99 percent of Canadians are either satisfied or really satisfied with the results delivered by Canadian athletes at the recent Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. While the “Own the Podium” program overarching goal of being the number 1 country with medals wasn’t reached, our record breaking 14 gold medals and the other incredible stories brought out by the Games had Canadians pumping their chests like I’ve never seen them pump them before. I’ve lived in many different regions of our great country and medals were coming out of all of them.
The “Own the Podium” program is a good chance to reinforce a couple key leadership principles:
1) People achieve more under greater expectations than with less. Our previous contentment with PBs or Personal Bests was radically challenged when we said we would Own the Podium in Vancouver. The new Goal was specific, measurable and repeated over and over and over so that noone could possibly not understand it. So much so that you could see that our athletes started to believe it. That is a key foundation to success. If we don’t believe we can do something .. we very likely will never achieve it. What does your team at work truly believe they can accomplish?
2) The goals were resourced. Through both increased goverment funding and private donations the level of funding of our athletes rose to unpredecented levels. Funding for the best technology. Funding to allow the athletes the ability to focus on their goal and not have to work 2 part time jobs to support it. As a leader, one of the best things we can do when we give employees is to check up front if they have the resources at their disponsible to be successful.
Two years ago I was the local Flying J here in Calgary and spotted a retro Team Canada Jersey that I thought was really cool. What was even better was that this high quality jersey was only 19.99 when all the other jerseys around it were 50 bucks! I bought it. While I’ve got the odd compliment here and there..they rank nothing like the 3 offers to purchase that I had as I travelled from the Calgary airport to Winnipeg just after the Games, to begin a week of speaking.
Don’t back off having expectations of the people around you and then setting them up for success. Success can be a ton of fun when it brings a nation, community or company together. It also attracts more success. Funding for the Own the Podium program for future Olympics got doubled in our most recent federal budget..one otherwise known for it’s goal of freezing costs.
David Benjatschek is an award winning trainer/speaker in the areas of Leadership & Communication with a 15 year track record dealing with the Canadian Transport sector. Workshops include Supervisory/Leadership, Dealing with Diffucult People, Presentation/Communication and Priority Management. Visit www.marketbeamer.com or email David: david@marketbeamer.com for more info

99 percent of Canadians are either satisfied or really satisfied with the results delivered by Canadian athletes at the recent Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. While the “Own the Podium” program overarching goal of being the number 1 country with medals wasn’t reached, our record breaking 14 gold medals and the other incredible stories brought out by the Games had Canadians pumping their chests like I’ve never seen them pump them before. I’ve lived in many different regions of our great country and medals were coming out of all of them.