It’s Game Time, What’s Your Professional Plan?

What can career professionals learn from the Superbowl?

The big game is approaching, and every NFL player and their coaches have a specific game plan in place.  They have practiced running their drills, watched countless hours of footage, studied their opponents, radiate with confidence, and have refined their skills serving as subject matter experts on the football field. They understand what it takes to be a professional and are relentless in executing their game plan.

Here are five key learnings from Superbowl Pros as you prepare your professional career plan:

1. Practice, Practice, Practice: If you want to become a subject matter expert (SME), you must develop your skills. Placing yourself in environments that will allow you to grow and nurture your gifts and talents.  This might show up as shadowing someone you professionally admire who is currently an SME, signing up for advanced training and development opportunities inside or outside your company, and/or attending free online workshops where you can learn from other professionals.  Once you’ve incorporated some form of practice routine, make sure you use your skills daily, in real time opportunities, and gather feedback from stakeholders on how to improve.
2. Become a Subject Matter Expert: Once you’ve refined your skills enough to where people constantly seek you out for counsel or advice and your leadership, peers, industry and/or customers have benefited from your guidance, it’s safe to say, your knowledge is highly valuable, and you’ve established yourself as an SME. This means that you need to learn everything there is to possibly know about your role, industry, competitors, products and/or services.  Be excellent at what you’ve perfected and share your insights with others. Experts help and share key learnings.
3. Radiate with Confidence: Hold your head up, shoulders back, walk with confidence, and close the deal. When others see how you position yourself, carry yourself, believe in yourself and your ideas or work initiatives, even if you don’t have all the answers, your confidence and belief in yourself is what people will admire and connect with.
4. Prepare for Showtime: When you have an opportunity to showcase your talent, don’t hold back, go full force and run like a running back towards the field goal. People invest in others that invest in themselves, leaders have a plan and are willing to demonstrate their plan in action at any time, but especially when they know it’s the big game and the reward is waiting on them to show up, perform, and win just like you’ve planned.
5. Be Relentless: Regardless of whether you win or lose in business, your career, or fail to accomplish a goal, don’t stop, be fearless and relentless in learning what went wrong or right, plan, practice, become an expert, prepare for your big career game, and one of these days you will take home the biggest trophy of your career.

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