10 Times Playing Sports Can Help You Kick Ass As A Creative In The Corporate World
There’s an interesting statistic that’s been going around in the last decade — 94% of women in the C-Suite played sports, 52% at a university level. I happen to be in the first part of this statistics — the playing sports — and have been in boardrooms with the second part —the C-Suites.
When I was in University, I was part of the team who started Taekwondo out of sheer love for the sport. The parameters were: 1. form a team: boys and girls 2. train consistently. 3. win competitions so the University can rightfully acknowledge Taekwondo as a sport worthy of investment (facilities, coaches, time, and other resources).
I kid you not, we trained so hard. I remember being in physical pain for the most part of the school year. I remember writing papers in the morning then heading to training then back to papers for semester after semester. I remember going to my class post-training limping from injury to show that we could manage both school and sports.
But also, if you ask me now, all I could remember was losing…a lot of it… in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes, we lost due to insufficient training. Sometimes, it was sheer skill disparity. Sometimes, it was because our team came in so late into the game. But every time we lost, I took something out of it. Our team took something out of it. So now, am I surprised about this statistic? Hell, nope.
Here are 10 things playing sports has taught me that helped me kick ass at my job as a Creative Strategist:
You can’t skip the steps: You can’t go from white to black belt in a span of 3 months. You can’t go to creative strategy without doing your 4C’s.
Pain is right to play: Your first way-in is the way-in all the other agencies will pitch because it’s the easiest one to find. If it appears on the first page of Google, what makes you think the other planners won’t find it? The best strategies come from painstakingly interrogating the brief, dissecting the problem, investigating consumer behaviour, breaking your thinking, and putting the pieces back together in interesting ways. It comes from hours of people watching, asking the hard questions, and debating with your creatives. In the boardroom, it’s always a painful dance between punching back and rolling with the punches.
The hardest muscle to build is mental: There will be kicks that, after hundreds of failed attempts, will make you think that they’re impossible (see: jump spin hook kick). But they’re not. You just need to break them down into bite-sized pieces so your brain can take them, step by step. Don’t shy away from the “big briefs”. Break them into achievable objectives until you’re able to conquer them.
Underdogs don't win with strength. We win with strategy: The world doesn’t operate in carefully curated weight classes. Some days you’re heavier with more experience while during some pitches you’re a Junior Planner up against a Head of Strategy so what do you do? You use age to your advantage and you pitch using Instagram Stories. You use speed over power. You kick first. Whatever you do, it starts with knowing what you can realistically do better than everyone else. Then, you focus all efforts getting the most out of it. You can't throw everything on the wall and see what sticks. It's about knowing your one superpower and throwing everything you've got on it: energy, time, investment. It's about focused efforts. That's how underdogs win. That's what strategy means.
The hungrier ones win: Passion can take you to places sheer skills can't. Your coaches can see it. Your clients can feel it. Your opponents fear it. Present like you can’t wait to execute it.
Coaches (and bosses) are not here to coddle you: They’re here to show you how strong you can be.
Fear is constant: Take it or leave it. It’s not gonna go away. You need to find ways to overcome it — presenting scares you? Think of it as a conversation. Present anyway. You’re scared to fall flat on your face when you do a reverse kick? Do it anyway until the feeling becomes familiar and no longer scary because you know exactly what will happen. Also, you now know you won’t die. “Courage is not the absence of fear. But rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear” (Princess Diaries, 2001). Go find your “something else”.
Life is unfair and losing is a part of life: There’s no denying that some fighters are born with privilege. But you can still choose to play fair even when no one is looking…especially when no one is looking.
You can win or lose on the last second: During the Tokyo Olympics, Argentina was down by a point in the last 7 seconds and still managed to beat Ireland by 3 points at the last 3 seconds of the match. The game is not over until it’s over. Your pitch is not over until you’re out of the boardroom so present like your life depends on it but also nail the Q&A because thinking on your feet is also part of the criteria.
Never underestimate the power of your team. That's how top-performers win. That's how top-performers lose. Your team will hold your hand through it all. Everything becomes possible. A championship. A comeback. A come-from-behind. A Hail Mary shot. All begins and ends with trust in yourself and your team. Creativity is risky. Being paid to be creative with jobs on the line with a set deadline is even riskier. It is impossible to be creative when you don't feel safe that you have a team who will be there for you after every round of revision, who will cheer you on every time you present a "wildcard" route that no agency has done before, who will pick you up in times of crisis, and when those risks don't pay off.
BONUS from the USWNT legend, Tobin Heath, also a kicker but from a different sport: You don’t win alone. In her interviews, she likes to describe how women live in a world of scarcity — that there’s only 1 seat for us at the table. From what I’ve seen in the last decade especially here in Asia Pacific, she is absolutely correct. I’ve been in rooms filled with men in suites talking about how to sell beauty to women, making big decisions for us. It was uncomfortable, to say the least. So it is truly our duty to open doors for others. To win together. To make our space bigger. She says, “if some structures are not going to fit us, let’s go out and build a new structure!”. Hence, I would leave you with a thought and a link to her space: ABUNDANCE.
Sports, while at the height of competitiveness, can also teach us about generosity and equity that lead to progress in a way that doesn’t exclude but actually brings more people together to build a better world. A space where creative thinking is also much needed. So if you're a creative problem-solver, I urge you to use it where it matters!
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