By Janna Pearman Jacobs

There are lessons to be learned from watching top athletes perform in the Olympics. One of them is resilience when dealing with disappointment and failure. An important difference between the best athletes and the rest of us is that they see challenges as opportunities for growth rather than threats. And what we might perceive as mental Teflon in top athletes is also the result of a lifetime of practice. Dealing with failure is part of the job for top athletes.

How can you make grappling with disappointment and failure a job requirement and cultivate resilience in your team, so they keep reaching for the gold – they help you WIN?

Consider these top athlete best practices:

• Athletes visualize their wins. They also imagine all the things that could go wrong, and how they’ll respond.

  • Organizations can define and describe what success looks like.

  • Organizations can plan their response to things going wrong before it happens.

• Athletes use positive self-talk to overcome disappointment and regain their composure.

  • Organizations can foster a culture that supports individual learning and taking calculated risks.

• The power of purpose – athletes have a sense of purpose, identify their goals, are single-focused, and anchor their motivations to something bigger.

  • Organizations need a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and to connect everyone’s goals and work to the BHAG.

  • Organizations can be disciplined, having a single focus.

• Athletes set process-oriented goals – goals within their control, as opposed to only performance-oriented goals, which are based on results and out of their control.

  • Organizations can break their BHAG into smaller goals, create forward momentum, and accumulate successes.

• Athletes’ grit is a team effort – the people they choose around them, and their support system are important elements of their grit.

  • Organizations can intentionally create teams with a positive culture supporting learning and failing forward.

If you need help building resilience so the organization can take on new hard things, this is the work we do. Visit RKCMANAGEMENTCONSULTING.COM for ideas and methods to guide your organization toward steady, reliable progress.