This past week was de facto sports conference week in New York. From the IESE event on Monday to the Sports Business Awards Wednesday to Leaders in Performance and Sports Ticketing, you could have filled almost every hour from 8 am Monday through 7:00 Thursday networking with sports biz folks big and small. On Thursday, the week capped with the second Sports PR Summit at the MLB Fan Cave, a day long gathering of sports communications professionals and media to talk about their interests and expertise and best practices, with senior league officials like Mike Bass from the NBA and Dan Courtemanche from Major League Soccer mixing in with brand professionals, journalists like ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap and LZ Granderson, USA Today’s Mary Byrne and Sports Illustrated’s Jon Wertheim, to talk about the issues of the day.
However throughout the week, from early Monday morning discussions about what Nelson Mandela meant to sport, through cocktails Thursday, the most important lessons were not what was spoken as much as what was heard and absorbed. Listening to others tell their stories effectively and applying those to what you do remains a lost art in business, and one which we were reminded of this week should be the most important element of such long and diverse events, no matter the industry.
My grandfather, Joe Sgro. Joe was an accountant by trade, educated at Boy’s High and St. John’s University and by many accounts the unofficial Mayor of South Brooklyn when I was young. He did lots of favors for people and was a pillar of the community. Especially in the political world of the Borough. He was a key member of the South Brooklyn Democratic Club, and I have vivid memories after 12:15 mass on Sundays where many of the people looking for influence in business or politics would stop by for a few minutes. He didn’t speak a lot, but he listened, and results often came. One of the key things he mentioned to me on several occasions as those around him were yelling and screaming for attention was “You have to ears and one mouth, so listen twice more than you speak.”
In a world today that is all about shouting down your opponents and proclaiming oneself to be the guru, the innovator, and the biggest and the brightest, it is great to have been able to listen and learn from those who have some diverse global viewpoints, whether they have a vision for growing Bayern Munich into more of a global brand or they explain how Jenny Craig applies grassroots marketing and listening to their communications strategy. As people at all these events this week moved from cell phone to tablet back to cell phone during and after each panel, I tried to look over all the notes coming from various social media platforms to see what I had missed, and what else could be learned even in short bytes from those who took the time to speak, with the hopes that many were listening and learning. While many of the messages were pretty universal; storytelling is still an art, unique owned content is vital, understanding your audience is a priority and we all need to think more than act first, the way in which the messages were spelled out varied widely. If you didn’t listen, you missed the [point many times.
Last year around this time I was invited to come down to Atlanta and talk to some legendary figures in the sports business about a potential opportunity, and to hear their concerns and thoughts about the forward-looking project. The room was filled with some of the greatest names in sports, all talking over each other and swapping stories. However as business plans were rolled out, one venerable leader sat quietly taking copious notes and asking questions about the details of the idea. His name was Johnny Majors, the Hall of Fame football coach from The University of Tennessee. Majors sat and listened and used a note pad for page after page of notes. He could have told more stories than anyone in the room, but instead he came to learn from those much younger than he about the business world of today.
The teacher learns from the students.
My grandpa would have been proud of many of those who listened this week as well as he would have liked what Coach Majors did, as I’m sure so many thousands of people he has influenced in the past and in the future are and will be as well. It’s the little things that you hear when you listen that can sometimes make the biggest difference, and in a world where self-proclamation is king, taking the time to listen to others is an art which needs to be embraced more than ever.
The Troops Remain A Still To be Tapped Platform…