Sports Story of the Week
The Fish that Can't Climb a Tree
There are so many sports going on right now that are teaching lessons abound. Wimbledon nonstop on ESPN. World Cup taking over the United States. WNBA moments. But as I found with the newsletter last week, sometimes the sports moments closest to home are the ones that we learn from the most.
I have been doing a lot of reflecting this week on strengths, skills, and how we all have our areas where we thrive. It began Saturday, where we held our annual Biathlon for the swim team. Watching those kids and teens who could were expert swimmers struggle running the parking lot laps and, and watching those fast runners get left behind when the group hit the water reminded me of a famous quote. It is commonly, but maybe falsely attributed to Albert Einstein but it fits perfectly
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Right now, I'm watching kids in summer camps try sports that they have never played, watching their identities get stretched and challenged. The Hockey Guy trying Gymnastics. The kid trying every single camp that Parks and Rec offers to jus to find one sport, ANY SPORT, they might finally be "good" at (Now THIS I can relate to! It was me, and I didn't find it... yet) Maybe it won't be sports for them. And honestly, that is okay.
Because the real story here is that at some point, as a general rule, adults stop doing this. We stop going to camp. We stop exploring and expanding and we start filtering and narrowing. There are the anomalies, we all know them. The adults in our life that start swimming to build family memories, or who take tap dance along with their kids and bravely get on stage for the recital. But generally, we stay in our comfort zones. Doing what we think we are good as, lest we be called a "stupid fish".
Don't get me wrong, at some point we have to specialize. We have to make choices on where to spend our energy and resources. We do need to follow our strengths and lean into where we naturally thrive. However, there is a big difference between specializing when necessary and refusing to stretch. Ask almost any professional athlete what kids should do to get better and they say, "play other sports". They know that cross-training, learning rules, and challenging your body and mind in different ways makes you a more resilient athlete.
The hard part is finding the balance between stretching yourself and giving yourself grace. Just like in our Biathlon, we know that "dry land" training days are going to be the hardest for swimmers. And guess what? That is fine! It is ok to excel in the water, and struggle on the pavement. It means that we don't spend our time beating ourselves up about not being a runner. We accept that we have skills that come easier than others. That being competitive means being brave enough to try, and mentally tough enough to know we won't always win.
We don't need to turn all the fish into track stars, or all the track stars into fish. We know that we can be multifaceted and still be confident. That maybe we are a swimmer that sometimes has to run, but we aren't only a swimmer. Because anyone that runs, is a runner too.
3 Lessons from
1. Encourage Cross-Training to Build Business Resilience
The advice to play other sports translates directly to work as well. In Major League Baseball, some of the highest paid athletes are the Utility Players. The ones that can fill gaps, play multiple positions, and aren't just locked in for one position. We need to do this more at work. Exposure to other departments, skill sets, and challenges doesn't dilute someones expertise, it deepens it, it helps eliminates silos and build knowledge that you can't just get from meetings. Spend time being uncomfortable, start doing things that might not be in your role, but you just might find the joy and skill you didn't know yet.
2. Support the Strengths instead of Calling out the Weaknesses
Putting people in roles, projects, or performance reviews that consistently measure them against their weakest skills doesn't develop them. It demoralizes them. We often take a high-performing employee and assume they will excel at everything, or we penalize a brilliant technical mind because they struggle with leading people. When you judge someone by a skill outside what might be their natural area of strength you kill their confidence across the board. Evaluate the projects, roles, and even those "other duties as assigned" and make sure that they are areas of strength, and then allow the weaknesses to improve slowly. Make sure you are reviewing performance for the skills and abilities necessary for the role.
3. Expect to have "Dry Land" Days
As an athletic trainer, I never worked swimming directly, but I will say that Dry Land training days were dreaded by all the trainers I ever knew that worked swimming. It was where the injuries happened. It was a bit of a joke, but firmly started with reality. But they were prepared. More ice, ready for the falls, the sprained ankle, the struggles. It will be the same way with your team. They will have tasks that are not in their area of strengths. Things that go wrong. It really isn't if they will struggle, its when. Will they then feel ashamed they had a rough day, or will they feel supported through it. Normalize the hard days, the days that exhaust us from doing something we don't love, but we know we have to in order to get better.
