Athletes turned high-performance managers

Their careers have made Spanish sport great. With them they achieved glory and recognition and their example, immortalized by the flashes of success, has elevated them as authentic leaders in their disciplines. With this backpack under their arm, full of experiences and knowledge, they have also known how to succeed in management positions or as entrepreneurs. But moving from the locker room to the office and doing so successfully is not a trivial matter. It involves finding a balance between qualities inherent to high-performance sports, such as effort, discipline or teamwork, and also managing strong egos and emotions.

Something that the Olympic synchronized swimmer Gemma Mengual has been able to deal with with simplicity and pragmatism: “I got very good advice to enter the business world and I have surrounded myself with the best,” she points out as a winning formula. Mengual has also used innovation to participate in the Cannabity Healthcare project, her latest venture that has a turnover of 200,000 euros. A business possible since the World Anti-Doping Agency legalized the use of medicinal CBD in 2020. “With Gemma the business has doubled sales,” says her partner David Fayos. But the athlete is not a beginner in management. She brings a consolidated career in hospitality and catering with the Ella Sugoi group. “At first I wanted to control everything and it was difficult for me to delegate. I learned to trust,” she says.

Although he recognizes that “risk always lurks,” he cannot complain about the good performance of his Japanese restaurant or that of his consulting firm Así Así el Patio, where together with his partner, Patricia Díaz, he advises athletes on their careers. She applies what 20 years in competition have taught her: “Have initiative, method, team, a clear objective and never lose focus.” And, unlike sports, “I don't take the company as a competition, but as a growth that requires analysis and a cool mind to provide good service, make the team work, feel that you are valued and give value to your people.” She mengually adds: “In the company you don't go for the gold, this is the sum of all. There is no success without humility and you always have to breathe, so as not to drown.”

If something defines the sports elite, it is their ability to win as a collective. “Ex-Olympians are good at leading high-performance teams because they know that they will suffer injuries and difficult moments, but they also know how to get up and successfully overcome frustrations,” says José Luis Bosch, director of the master's degree in Human Resources Management at OBS Business School. “And to win, the key is the workers,” maintains former basketball player and doctor Juan Antonio Corbalán. “Organizations that do not make their players great are doomed to failure. Bosses are not there to command, but to serve their people and provide the best customer service. Otherwise, a boss is of no use, even if he wins.” The former Spanish point guard also has words for the employee: “The worker, like the player, must be aware that the company depends on him and that he is responsible for its maintenance.”

Corbalán's experience in management began with an assignment from the consulting firm PwC and, after his time as a partner with Jorge Valdano in their company Make a Team, he is now an advisor at the educational group Metrodora. In this center, specialized in health and sports training, "we seek to train young people to draw conclusions and make decisions in professions aimed at caring for others." A challenge in a world, like that of training, where artificial intelligence (AI) has a full impact, he assures. “We must instill in young people, beyond the internet and AI, the value of knowledge itself. “To study is to develop your career with freedom, it is to be able to choose or choose to influence others.”

From center to talent scout

Six times international with Spain, Arturo Llopis (he was also a basketball player), changed his position as a center for that of financial analyst. Now a talent scout for the Spencer Stuart firm, he assures that the management of sporting and managerial talent is not very different. “Both senior management and sports are super-competitive environments, which bring together stars with a lot of ego that, whether it is the coach or the CEO, must know how to reconcile.” And to do this, he advises “making the squad have a common team objective to align themselves without prominence, as in basketball it is to score baskets, regardless of whether the board of directors has the same purpose.”

Given the unstoppable change in the labor paradigm, which also affects the high positions with which his firm works, Llopis indicates that “the market is very hot because there is little good talent and a great need to hire it.” And he defines “good” as a profile that brings together three characteristics: being a crack, “managers capable of solving all types of problems as they come”; being political, “knowing how to attract people and mobilize them for action,” and those who “like children, listen and know how to adapt to the environment to give the market what it asks for.” And that is what Jennifer Pedro, who was international with the Spanish futsal team, has done with the launch of Revelify, her start-up that evaluates movements during sports practice through AI.

“Entrepreneurship, like soccer, where I was captain, requires sharing effort, resilience and knowing how to motivate a team that must be aligned with your purpose. If not, the results do not arrive,” he says. After leaving his position as a civil servant at the University of Alicante and entering fully into the business world, Pedro highlights his learning for mental management as an athlete: “Undertaking is very hard. You have to improve yourself every day without faltering, which entails excellent management of emotions, and in that we athletes have a way to go.”

Fail and get up

“Sport will instill self-esteem and effort in you.” Under this maxim, the father of Marta Ruiz-Cuevas, CEO of Publicis Groupe for Spain and Portugal, enrolled her at the age of five at the Barganiza golf course, in Asturias. Something that had a full impact on her professional career. “I spent all my free time there and got an athletic scholarship to study at the University of South Alabama.” Ruiz-Cuevas talks about renunciation and a lot of sacrifice, aspects of sport that “cannot be seen and that shape you.”

Publicis Groupe achieved revenues of 15 billion euros last year and is present in 100 countries with more than 100,000 employees. As a leader for Iberia, she assures: “I have gotten here thanks to the discipline, concentration and organization that I learned in training and championships from a very young age.” And she highlights: “You learn not to be afraid of making mistakes, failing and getting up again.”