Sports Psychology

Organizational Strategies Professional sports teams constantly look throughout their organization and ask hard questions about what contributes and what does not. Every team wants to win, but not every team has the same advantages, meaning that improvement needs to come in different areas for a team to be able to succeed. Sports psychologists help to develop a vision for a team’s organization, from the batboys to the general managers signing huge contracts, so that everyone is pulling in the same direction and contributing to success. Businesses invest huge amounts of money in consulting, management training, and organizational reformmeant to develop a better business strategy. A big company that earns billions, like Apple or Alphabet, will get a better return from a process that improves the company by just 1 percent than it would by signing up thousands (or even millions) of new customers. Sports psychologists are often employed or referenced by these businesses for strategic decisions, in part due to the popularity of sports and the desire to apply sport concepts to a company, and in part because of the need for change and outside-the-box thinking. The results that they provide are capable of changing a company radically, whether they recommend a name change or even pivoting away to an entirely new line of business altogether. Just like professional athletes always look for new advantages, so too do major corporations seek a leg up on their competition.

Chapter 5: Takeaways for Everyday Life

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