The Hindu Business Line : Lessons from football to succeed in business

"I was lucky to come from a difficult area. It teaches you not just about football but also life," reads a quote of Zinedine Zidane on www.brainyquote.com. The once-golden Zi-Zi refuses to vanish from news headlines. `French president condemns Zidane,' says African News Dimension, South Africa in a report `1 hour ago'. `Tragic exit no match for Zidane's legacy,' rues The Japan Times, `13 hours ago'. And Telegraph.co.uk says, `No ifs or buts, Zidane must be stripped of his award.'

Well, rather than draw life-lessons from Zidane, you can think of drawing business lessons from football, reading Business and the Beautiful Game. The book from Kogan Page (www.vivagroupindia.com) , written by Theo Theobald and Cary Cooper, promises to tell you `how you can apply the skills and passion of football to be a winner in business'.

The first half begins with skills. You'd need six of them, viz. control, touch, vision, awareness, resilience and fitness. Remember, these are what can help both in business and in football. For instance, resilience is about bouncing back in the face of adversity. "Organisations are realising the benefits of allowing their people to make mistakes, as this is key to learning the right way to do things," note the authors.

Ambition comes next. For, "in the engine room of achievement, it's ambition that fuels the fire." Measure your AQ (ambition quotient), by answering 10 questions, including this one: "When you go on a two-week holiday, do you: a) just lie by the pool or on the beach, doing little else; b) have some rest on the beach or pool but also see some of the sights; c) book onto as many of the organisational tours you can fit in; d) read the `rough guide' in advance and set off on your own to ensure that you see everything in the area?" After doing a self-scoring, you can find out if you are one of these: sloth, sheep, tiger, or Tasmanian devil!

In a different chapter, the poser `What does passion look like?' finds answer thus. "Passionate behaviour involves the whole body," instruct the authors. "Clenched fists, frowning, bared teeth, strained muscles, feet planted apart, arm waving, punching the air, and slamming down a fist are the behaviours we often associate with passion." To these, you may add `head-butt' too.

`Stress' comes next. Enough evidence is available both from football and business players. "A seemingly small error causes them to explode into a fit of fury, disproportionate to the amount of aggravation it might have caused."

The first half concludes with `discipline'. Important, because: "Dreams are what get you started. Discipline is what keeps you going." A section on `anger management' counsels that there are things in working life that wind all of us up, but discipline is about finding ways of dealing with them. "Sometimes we get frustrated by systems, the inefficiency of the tools we use, or the lack of a valuable resource we need to do our jobs. All of the energy spent getting angry about these things is debilitating... "

How true! If only Zidane had read this.

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in

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Lessons from football to succeed in business