The X International Forum
on Elite Sport, recently held
in Durban, South Africa
was a tremendous success!
Thank you, sincerely, to
the presenters, attendees
and organizers for your
contributions to making
the Forum a highly-valued
experience.
The Forum offered an environment that
allowed for productive and meaningful
conversations. It was a great opportunity
to garner new knowledge, make new
connections, share experiences and
seek advice on solving problems and
addressing issues many others in our
business may have already faced.
With enough humility, we can learn
from anyone. Humility leads to a growth
mindset. Growth is not an accident.
We grow on purpose or not at all.
We understand that leadership
development is a cost, however, there
is also a big cost of lagging leadership
development. It is a competitive necessity
that we invest in our self and in our
“bench”. As leaders, we are responsible
for our “bench”, for our organizational
structures and for the culture we have
created or allowed to develop. Effective
leadership is the bedrock of performance.
Leaders inspire and influence others
and provide a distinctiveness between
organizations that thrive and those that
do not.
It is important for people who have
experienced success to share their
learnings, their wisdom, and insights
and impart them to others. We can
all be advocates for and champions
for others, helping them succeed by
opening doors, make introductions
or sharing opportunities. We expect
athletes to be role models. Each of us,
as administrators, managers or leaders
in our respective Institutes/Centres have
a similar responsibility to be examples, to
teach values, to encourage servanthood,
to support others, to develop others.
As lifelong learners, we should always
be open and receptive to learning from
others, to learning new ideas, to being
receptive to tweak our ideas. There is
always room for more learning. Those of
us in high performance sport business find
ourselves are in a unique and challenging
time. Sport can be used as a vehicle to
bring people together in a world that
seems increasingly divided.
Dale Henwood
ASPC President