise, Lori believes that risk taking in sports translates to increased faith in oneself and one’s abilities as well as fosters a spirit of determination and perseverance.

Drawing from our own experiences of hands-on leadership and personal development in sports as well as the learned knowledge gained through our interviews with achievers in various sectors, our definitions of leadership are expanding to include the interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, inner confidence and the ability to act on it, personal inspiration that translates into our work in the world.