Australian Winter Olympic athletes turn their mindset to business success.
Welcome to my Insights BLOG.
Over the coming months, I will be interviewing high-performance Olympic and Paralympic Winter Sports Athletes that have excelled in their sports and gone onto to achieve great heights in their sports, and how they have translated their learnings and success in sport into the world of business.
I’m extremely excited and honoured that my first interview in this series is with Alisa Camplin. Alisa is an Australian aerial skier who won gold at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Australia’s first Aerial Olympic Medal. Alisa went onto win a Bronze medal in aerials in 2006 Torino Winter Olympics. Her story is one of true change and commitment.
Today, Alisa is still driven by performance, she is a highly experienced Non-Executive Director, as well as an in demand keynote speaker and corporate consultant, assisting both small and large organisations to achieve repeatable sustainable success through a focus on resilience, mindset and improved human performance.
1. How did the training, discipline and experience as a world-class athlete translate to and impact your ability to lead, perform and grow in the field of business?
The obvious answers might be my “no regrets” mindset, or even how I took an extreme knowledge of scenario planning and risk mitigation away from the sporting arena and into the corporate world. I am an enthusiastic goal planner (the planning template I used for the Olympics is the same one I used to move from sales to management at IBM) - in fact, I say in my keynote speeches “a vision without a plan, is just a wish”. I’d also say that I’ve continued to hold myself to high (world class) standards - I want to be as excellent in business, as I was in sport. Excellence is a personal value for me, so holding myself accountable, being motivated to learn and grow, and showing integrity in all that I do, have all helped me to build my capabilities and perform in business.
For a single answer to this question, I’m inclined to say that it was my dedication to practice, but in particular, deliberate practise. We all know that to improve a skill, create (or alter) a habit, or enhance our mindset - it takes practise. Change and success doesn’t happen overnight, achieving goals takes focused practise. But what I often feel is missing in business, is being deliberate, specific and targeted in practise. To give you a sporting example, when I wanted to improve the height trajectory of my jump, I didn’t just climb up the stairs in training and then ski down each time hoping for a higher jump - I worked out all the elements that would help me achieve improved height, and then one by one, I spent weeks at a time practising, refining, reviewing my progress against each element, until higher trajectory jumping had become ingrained. In the business world, I use this same approach. Some might say this is just extreme attention to detail but when you can identify and then practise these small adjustments with deliberate focus - day in day out - you build conscious habits based around this improved performance. In this way that you can slowly and purposefully edge yourself towards better, and you can do this individually or across a business to create change and achieve greater results. It’s important to set goals and measure progress, but you also need to embrace and enjoy the process of learning and improving and celebrate your progress along the way.
2. What do you know now about the difference between athletic and business performance that you wish you knew when you left sports competition?
The notion of high performance is becoming increasingly common and aspired to in the corporate world, but I feel that few people are actually well trained in high performance thinking or execution. Honestly, I didn’t expect to bring so much sport and performance psychology teachings with me back to the business world, but they had become an intrinsic part of me, as well as part of a methodology for achievement that I knew worked! Simple things, like the importance of physical and mental recovery is drilled into us in elite sport, because we can’t consistently perform at our best if we are not effectively managing our mind, energy or body. The same principle applies in business - no employee will be preforming at their best if they sit staring at a screen for 10 hours straight. Regular micro recovery, like getting up to stretch or go for a walk to reduce fatigue and lower stress levels, as well as strategically enabling macro recovery (such as using some annual leave for more long weekends) are vital for ensuring professional long term sustainable success for both individuals and teams! Another example is self-talk - I learned the power of choosing my own thoughts and narrative and recognising that I can control how I react to various situations. I made the choice to become my own biggest cheerleader, flooding myself with positive self-talk (which crowds out the negative), and I learnt not to be so tough on myself. By learning how to constructively coach and positively encourage myself, I unlocked the ability to perform at a higher level and I enjoyed the journey a lot more. Learning performance psychology skills and techniques completely revolutionised my mindset and changed my life, yet most adults have never been introduced to such strategies or taught how to use them. Another little example of this would be reframing - and our ability to change the way we are looking at (or responding) something, perhaps using a different lens or acquiring a different/broader perspective and even being able to decatastrophise when things are becoming overwhelming. Distraction control was also something very tangible I learned in sport that I’ve taken forward with me into my business life. The ability to focus, maintain attention and be productive has been a hugely important skill for me, particularly as a working parent who has to maximise every working minute available. Many of my business colleagues have not necessarily been taught how to set themselves up for success in this way, which I think is a shame and also a massive opportunity. I often ask people in my training programs, to think of yourself as an elite performer, and ask yourself, what do you need to perform at your best day after day after day. We can then identify what skills they need to learn and practise to elevate their foundations for sustainable success.
3. Thinking about the biggest transition you had to face in your career, what advice can you share with business leaders who are figuring out how to transform their companies?
I’ve had many difficult transitions in my life, but there was a way to work through and unlock each of them - you have to spend the time sitting in the difficulty of the situation and finding within yourself what is the next ‘place’ you want to be. It requires respect for strategy, planning, patience, emotions and optimism…but the more you do it the more comfortable you become with the process. One of the more interesting transitions I went through, was going from 'being the hunter' in sport, to 'being the hunted’. After winning the Olympics in 2002, I had to learn very quickly how to sustain success and repeat success, and this was a steep learning curve for me at the time. In the 4 years between 2002 and 2006, I learned so much about myself and how I handled pressure, scrutiny and opportunity, and importantly how to balance the fundamentals with evolution. I also became aware of burnout, and how important it is to proactively manage this for yourself and your team, while still pushing the bar and raising standards over time. It’s a reminder that transformation isn’t just a one-off - change is constant and you need to learn how to have a positive relationship with change so you can ‘thrive’ with it, and not just survive it. That takes resilience, using skills to help yourself and your team to be agile, flexible and comfortable when pushing outside your comfort zone. It was everything I learned and worked through during this transition period, that makes my Olympic Bronze in Torino 2006, just as special as the Gold
