My Red Stars co-worker Pat McNamara posted a great blog today about his life in soccer. i worked with Pat at the Chicago Fire and am very fortunate that he accepted the Red Stars Director of Corporate Partnerships position recently. He is one of the best sellers of the professional soccer experience i have ever known.
In his post, Pat talks about how soccer has engulfed his life. i strongly believe that hiring people like Pat is a critical part of being successful. i've always called it hiring talented, hardworking people with good character. Someone today referred to it as "I.C.E." - hiring intelligent, competent, energetic people.
In either case, it is the passion for the job that makes good employees great employees. Hiring people who know soccer and have a passion for the sport results in a better office environment and a more effective and harder working staff. Hard work and passion means nothing if they're not also talented and have good character though.
One of the real differences in pro soccer administration now compared to twenty years ago when i started in pro soccer is the depth of the front office talent pool. When i started with the Milwaukee Wave in 1987, there were only one or two sports administraion programs in the country, fewer than 100 experienced soccer executives and less than a million soccer players. Now there are hundreds of collegiate sports admin programs, thousands of experienced soccer executives and tens of millions of current or former soccer players. That all increases the pool of talented, hard working people with good character who are qualified to work in pro sports administration.
The Chicago Red Stars are the beneficiaries of that progress.
2 comments:
the Wizards won the 2002 MLS Cup? Carlos Ruiz will be so dissapointed.
I’ve been doing quite a bit of introspection these days. It’s not that I’m narcissistic or anything. I just keep hearing folks say over and over again that you will be most successful career wise if you work where your passion is.
The part that I’m struggling with is the whole part about where my passion really lies. That may sound pretty dumb to most of you. But the truth is I am good at a bunch of different things. I enjoy a variety of stuff. And I tend to get passionate about things for relatively short bursts of time before I move onto the next thing.
I think my whole struggle drives my wife a bit nuts.
I can imagine her thinking, “Here we go again,” whenever I get on the topic. I mean just last night we had another one of those “I don’t know what I want be when I grow up” conversations. Oh, and I’m nearly 40. Sheesh!
The good news is there are some folks who are offering up some practical ideas and techniques to get through a barrier like mine. I thought I’d share a couple links that I’ve found that help me out since I’m struggling here. Who knows? Maybe some of you are struggling with this too.
So here are the links:
By far the most practical advice that lays out a step by step process to work through this that I’ve ever seen was laid out by Brian Kim in his post back in July called How to Find What You Love to Do. I just found the post a couple days ago and I am working through the steps he laid out now (I’ll let you know how it goes.)
Post a Comment