What’s the Difference Between Life and Sports?

I’m bummed.

Last weekend the Broncos lost, which I thought might happen anyway, but tonight the 49ers lost. I really though they had a shot at winning it all.

I grew up rooting for the 49ers. I’ve personally known some of the players. I DJed a couple team parties back in the day. I’m bummed. And that has made me wonder…

How is it that we can get SO passionate about a team, or a single game, or a season and we rarely experience that kind of passion in the rest of life? Allow me to share a couple observations:

1. Sports span a wide emotional gamut.
There are studies that show that fans actually like games better when there is a chance their team could lose. Blows out are humdrum either way. If we blow out the opponent that’s nice, if we get blown out that’s too bad, but if the game is close our elation of depression are much more deeply felt.

We’re emotional beings so that range of emotions is intoxicating. Threat, risk, despair, hope, anticipation, elation…they’re all there. We like the emotional ride.

2. Faster team sports generate bigger emotions
I don’t have any science on this, I just think it is true. You don’t see fans of individual sports like golf or tennis go as crazy as soccer, hockey, or football fans. I would contend that baseball fans are less crazy too, except perhaps on a hot afternoon when there has been a lot of beer consumed.

We’re social beings made to be in relationship. Team sports are about relationship and interdependence and team work. We love it when all the parts click and wish we could be a cog in that well honed relational mechanism.

3. Sports require split second decision making.
This plays into why faster sports spawn bigger emotions. It is also why soccer fans pick on football fans and football fans pick on baseball fans…the amount of relative dead space in their games. This need for instant decision mixes physical, cognitive, and intuitive skills in an oft times artistic mix that amazes us when it all comes together.

We’re creative beings. When adrenaline courses through our veins our cognitive and physical functions work at max capacity and we are at our most creative. We not only love to feel it, we love to see it in others.

So if that’s how we’re wired why isn’t day to day life more like that?

Probably because we spend a large proportion of our time at work!

1. The workplace engages fewer emotions.
At work we’re asked to operate predominantly out of our brain, sitting on our butt. Emotions are against company policy to a large extent. It’s not: go big or go home, it’s: go big? and we’ll send you home. We’re asked to dial back the range and the volume on every emotion. We must be in control.

2. “Teamwork” takes on a different connotation.
We may be “team players” or “individual contributors” but we rarely, if ever, find ourselves in a place where teammates must connect one after another like a quarterback getting time in the pocket and completing a pass.. (I’ve never worked on an assembly line but I do wonder if it feels more like a team in that setting.)

3. Decisions are generally made over time
…and then second guessed, and then changed. Sports contests are confined to 90 minutes, or nine innings, or the couple hours it takes to play four quarters. Sales cycles are days, weeks, months or sometimes even years. Product life cycles are even longer.

What if we allowed emotional expression in the work place without fear of reprisal? What if we created teams that had to consistently connect the dots one after the other? What if we set up cycle times that put teams in a position to have to do that daily, or even before lunch time?

Would we find ourselves being as passionate about work as we are about sports? And if we were…what might we accomplish?

What can you do to bring the fan experience more realistically into your workplace?