Of the many sports I played when I was younger, the two I loved the most were football and tennis and in my early 60s, I am still playing them both. Full 11-a-side and 6-a-side for the former, and only singles in tennis. For many people of my age who play or played tennis, Padel has become a major force in the market, not only because it’s an easier game, but the economics (played on half the size of a tennis court with 4 players) make it very attractive to sports club owners. I‘ll leave my views on Padel to another time.
My idols are Cristiano Ronaldo and Roger Federer. The former is 40, the world’s highest-paid athlete, and still plying his trade with Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia. He averages 0.8 goals a game in club football across 733 appearances and a little over 0.6 per game in his international career with Portugal, having recently reached a record 41 goals in World Cup qualifying. The tennis aficionados won’t need much of an introduction to RF, his brand name (Ronaldo’s is CR7), who graced the tennis arena for many years, won 82% of the matches he played and 103 titles in the open era and still has a huge following around the world.
Both sportsmen were undoubtedly born with extraordinary gifts and whilst Federer’s route was fairly straightforward (his parents worked for a pharmaceutical business and he had access to the company’s tennis courts), Ronaldo was diagnosed with tachycardia as a child, which could have resulted in him giving up football. In his early development years Federer was a terrible loser and frequently broke racquets when he lost matches. It was only when he met his future wife Mirka (who was a very talented player) that he changed his behaviour. So much so that he ended up becoming the coolest and calmest person to play the sport.
In any major sport (or walk of life for that matter) practice, preparation and mindset are key. History is littered with sportspeople who showed significant early promise. Nick Kyrgios & Bernard Tomic spring to mind in tennis and Nicolas Anelka in football (said to be brilliant in training, but found it difficult to replicate when it mattered).
As negotiation consultants, there is little we can do to address issues that come from a person’s nature, which is pretty much fully formed by the age of 7. Psychologists believe that the ratio of nature (what you’re born with) and nurture (how your environment helps you shape your world) is around 60/40 in favour of the latter. Preparation and mindset (what do I want/what do they want and where is the balance of power to name but a few) are key to understanding how to manage a negotiation effectively and ensure that both parties come away with a deal that works for both parties and with reputations intact.
At Scotwork, we’ve been focused primarily on the preparation, and the introduction of the recently launched Behavioural Profiler will provide our clients with the wherewithal to understand more of their participants' behavioural preferences to enable them to make the appropriate adjustments in their negotiations to further drive positive outcomes.
If you’d like to know more, you know where to find us…
