A different source of inspiration for new year resolutions

The 22nd Winter Olympics take place in Sochi in February. The torch relay will have been the longest in history, from the bottom of a lake, to the North Pole and into space, while the cost of the games is estimated to be some five times the original budget (and about five times the cost of the London Games).

Spectacle aside, perhaps thinking about outstanding people might provide a fresh angle for New Year resolutions that really will make a difference? Sport illustrates a pinnacle of personal and team achievement, backed up by outstanding leadership to create the right conditions in which to nurture winners and allow them to deliver.

It seems to me there are five strands that could give us food for thought within business.

1. Pipeline management

Research suggests businesses tend to have only moderate levels of confidence in the management of the quality and quantity of their talent pipelines. If correct this is disappointing since it ought to be largely in our sphere of influence.

By comparison, Lane4, the talent management firm built from leading athletes, has made a number of interesting observations about the 2012 Olympic Games and noted that Team GB had very high levels of confidence that they had indeed identified the best people for the Games.

2. Application

Athletes can spend 90 per cent of their time practising and 10 per cent performing. In business, people are unlikely to spend even 10 per cent of their time in development. As the saying goes, we can be too busy sawing to stop periodically to sharpen the saw.

The core challenge for business may be mainly around providing enough opportunities for the new skills you are hoping to develop to be put into practice: without this, any real improvement in competencies is likely to be pretty limited.

3. Personal resilience and mental toughness

As well as providing opportunities to practice applying skills, we also need to consider the nature of personal development. Developing sporting excellence shows a focus not just on technical skill but also on aspects of mental toughness such as resilience and discipline. Perhaps business might see improvements in performance if it too gave more attention to these aspects?

Personal resilience - managing self-belief, emotional control and focus - is also crucial for those who hold leadership positions and need to maintain energy levels not only for themselves but also to bring others with them.

Resilience and overall wellbeing is starting to rise up the business agenda and is becoming recognised as a core element of maintaining high levels of performance over sustained periods, as well as for underpinning recovery from setbacks that inevitably occur.

4. Proactive support

Leadership support, together with close feedback that is linked to the external and competitive environment, helps athletes to focus, maintain well-being and reduce stress levels. The provision of high levels of support in conjunction with high performance expectations is believed to be the strongest combination of leadership behaviours in sport, according to Lane4.

By comparison with sport, few businesses provide their people with such close levels of engagement and dialogue. And, in business, while we may demonstrate some best practice through repeated communication of vision statements, the follow-through tends to be less good, all too often without clear goals (broken into manageable chunks) or well-signed milestones.

5. Trust

Finally, trust is essential because honesty, sharing, openness and accepting constructive feedback are prerequisites for other behaviours. Building a culture of trust will have a deep impact on any business but, too often, honest conversations may be avoided or self-interest will prevail, and these will damage productivity and connection with the espoused vision.

So, as you take stock of how many of your new year resolutions might be in danger of falling by the wayside already, perhaps Sochi can give a fresh opportunity to see the truly extraordinary things that people can achieve if they put their minds to it.