This is a series that was long overdue. That there are deep co-relations between sport and business is known. Corporate leaders, more often than not, give sporting references when they speak and are often influenced by lessons learnt from sport when they act in the boardroom.
What drives them? How are these leaders backstage? What has sport taught them? How do they deal with adversity and failure? How do they motivate large teams? What is key to decision-making? And in all of this, where does sport come in?
These are some of the questions we have often asked ourselves. Now these leaders, the best in India, answer them in this series, Leadership Talks: Life lessons from Sport.
Each one of them is a sports lover. Take TV Narendran, Managing Director and Global CEO of Tata Steel, who is my guest for the inaugural edition. Mr Narendran is a constant at the Tata Steel Global 25K in Kolkata every December. He does the 10k and does so with enormous passion. He runs every morning and has always been an avid sports lover. By his own admission, sport has taught him multiple things, which he has subsequently used in his corporate career.
Shyam Srinivasan, former MD of Federal Bank, is a huge Rahul Dravid supporter. Shyam, who had a hugely distinguished career, tells me how he loved the resilience in Dravid and how he wanted to instil the same commitment in every colleague of his.
Sagar Daryani of Wow Momo, just 36, is one of India’s best aspirational stories. In fact, he is a wow story. An avid cricketer, Sagar is highly competitive on the cricket field. In a tournament he played a couple of years ago, he was hit for five straight sixes. “It was the only time I cried on a cricket field. But my teammates did not disown me. I played the next game and performed. It is the same in business. On days that are good, you run. On days that are okay, you walk. And on days that aren’t good, you crawl. But you always move forward,” says Sagar.
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Sport on the one hand creates business, which in turn provides economic growth to a society and a nation. On the other hand, encouraging sports through business also makes a fitter and healthier society. Sport involves a multitude of stakeholders (namely, sports authorities and organisers, governments at all levels, financial partners, athletes etc.). The very same can be said of big business, which makes the mind of each of these leaders fascinating subjects of study.
And in all of this, there is the RevSportz story. Why did some or most of them back us? More so at times of adversity when I, as Editor and Founder, was serving an unfair ban? What prompted Mr Narendran, Sagar, Shyam and others to keep supporting us?
In fact, I fondly remember the conversation with Mr Narendran when I had reached out to him for support in December 2022. “Are you planning to focus only on cricket, for then it’s not really of interest to me. There is already a lot of clutter there,” he had said. When I mentioned our focus areas – Olympic and Paralympic sport, the conversation just took off. And the support continues.
Leadership Talks: Life Lessons from Sport is a series you can’t miss.
Inaugural episode 12 noon Monday on all RevSportz platforms.
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