How Sports Talk Can Help Women in Business
The Jeopardy answer is: weather, pets and sports
The question: What are the three safe topics to talk about at work?
When I landed my first outside sales position, my sales manager instructed me to NEVER talk about race, religion or politics during discussions with potential clients. NEVER. “It’s just not safe.” However, he didn’t tell me what I SHOULD talk about.
Fast forward 7 years. By now I’m pretty heavy into the sales game for a well-known telecom company and I am starting to see female managers emerge as role models. I ask the only female director in the company out to lunch in order to pick her brain. I quickly noted that she was sharp, confident and business savvy. When I asked her what kept her comfortable at meetings as the only female in the room, she told me that she read two magazines cover to cover – Time and Sports Illustrated, and “would never be left out of any conversation”. Hmmm.
Fast forward again and now it’s any given Monday morning, fall of 2019. My friend, Lauren, a project manager is on the weekly conference call with her team. Thank goodness she knows football, because the first 10 minutes of the call is a Monday Morning Quarterback conversation reviewing the thrills of victory and the agony of defeat. There are a few women who don’t participate. Why? Because they don’t understand football! Lauren has continued to move up in the company and makes an extremely comfortable living. She “caught” her football interest from her husband, a big college football fan. She’s in the game from the very beginning of the call.
December 2019, at a networking event, I get to share the What Just Happened Sports story to the attendees, and casually (not casually) throw in that we would be hosting a Football 101 class in January 2020. A woman who had just been recognized by the group for earning a coveted award at AT&T comes over to introduce herself and tells me that she likes what What Just Happened Sports is doing. I’m thrilled because I’m thinking I’ve found our first student for the upcoming class! Wrong. She won’t be attending because she already understands football! She went on to explain that knowledge of football at work helped her career, and it’s one of the three safe topics to talk about at work. She “was handed off” a love of football while growing up from her Dad and brothers.
I founded What Just Happened Sports to make sure that we as women are “in the game” in corporate interactions and personal relationships. I also want us to have an appreciation for and enjoy sports as a spectator, player, or even an owner. I want us to know the fun aspects as well as the key players, owners, cities and rules. I’ve also learned that there are lots of women who already know a lot about sports and smoothly contribute to the sports conversation. Every one of them exudes a certain confidence which is a clear advantage in today’s world. I’m in this to learn as much as I can with you. Knowledge is power and sports is one of the few universal languages. Let’s do this – it’s game time!
