This article aims to make comparisons between sportsman and executives, I strongly believe that executives should learn more from elite athletes.

We all know how important self-confidence is in achieving success and the desired outcome. The tennis player Serena Williams once quote “ if I think that I going to lose I already lost that match, I always think that I am better than the opponent “.

Self-confidence is one of the most important psychological aspects in executives arsenal in corporate environments. While some executives will report extremely high levels of self-confidence, others may report self-doubts. Self-confidence has been shown to have a direct positive relationship with performance, while successful previous performances in similar roles will develop strong robust confidence beliefs.

This is one of the reasons why some executives show strong resilient confidence beliefs in that they can take a series of knocks and set-backs before their confidence suffers. Those with strong confidence beliefs tend to stay focussed even when performance is poor, and those with weak confidence beliefs tend to fall by the wayside.

However measuring confidence and resilience might remain elusive. But sports psychology strongly defends that benefits in wellbeing and vitality ( Seligman, 2005) can help individuals.

Executives have an additional task today in engaging their people and remain resilient at same time, in essence resilient individuals possess the ability to overcome adversity, bounce back and rebound.

Resilience is a process of which is built up by an individual over time through situations and scenarios which encourage them to overcome obstacles to become a mentally stronger individual. I can’t think off a better example than Andy Murray, he is a perfect example of this. His resilience skills took him to new heights and success, Resilience is Success ™.

Most executives confidence fluctuates while performing tasks such as board level meetings or department functions. Sometimes a feeling of failure may be perceived, they can be pushed out of their comfort zone for a limited period of time.

Training executives to cope with failure and giving them the resources to ‘bounce back’ quickly help them develop a robust sense of confidence. When things are not going so good, executives with that sense remain focused, dedicated and are more likely to come out on top.

Author : Joao Bocas- Performance Coach and Resilience Speaker

Find out more about our performance and resilience programmes via e-mail joao@sports13.co.uk