Work, 7 Olympic attitudes to inspire you

Never before have the values ​​of sport excited, united and inspired us as this year. The incredible achievements of our athletes at the Olympics – from Jacobs’ gold to Bebe Vio’s, to name just the most striking – gave us a taste of that Olympic mentality capable of making the impossible possible, going beyond its limits. .

A teaching that can give us the right motivation for school and work. Why, as it reminds us Valentina Marchei, the only Italian to have participated in the Olympic Games in two different ice skating specialties (the individual and the artistic couple, where she broke several records), “in sport and in life the best does not always win nor the stronger, but often only the most convinced ».

The former skater with 15 European Championships, 11 World Championships and 2 Olympics behind her (Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018), today assumed in a managerial role in the Organization of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Milan Cortina 2026, in her masterclass on Competenze.it – ​​the platform created by Marco Montemagno to learn from the best Italian excellence – explains how to be guided and motivated in daily challenges, inspired by those values ​​that accompany the life of every athlete, in view of a five-circle final.

Here are 7 attitudes to inspire you for a proactive return by Valentina Marchei.

1. Fatigue
We do not avoid fatigue. Fatigue has a goal, that of striving towards realization, an innate instinct in each of us. It is very important to have a good relationship with fatigue, accepting it even if we don’t want it, facing it even if we apparently don’t see a sense of it. Even if we don’t always win a medal or don’t immediately see a result at work. Carl Rogers, the father of humanistic psychology, did an experiment: he left a basket full of potatoes in a semi-dark cellar. After a few weeks he noticed that almost half of them had sprouted towards a small window at the top. Fatigue is a decision you make: move towards the window or stay in the potato basket?

2. Character
Put your character, your personal way of being at the service of your goals. Character is the ability to influence and influence when we have to make decisions. It is not a skill, but a skill and can be trained according to the context. Are you a freelancer? Are you part of a team or are you the boss? “In my experience on ice I went from having to make decisions just for myself – when I was a single skater – to a more democratic form of leadership – when I switched to pair skating and the decisions have to be discussed together. Today I put my experience at the service of a company, moving to a form of charismatic leadership. I transfer my inheritance, letting others decide for themselves.

3. Communication
In skating, as in many sports, you are continually judged by someone, often you don’t feel up to it. The only way to get the judges to your side is to get yourself on the ice. A teaching that is also valid in work, where the “judge” is a boss, a colleague, a client. In my career in the women’s singles I have never been the technically strongest skater, certainly my quality has been that of knowing how to sell even the things I didn’t know how to do. Using my personality to enhance my elements on ice.

4. Take a chance
At 16, exhilarated by the adrenaline of competition, I performed my first triple tolup during a competition – a jump that I had never been able to do in training. And what did this teach me? That you learn by taking risks, you don’t learn by avoiding. In sport you can lose for a penny and therefore we are used to going to earn every single point. Even at work today and in my daily life, this mentality has taught me to leave no stone unturned, to have the courage to fight for something I believe in.

5. Manage stress
In skating, as at work, staying in balance under stress is very difficult. In the career of an Olympic athlete, years of sacrifice are at stake in a single competition. Training self-control is essential. The key is to tackle one item at a time. Organize priorities. At a first European participation with my partner, Ondrej, we were only in our second race together and already among the best four in Europe. The tension was so great that I thought I’d back out. Reorganizing all my emotions helped me in the face of an adventure that apparently seemed very scary, but which in reality we were able to face. We only had to bring to the ice what we knew how to do. Nothing more, nothing less.

6. Perseverance
Often, in sport, as in work, it is not the one who has the most talent who wins, but the one who insists the most. Among the athletes, there are those who are born with a natural gift and those who instead had to build and fight. I very much recognize myself in the second category. This, in reality, has been the luck of my career, because in silence I worked and bit the calves of those in front of me. I knew that the closer I got, the more I was on top of the world too. Perseverance really makes a difference in the face of daily unforeseen events. It helps us get up stronger than before, just like injuries that can affect any sportsman – and in this case, innate talent is not enough.

7. Liability
How many times in a meeting, when faced with a problem, everyone blames someone else without taking it? In the race there is no time to point the finger at the mistakes of the teammates. Resources must be quickly channeled towards the search for a solution. When I started skating in pairs, the trust that was created with my partner meant that, in the face of a fall or a difficulty, we knew how to take responsibility for each other, protecting ourselves. Focusing on guilt only risks exacerbating the problem. A true problem solver takes responsibility. Not only that, he also manages the responsibilities of others within the group, coordinating them and finding the most effective and fastest way to reach the initial goal.