This year, 2012, Britain has the great privilege of being host nation to the international Summer Olympic Games, for the third time in its history - the previous occasions being 1908 and 1948. London will be the only city ever to host three Olympiads! A new 200 acre “Olympic Park” has been built in Stratford, East London, and many existing London facilities, such as the new Wembley Stadium, will also be used. And when the Games are finished, London will be left with the valuable legacy of a completely rejuvenated area, that was once derelict, and that will, in a few weeks time, provide homes for thousands of Londoners.
The Games began on Friday 27th July and will run through until 12 August, with 4,700 medals ready and waiting to be won! The country is enjoying Olympic fever and the excitement is running at a high level throughout the capitol.
The newspapers are full of stories of past Olympic champions, Dame Kelly Holmes, Mark Spitz, Nadia Comaneci, Carl Lewis, Jesse Owens and Daley Thompson. Here we have accounts of people whose physical fitness, total dedication and commitment have shone through to their eventual success. Each one of them have had their own tales to tell as to how they gained the ultimate in sports achievement. The days when they thought they could train no more but then they found the inner strength and determination to take them to where their dreams wanted them to be.
New Winners
And so these London Games bring new opportunities and new winners who will wear their medals with pride for themselves and their country. It will highlight those that have taken themselves from being just ‘very good’ to being ‘great’ and they will duly have their names written in the history books of sport.
They will have achieved the ultimate of success. But none of this will have happened by chance or just because they wanted it more than anything else in the world. It will have happened because of their continued tenacity, focus, dedication and, of course, their passion.
But passion and having the right attitude, by themselves, are not necessarily enough. Having a ‘Yes, you can!’ attitude is great but you have to have alongside it, the mechanics of how you are going to achieve your goal. You have to have attained a peak of physical fitness to ensure that your success will be achieved.
Many people say of others who are successful that they are just lucky, but they may not have seen, behind the scenes, all the blood, sweat, toil and tears that it has taken to get them there. Success rarely happens by chance. There are always foundation stones that have had to be set, prior to anything being built. Only then, will the success be long-lasting enough to stand the test of time.
So I wonder whereabouts are your team on the scale, at work? Are they a ‘good’ team or are they a ‘great’ team. If they are just ‘good’, then what is getting in the way of them being ‘great’? Is it that they need motivating and encouraging by you or are there obstacles of which you may not be aware? Are there barriers that are getting in the way of them carrying the Olympic torch at work?
Does your team just achieve the goals that you have set them and then go no further? If so, it could be that you are setting the bar at too low a level so that they achieve the height but are not necessarily encouraged and motivated to go beyond it. Raising it to a point where it is ‘good enough’ is fine but that is not going to make them ‘fly’ or become an Olympic champion for your company. Olympic champions know how to go from ‘good’ to ‘great’ and ‘great’ is exactly where you want your team to be!
So think about how you can create your own championship team. A team who can carry the Olympic torch in the workplace and pass it onto others with a flame that will show their colleagues a beacon of resilience, determination, tenacity and passion and be an example of excellence to all.