From lessons in team management to strategies for overcoming adversity, an awareness of sports psychology can be beneficial when running an advice business, says behavioural scientist Mark Pittaccio.
The business consultant and founder of Your Behavioural Economist, who is a keen cyclist and former rugby coach, says there are many useful situations in sport that advisers can learn from.
These include understanding team members' motivations and having an awareness of the support people need in order to create the best performing business.
It could also include more controversial measures, such as cutting out star performers when they are seen to be harming the team environment.
Pittaccio says: "Quite often when I go into an advisory business there's sometimes a lead adviser who generates an awful lot of the income.
"And the owners of the business quite often say 'yeah I know he is a pain', or 'I know he is difficult to deal with but he generates all this income, he is our star performer'.
"But then you [think], but look at how many admin staff you've lost in the last year because they just don't want to work with him."
He says in his experience, in all the instances where the conclusion was to let go off that adviser, the turnover of the business eventually became better, and the staff turnover was reduced.
It was a similar story when he was coaching rugby teams.
After dropping a star player from his team, and consequently losing the next few matches, the team eventually adopted a way of playing which allowed it to be happier and better.
Sometimes hiring good staff who are good team players is better than hiring the best staff who are not, he says.
Objectives aligned
Cycling the amateur Tour de France has taught him another valuable lesson in team play.
The mammoth task, spanning several thousand kilometres, which he attempted with 11 other cyclists unknown to him, taught him how quickly a team could bond when people's reasons for being there were aligned.
"None of us knew each other before we started and at the end of [the first day] I was in one of the closest teams after one day that I'd ever been involved in because everybody understood after that first stage, which was something like 180km...everybody wanted to complete the Tour de France and everybody knew they couldn't do it on their own."
What that means, he says, is "when the objective is really clear and everybody aligns to it and when everybody understands it's not something they can achieve on their own, the team just comes together."
