The difficult second album
….. blog
Second place.
Second thought.
Second fiddle.
Second choice.
I’m not good with second; I’ve
never been good with second. I don’t want to buy seconds; I want the original. I
like winning; I need to win. I only want the best; I want to be the best. I
have a Nike Swoosh tattooed on my ankle to symbolise the Greek goddess of
victory; I am obsessed.
All of this makes me a bit of a pain in the proverbial.
I’m not really
allowed to play board games; bowling and darts are out of the question. So
where can I put my desire to win, to be first, to be the best? Sport is the
obvious place, and if I was able to play I would, but six rounds of knee
surgery has put pay to that. So now where do I take my desire for first place?
Turns out I don’t need to take it anywhere – it just needs repositioning……
Through the rehab process after my operations I began to learn that being the best doesn’t really mean anything unless you are being the best you can be, regardless of how that places you against others.
Now, this might sound like a strange thing for someone as
obsessed with sport as I am to say (cut me through the middle and, like a stick
of rock, it’s sport through and through!), but we all do ourselves a disservice
when we lower the bar and place winning over performing. I can’t remember how
many times the teams I played for won matches by ridiculous score lines
(football, rugby, hockey, basketball, cricket etc.) because our opposition were
just so poor. And that’s no disrespect to them, we just struggled to find the
teams to play against because so few teams existed when I was growing up –
particularly in terms of football and rugby. (I’m not that old by the way!) In all of these landslide victories I don’t
think I ever played my best – I didn’t need to, and that’s probably why I
became so obsessed with winning. When we were pitted against a team that really
challenged us, I remember that the feeling of beating that team was far more
powerful than any 16-0 victory could ever be. As more and more women’s and
girls teams emerged we had to get better, both at performing to our optimum, and at losing (not something I’ve mastered as yet).
Clearly the increase in the
number of teams playing so called ‘traditionally male sports’ is a great thing
for women and girls' sport, and we continue to see it bear fruit at the highest
level. Just look at the quality of football now being played in the FA Women’s
Super League; for the first time in nine years Arsenal Ladies are not the champions and the score lines in the top tiers now look like Association
Football results and not Rugby Football ones.
So, we’ve begun to do it on the
sports fields, but what about in the boardrooms? Does the same apply? If we
increase the base of our pyramid, will the apex be higher? Will our foundations
be stronger? As we better ourselves by being the best we can be, do we bring
others along with us? Do we lift the levels of performance of our peers? Are
our aspirations are higher because we can see through the cracks in the glass
ceiling that are beginning to appear thanks to those women continuing to push
themselves to be the best they can be?
At WSFF, we had our second Women’s Sport Network event last week. It was Lunch with the Leading Women in Sport. After the success of our inaugural event,
we knew this one had to be even better, and it was. Listening to our speakers,
Debbie Jevans CBE and Tricia Thompson, they both talked about the people
that helped them on their way to the top. They talked about how they wanted to
lift others and help them reach greater heights, and how, as women, it’s
important for us to bring others along with us as we continue to push for
equality on and off the fields of play. The more of us that are on the journey,
the further and higher we will go.
What does this mean for those of
us that want to be first? Does all of this make coming second easier? What’s so
bad about second? Isn’t one of the greatest things about sport that it can
teach us how to win and how to come second? Isn’t it all relative anyway? Is
second acceptable when our competitors are amazing? Is the real victory our
collective one of together elevating our successes?
So, how did I reposition coming first? Well, I’ve changed my competitors. My competitor is
me, I need to be better than I was yesterday, but not as good as I’ll be
tomorrow. I need to be this way because the arenas I want to succeed in have
also changed – my sports fields are now the boardroom and the gym floor. Neither
space needs me to be better than anyone else but myself, and in doing so I can
push and lift others…the former metaphorically, the latter literally……
So, we now have a second chance
to change the way women are seen in the world of sport. It’s second nature to
see women on the pitch, now’s the time to make it second nature to see us in
the boardroom.
(It’s still not safe playing
darts or going bowling with me though!)
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