I am sure every one of us has gone thorough the case of the bad or the incompetent manager who would insist on doing things their way and would be totally floundering at sea when it comes to making critical and meaningful discussions or decisions.
Management Institutes
The issue is because of the numerous management institutes in India that claim to create ‘Good Managers’ who go to the industry and implement the core ‘concepts’ as imparted to them. More often than not these theoretical teachings fail because of the dynamic nature of the industry, team members, working culture and ego issues etc.
For an avid sportsperson such as myself I have found all these lessons by playing sports be it cricket, football, badminton or a game that will humble you like golf.
Team Sports
Let’s take a popular team game like cricket. Now as a captain I have faced numerous situations that deal with the character of a person. There is something about sports that makes it hard to hide one’s true nature – take for instance a debutante walking onto the field to bat against a fearsome bowling attack. The batsman comes in with full confidence (let’s assume he has made tons of runs in domestic cricket, local matches and what not). As soon as takes his guard he gets peppered with bouncers and gets hit on the nose and starts bleeding. So now you have two choices either cave in or make your stand there, play well, get hit and lead the team from the front. In such scenarios there are really no pseudo personalities- your innermost character shows.
The case that was made above was young Sachin playing in Pakistan and getting hit by a Waqar Younis bouncer – he went on to hit cracking shots in Waqar’s next over and the rest is history.
Character is Revealed through Sports
There are other things that are easily fathomed – whether the person is a team player, does the person
provide a two way communication or just bathes in the limelight only. Does the person show leadership qualities, does the person help the leader, is the person a visionary, is the person thinking only of short term goals or personal credit. Playing in a team and leading a team for many years I have found, observed and learnt the various shades of a person’s character and attitude on a field of play than by years of working with that person as a colleague.
I was just going through an article that cited many paper based exams and personality development programs while enrolling in a management institute. Somehow it struck me that there should be an entirely different approach to teach management principles to the young generation. Instead of cramming for exams there should more team based sportive events and an environment of sports should be fostered to teach management principles.
Sports brings out the True Self
Also it does not make any sense to gauge somebody by their conditioned and taught responses from various teaching/preparatory institutes. The whole idea is to see somebody in their true natural ability and I strongly believe that playing sports brings out the Best or the Beast in them.
There are numerous beautiful examples of using sports to teach management but I will restrict myself to this small article only. The very idea that the Indian cricket team was being led admirably by M S Dhoni, a person from a small town, who was never taught management, is testament to the fact that sports should be made an integral part of teaching philosophies.