In the summer of 2016, Helen Maroulis was the first female wrestler ever to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States. When she sat down and started to tell us her story, she didn’t talk about picturing things or conquering mountains. Her story was about something simple. She explained to us that a person goes into battle or a meeting with nothing other than what they have with them. She was able to say, “Look! This is what I did. This is how I was able to win a gold medal. I go into a situation and put forth the best effort that I can. I don’t think that I’m always going to win. I simply know that I’m prepared mentally and physically to do the best that I can.”
Impact of a Well-Told Story
Helen was able to tell her moving story in 30 to 40 seconds. It reached millions because a lot of people could relate to it and decided to share it. The most important thing that she could do was take a large story like winning the gold medal in Rio and narrow it down using the simplest of tactics. This is what you need to do when you’re trying to tell a story.
Important Storytelling Lessons
Everyone has a story. Whether they’re a brand, league, team, student or parent, they have a story. The most important thing that you can do is make certain that you understand the messages that people are trying to communicate to you and others. You must also use the proper medium, no matter what that is, to make certain that whoever you represent is telling their story properly in an impactful way.
One important rule is that you must actively listen when someone is trying to tell you their story. You have two ears and one mouth. So if you listen to whoever it is that’s trying to tell the story and you’re able to prepare from that interaction, you can tell amazing stories on whatever medium that you want to tell them. Today, you have so many options. You can tell their story using video, print, digital or audio. It doesn’t really matter which medium you use, but you have to make sure that you match that medium to the person who’s telling the story.
You also need to be consistent. You must make certain that you’re telling a story to the right audience, and it’s the right story that you want to tell. There are plenty of examples of people who put stories on Twitter and other social media platforms and made one or more mistakes that caused them to lose control of their message. No matter what it is that you want to do with a story, controlling the message is important.
As long as you’re consistent, anyone in your global sports organization should be able to repeat your story. You can do whatever you like as long as your story is consistent and you’re telling it to the proper audience. With social media, you can tell your story with any device that you want to use in any way that you want to use it. Whether you’re using a phone or laptop, you can build your own story and use Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat or any other platform to spread it.
Yet, the most important thing is that you need to curate the message and make certain it’s told consistently and properly. You also need to make certain that you’re conveying the right message.
Finding Storytelling Opportunities
Opportunities in storytelling exist at every level of sports management. You can find them at agencies and in teams. Athletes and celebrities are hiring their own people to help them tell their stories.
There are some really important characteristics that you can develop through a sports management education that you need to have to help them tell their stories. You have to be a good listener and able to write well. It’s also great if you can speak to the world in more than one language. You need to be able to not only tell the thoughts that you want to express, but you also need to take other people’s thoughts and put them into a form, such as video, audio or print, and make sure that the story is told consistently.
There are so many sports management jobs out there now, from entry level to senior positions, that are growing by leaps and bounds. Teams are hiring for sports management jobs, but they’re mostly hiring at entry-level positions. Given that people have up between five and seven years of experience, they’re primarily hiring senior people for story curation, digital and social media, brand building and advertising positions that didn’t exist before.
Online Sports Management Education
These positions will continue to grow. As long as you have the traits outlined, such as being a good listener and writer and a really good storyteller, you can find these jobs. You only need to remember the most important things. You need to know how to tell your story. You need to know all the tools that are out there to tell your story or the story of the company that you work for in the sports industry. An online sports management education is one of the best ways to gain access to this knowledge and these tools.
