With the end of the Olympics, it’s a great time to reflect on the journey that our Olympic athletes have taken to reach their goals. I was very taken by the number of athletes that found interesting ways to motivate themselves to reach the podium, through innovation or with goals and persistence.

Many of the athletes challenged themselves in untraditional ways to achieve great results or set forth on a path to change their lives by reaching for an Olympic medal.

As with any business, goals were set and the training and learning of new skills and tactics were accomplished.

A few examples of out of the box thinking were:

Speed Skating – Men’s Team Pursuit – Utilized a new tactic where they gave a gentle push to the slower skater in their group and kept that skater from falling back. This tactic was only revealed for the Olympic Games in this event and gave them a clear advantage to help win the race. The push off had never been used before in team pursuit. Two of the skaters came from short track where this technique is used. Incorporating this skill won them a gold medal.

Snowboarding – Women’s Snow board cross – As a young girl Maëlle Ricker had two dreams: to compete competitively in snowboarding and to compete in snowboarding at the Winter Olympics, despite the fact that Snowboarding was not an Olympic sport at the time. Ricker was forced to skip the 2002 Olympics because of an injury. At the 2006 Olympics she placed 4th in her event. In 2010 Ricker won the gold medal just minutes from her childhood home in North Vancouver and described the Olympic victory “like a crazy dream”. The gold was redemption for her fall and concussion during the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin. She said that “Turin was such a motivator for me. It just made me work that much harder and just go for it today.”

Alpine Skiing – Women’s Downhill – American Ski sensation Lindsey Vonn strives for dominance and consistency in every race. She does it under pressure, in good conditions and bad conditions, tough courses and easy courses; it’s a real testament to what an amazing athlete and ski racer she is. As an analytical perfectionist with great strength she skis with longer men’s skis which are more forgiving and allow her to smooth out the conditions on the course. This tactical advantage increased her times and allowed her to reach her goal and win an Olympic gold medal.

Skeleton – Men’s Skeleton – Jon Montgomery watched the Olympic competition as a young man and decided that he needed to find a way to experience the Olympic spirit. In 2002 he visited the track in Calgary and a love affair began with Men’s Skelton. In an interview with CTV, he stated that he has a tattoo of a maple leaf over his heart and also said that he hopes his gold medal performance inspires more people to enter amateur sports. When not skeleton racing, Montgomery works as a sales consultant and automobile auctioneer in Calgary.

Ice Hockey – As a young child Sydney Crosby envisioned winning the Stanley Cup and playing for Canada in the Olympics. Many sportscasters mentioned that, Sid the kid, was not having the type of Olympic Game they had envisioned for him. But when needed Sydney Crosby scored the goal that won the gold medal for Ice Hockey and set a new Olympic record for Canada of 14 Gold medals.

These Olympic athletes identified their areas of strength and weakness, created visions for themselves and determined areas to focus on in order to get the biggest payoff. They set personals goals reviewing weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly.

They also set achievable and believable challenges to move forward with their lives, and held themselves accountable by working with personal coaches and trainers.

March has arrived and the first quarter of the year is upon us. What can you take from these Olympic Games to help Build Your Business and propel yourself forward for this year and into 2011?

Donald Robichaud is the President of the FloodLight Consulting team and can be reached at 250-768-9415

http://www.floodlight.ca/