Role models wanted (IV): Lessons from the Olympic
updated: Monday 25-08-2008
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Over the last few weeks we have
been exploring the place of role
models as one of the key inputs we can access in facilitating our leadership growth. This week as the Beijing Olympics come to a close I find that there are a lot of leadership lessons we can learn from the Olympics even in the seemingly unrelated issue of role models. The current Olympics have indeed been an illustration of some of the key elements in the utilisation of role models especially as we examine the performance of three countries which have successfully dazed the world by their performance and how they used other nations as role models in the different ways a role model can be used.
Anyone who knows anything about sports would easily recognise that the three outstanding teams of the Beijing Olympics have been the host nation China who have topped the medals table, the United Kingdom which with a Gold medal haul of more than 17 gold medal has produced its best performance in the modern era taking the third place position and of course the Jamaicans who have produced a dominant outing in the sprints eclipsing the perennial favourites the United States. Interestingly each of these countries achieved this by among other things a proper use of role modelling and have in the process become role models themselves. Ironically Nigerian administrators are already using them as examples but in such a manner that also illustrates why these role model nations or societies are hardly ever useful to us in that capacity.
The first lesson on using role models to establish our leadership is that we cannot have effective engagement with role models if we have no idea of an ideal world of accomplishments to which we aspire and are willing in the words of Nelson Mandela “to live for and if necessary to die for”. As Harold Taylor put it “The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become.” Each of the three countries I mentioned started out with a decision that improve performance in sports at the Olympics was not just desirable and necessary but also a key part of the national definition. In other words their ambitions were far beyond the mere aspirations or good intentions which seem to pervade our sports administration in Nigeria. This position is important because it is the ambitions we set for ourselves that give us the drive to identify worthwhile role models even when as in the cse of China using the U.S as a role model may be politically grating. The benefit for all these countries was that having set their objectives it became easier to identify the U.S in particular as the nation to follow both for inspiration and modelling the result being that the performance of all of them eclipsed that of the U.S even thought he U.S still did quite well coming in second.
A second lesson was that having identified a role model it is necessary to work out how you may engage their example and inspiration. To do this effectively requires that you know your strengths and capabilities. The Chinese with their vast national resources studied extensively the level of organisation and resources including science and technology which the U.S had deployed to the sports programme and then proceeded to replicate it on a grand style by starting in 1992 a talent identification process backed up by proper training facilities. The Jamaicans on the other hand were aware that with only 3 million people and not having the same kind of resources at the disposal but having the advantage of proximity and ease of movement to the U.S proceeded to arrange for their top athletes to attend University in the U.S to learn from the Americans. In the case of Britain they have used a lot of American style methods but with emphasis on the British areas of natural strength sailing and cycling and using them as a platform for motivating the other areas.
A third lesson is that to emulate and utilised a role model requires more than just admiration but also a committed execution of a plan with well worked out benchmarks and accountabilities as Stephen A. Brennan said “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” This is indeed one of the banes of the Nigerian situation.
One inverse lesson of the Olympics is that while role models are available to all and should inspire us an unwillingness to make the commitments that utilize them soon leads to an increasing position of irrelevance as shown by the Nigerian example in which we are losing our top athletes to countries like Britain and Spain which are showing ambition and with a large delegation the returns are very meager. The Irony is that the sports administrators who have shown these inabilities are blissfully unaware of how tenuous their positions are and how close they are to the irrelevance that first loses you leadership then position and ultimately sidelines you to ignominy. As General Eric Shinseki, Chairman, U. S. Joint Chiefs said “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” Role models provide us a major instrument of change but we must use them effectively.
P.S. As part of providing role models and leadership development for the upcoming generation we are putting up in the month of September two subsidised one day programmes for aspiring leaders under the age of 30. Anyone interested should call or text for details.
