Athletes Train More Than They Play

By Lora Benson | Sep 16, 2016
The Olympics contained some important lessons for our profession. Athletes train more than they play their chosen sport. In business it’s almost entirely the opposite. We are “doing at the coalface” a lot, but rarely practicing our skills. We practice on live customers, which you’d have to accept might not always a great idea.

Tips From The Coalface, September 2016

The Olympics contained some important lessons for our profession.

Athletes train more than they play their chosen sport. 

In business it’s almost entirely the opposite. We are “doing at the coalface” a lot, but rarely practising our skills. We practise on live customers, which you’d have to accept might not always a great idea.

In the military it’s the same; they spend innumerable hours, training, training, training, to ensure that come the hour, they’re ready. In their world the stakes are clearly so much higher than in ours.

So maybe we can’t spend all of our time training, but we could certainly do a lot more of it, and we could get way better at making any training time we do set aside count.

Doing technical exams is not training in my view. Maybe it is for newbies, but not for experienced advisers, or administrators, or paraplanners. 

What are the skills each person within your business could improve, so that in turn, their enjoyment and performance of their role could improve too? That’s the question you need to be asking.

It doesn’t need to be onerous. A few times per year of external training might suffice, along with some more regular internal sessions. However, as little as that is, it’s a lot more than most firms ever do.

I reckon it’s time we trained a bit more.