Managerial diary of an amateur tennis player

One of my teacher's mantras is: "tennis is not like diving, there is no one to grade the execution; what counts is being in the game and making fewer mistakes than your opponent."

When I first took up the sport, I well remember how other instructors insisted, for example, on the technique of stroke execution and, no doubt due to my less than natural talent, this only ended up frustrating me. My focus was on grip, racket, feet, legs and never on the opponent's court. The change of approach that allowed me to make the turn was as simple as it was elementary: 'throw the ball over there, in that area of the court, as it suits you best'. Shifting my gaze to the effect to be generated allowed me to find my own way of striking and being effective.

Making game decisions on the basis of clear criteria increases execution speed and 'steals' time from the opponent.

The variables that come into play in a tennis match are far more than an amateur would commonly identify. A bit like when learning to drive, having so much to take care of can be confusing. One needs to have in mind some clear patterns and criteria for approaching game decisions that allow one to concentrate only on execution. An example: to an opponent's short ball, you respond with a short ball. I am not saying it is a universal rule, but for an amateur like me it is manna from heaven. As I run towards the net because my opponent has shortened it for me, I don't have the resources to come up with something new. If I concentrate on deciding what to do I miss the execution; if I do exactly what I already know I have to do, I increase my chances of being effective. Similarly in everyday professional life, in many circumstances clarity of criterion can make us autonomous and timely in decision making.

Reading the context remains essential to maintain a situational approach to the game.

Schemes and criteria are fine, but from time to time the reading of the context (i.e. moment of the match, opponent's approach and condition, score, environmental conditions, one's own psycho-physical state, etc.) must be updated to decide at what speed to hit, whether there are conditions to attack, whether one should pursue the extra stroke strategy or whether on the contrary one should shorten the exchange, and so on.

In general, people find it easier to rely on the pattern and stay within it to have 'one less thought'. Therefore, reading the context can really become decisive in the economy of a game.

Thinking about the day-to-day, when giving feedback to a colleague or running a meeting, reading the status of the relevant variables allows us to adapt the mode.

Intention as a driver of attention and proactivity.

Here it is easier to understand if I recount the exercise on the court that enlightened me in this regard. Very simple input from the instructor: "whichever way the ball comes, always hit with your forehand." In some cases I was coming down on the right side, in other cases I found myself forced to 'go around the ball'. Incredibly, this goal-driven intention of mine, in turn, solicited my attention to what was happening to me and the way the ball was coming at me, and my proactivity in always putting myself in the ideal position to hit a forehand shot grew exponentially. The much infamous proactivity, at the end of the day, is this thing here: clarity of the goal to be pursued that activates intention and attention pushing us to play in advance and take an advantage over the other. Otherwise, one plays remiss with all the consequences of the case such as, for example, ending up in the plot of the opponent's game.

Managing the trade off between trust and control

Here, too, it helps to use the exercise that has opened up a world for me. Normally you grip the racket from the bottom of the handle to get more leverage; obviously this causes you to lose some control. It is the proverbial short blanket; in managerialese it would be called 'trade off'. In some particularly frustrating moments when the ball flew in all sorts of directions, the advice/exercise was: 'shorten your grip on the handle and hold it closer to the stringbed'. Again, as if by magic, the accuracy of my strokes increased, certainly at the expense of power but with much less frustration evidently.

Delegation works exactly like the racket: if we want to increase the effectiveness of our co-worker through our greater control, we will have to act "closely" by trying to increase the frequency of contact moments; of course we will lose some leverage in the sense that our co-worker will move more cautiously and we will have to invest our time. However, as trust grows and we perceive that we can increase the effectiveness and impact of our co-worker's action by investing less time and supervision, but without relinquishing control, we will have, in fact, "gripped the racket from the bottom of the handle again" and obtained amazing results.

Try it (on the tennis court with capable and enlightened instructors) to believe!

*Partner of Newton S.p.A..