Written by Combining my studies, my job, this crazy condition we find ourselves in globally, and the topics I explore for Culture in Sports, I have found that the most prevalent unifying issue is the constancy of change and how we manage it.
The culture of an organisation can be made or broken by the ability to curate a strong framework of information, support, and empathy. Change can’t happen successfully without the scaffolding of a strong positive culture. Leadership that is situational in nature will be responsive to whatever is needed in any given situation. This could then be:
- Telling, Directing, Guiding – ‘instructional/creating movement’
- Selling, Coaching, Explaining – ‘culturing understanding’
- Participating, Facilitating, Collaborating – ‘alignment seeking’
- Delegating, Empowering, Monitoring – ‘follower-driven’
The sporting organisation is no different than in the corporate environment, the leadership style and the strategic decisions made and how they are implemented will drive the culture and therefore the success of the organisation.
Massive changes to sports around the closures and reopening of sporting clubs and the postponement and cancelling of events have occurred. Consideration of measures that ensure everyone’s wellbeing need not just to be accurate and well-researched but communicated to stakeholders in a manner that will ensure them being understood, accepted, and adopted.
We have seen recently in the Djokovic saga, that a corrupted culture of misinformation, egotism, and elitism has upset a major sporting event in Australia and the ripples of further misinformation and hyperbole has fed and spread the drama. Water-cooler opinions and hastily and ill-informed social media rants divided nations and inflamed tempers. Had changes in mandates and expectations not been communicated well? Was the sport of tennis itself suffering from a poor culture? It’s pretty hard to fix the culture of the world but in this case, we could start with embedding in our athletes the importance of humility and pride in their profession. A cohesion within the industry that ensures that its players are well informed and understand what is required from them in regard to their legal matters as well as their behavior.