Learning the benefits of talking sports in the workplace with The Gal’s Got Game
Here at YCB, we are firm believers that we women are the ultimate business players. Hardworking, ambitious, optimistic and charming, there should be no reason for us or our colleagues to ever feel shut out of boardroom conversation. However, when the business chat so often turns to last night’s game or that player that we’ve never heard of’s recent signing, the sport outsiders amongst us can feel left out and may be missing out on some vital informal networking. Casual networking can be the best form of extending your personal brand, but when we’re lost in translation in a sports discussion it can leave us feeling rather awkward, as opposed to the confident and charismatic characters that we really are. So why not educate you, your employees and your friends about sports in a fun and simple way so that we never feel shut out of a conversation in the office? That’s a question that the founders of the groundbreaking sports media venture The Gal’s Got Game asked themselves, and have now provided a solution.
Though you may think of sports as merely a game, it can be incredibly beneficial to your personal brand. Seen as the ‘the great equaliser’, sport is a conversation that people from all walks of life can get involved in. The intern and the CEO could find that they are fans of the same team and rapidly build a friendly relationship that may have otherwise taken them months to build. Lally Rementilla, co-founder of The Gal’s Got Game, recognises that finding common ground with your career counterparts is extremely beneficial to building relationships by establishing common interests. A safe subject – unlike politics talk – everybody is entitled to their own opinion; nobody is necessarily wrong or right. As well as the more informal side, many business meetings are conducted over sports. Think of an investment deal over a golf game. Why miss out on career opportunities only due to a lack of sports knowledge?
The Gal’s Got Game, founded by Toronto’s Lally Rementilla and Rekha Shah, is a sports media company offering services such as free daily cheat sheets, online courses and events. Not exactly sports experts ourselves, we had to see what this sports site was all about. We tried out the soccer (or football to us Brits) news section to get us into the loop post-World Cup (a slightly late attempt, we know, but we tried!). 5 short minutes later, and we’ve finally figured out who this Neymar guy is and what all the buzz surrounding him is about. Tailored to busy career women, the news updates and cheat sheets reject the assumption that the reader has a bounty of sports knowledge and aims to get them up to speed on what’s happening in the athletic world. Now we can start using that once alien sports jargon when talking business and drive home the concept that we’re winners.
Lally notes that the higher we climb up the business ladder, the more essential worthwhile networking becomes, and with that comes finding common ground with your male counterparts. This can be tricky with tedious small talk; so being in the loop with sports can quickly establish a relationship with an important client or connection. A quick quip about last night’s football game that you read on The Gal’s Got Game during your commute can turn you into fast friends and business contacts quicker than any expensive corporate lunch!
Rekha and Lally are firm believers in the value that sports knowledge can bring to career women. Instead of feeling uncomfortable and turning into a shrinking violet when business turns to baseball, it seems that we can continue to build personal and professional relationships through sports talk and have fun whilst doing it. Lally states that the sports world is all about winning through discipline, drive and teamwork – a clear overlap with the business world. The positive qualities of sports and sports vocabulary can transcend work and leisure borders – you needn’t wonder why we were so quick to check The Gal’s Got Game out. We can’t wait to test out our newfound football knowledge at next week’s meeting!
Make like we did and sign up for a free, short and sweet daily cheat sheet or simply flick through the headlines now at http://thegalsgotgame.com/.
Interested in The Gal’s Got Game online courses? There’s a special offer up for grabs for YCB readers. Just enter the code ‘YCB’ when registering and receive 15% off Hockey 101 or the soon to launch Baseball 101.
