Recently, our global legal department organized a panel discussion featuring accomplished athletes. The parallels between maintaining excellence in the legal field and excelling in sports became evident.
Just as athletes need emotional fitness to succeed, lawyers must understand and manage their emotions to excel in their work. Skills such as resiliency, antifragility, time management, accountability, collaboration, strategic thinking, and a proactive mindset are shared attributes among top professionals in both law and sports.
1. Goals: Long term goals (e.g. lifting a sporting trophy at season’s end) are essential, but they can only be reached via hitting aligned short-term goals. In sports, internal drive and motivation is key. Athletes celebrate daily or weekly achievements that align with larger objectives. We are similar in our legal work: we strive to be among the best legal functions globally with clear goals and focused objectives. For example, in our day work being responsive whilst safeguarding the firm; and nurturing trusting relationships with our colleagues and internal clients (McKinsey consultants) to help them drive positive, lasting change in the world.
2. Resilience and antifragility: Sports offer valuable lessons in resilience, illustrating the ability to regain one’s original form following a setback and the inner strength required to rebound after encountering adversity. Furthermore, sports extend their teachings beyond mere recovery, encompassing the idea of advancing and improving after enduring a setback. The participants in the discussion delved into the concept of “antifragility,” a notion explored by authors like Nassim Taleb and Tal-Ben Shahar, which describes the capacity to emerge from challenges or tough times not only unscathed but stronger, wiser, and better. Consequently, our panelists were prompted to share the insights they’ve gained from demanding experiences, such as how to stage a comeback after losing a championship, how to recuperate from falling short of the finals, how to process the repercussions of an incorrect referee decision altering a match’s outcome, and how to tackle the obstacle of an injury preventing participation for the remainder of a season.
3. A toolkit of skills and behaviors
Our panelists’ insights about different skillsets and values apply universally, including in the legal world:
Sustaining success: Athletes balance intense training with rest, mirroring our need to deliver on pressing high-pressure legal work whilst finding thinking space to slow down and prioritize strategic thinking, process improvement, and maintaining and developing connections which contributes to sustained success.
An environment of feedback: Learn how to lose gracefully is a vital lesson from sports. Learning from constructive feedback fuels improvement, fostering resilience, collaboration, and growth.
Learn from Others: Glean wisdom from others’ experiences, cultivating empathy while objectively analyzing lessons for personal growth.
Embrace Boldness: Choose endeavors that align with our values, strengths, and goals. In our legal team, this entails aligning with the firm’s values.
Valuing Unity: When we recognize our interconnectedness it promotes collaboration and inclusivity, fostering a harmonious and prosperous future.
Collaboration: Collaborative efforts drive synergies, enhance creativity, productivity, and problem-solving, enabling greater achievements collectively than individually.
Knowledge Thirst: Actively seeking knowledge, guidance, and new skills promotes adaptability and learning across various aspects of life. Likewise, being able to “unlearn” the unnecessary, helps creating space to grow in what really matters.
Appreciating Highs and Lows: Intentionally embracing both successes and failures builds resilience, humility, and emotional strength, facilitating personal growth.
Adaptability: To be able to adjust and recalibrate under pressure and find solutions are vital skills.
Service Mindset: When we learn to prioritize the growth of the professional community over individual aspirations, it paves the way for leadership.
Sports can have a significant impact in the community as well. We identified that one thing that also motivates us is McKinsey Legal is more than just excellent legal work. On the community side, for those who want to do so in this space, we are encouraged to value and make a broader contribution outside the day-to-day legal lane. What as individuals/a team can we bring to the Firm and our wider communities to help us and others have more meaningful lives, to inspire ourselves and others? That’s a big goal and challenge. Many colleagues take on mentoring, coaching or training roles, support diversity and inclusion efforts, or do community volunteering. Many enjoy hobbies such as music or sport particularly enjoying coming together as a community – some of the recent accomplishments include:
- the October 2023 McKinsey Legal Maltese Falcon challenge by Rat Race. This was an event organized by the McKinsey Legal department in Europe where some Europe Legal colleagues came together as a team (including with others such as a few legal colleagues from other regions) to complete in one day (starting at 3.30am) the crossing of the 3 Maltese islands via running, kayaking and cycling whilst raising over €17,000 for charity, and
- the July 2023 charity event at Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam organized by the McKinsey Legal department in Asia where the Asia Legal colleagues spent an afternoon planting trees, donating gifts, painting and talking about different cultures in the APAC countries with children at SOS Children Village which works towards providing young people, without parental care or at risk of losing it, a safe environment to grow up with care and support they need to become their strongest selves.
In essence, the synergy between sports and the legal profession underscores the importance of emotional intelligence, collaboration, learning from challenges, impacting beyond personal boundaries, and pursuing bold objectives and vision. These lessons from the athletic world can be seamlessly integrated into our legal roles for enhanced joy and success.