Olympic Reflections #4: Resilience
by Ross Fletcher, Director
Herd Freed Hartz – Executive Search
Olympic Reflections and lessons learned for recruiting
I was fortunate to work at seven Olympic Games (and a few Youth Olympics) during my time in broadcasting. For the duration of Paris 2024 I’m sharing a reflection a day.
Working at an Olympic Games was always a great privilege. Yet it often came with plenty of challenges. I learned a lot about my resilience levels at the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games.
Due to covid, the Olympics were pushed back a year but even in July 2021 there was a very different feel to any other Games I’d covered. Precautions were understandably high. After stringent testing and airport checks, I was allowed into Japan, where my colleagues and I would spend a significant chunk of our first two weeks isolated in our hotel room. We were only allowed out to go to our place of work and once the workday was finished, we were expected straight back in our rooms. It made for interesting mealtimes.
At breakfast we would go downstairs, put on disposable gloves, place our food in a Styrofoam container and immediately head back to our room to eat. At dinner it was only a little less relaxed. After signing out with the hotel security guard, we had 15 minutes to go to the next door 7-Eleven and buy dinner, to also have in our rooms. Just to clarify, Japanese 7-Elevens are actually a thing of wonder, with all sorts of unexpected delights! There were a couple of days when I only just sneaked in under the deadline.
Eating in a Japanese hotel room alone wasn’t exactly an ideal dining experience. If you’re not a fan of New York hotel rooms, I wouldn’t encourage a stay in Tokyo. To say an averagely priced hotel room is ‘efficiently sized’ is about as kind as I can get!
After those two weeks were allowed a much more ’normal’ amount of movement and we got to indulge in a little bit of the amazing Japanese culture. But those first two weeks taught me a great deal about resilience and respecting processes – attributes I’ve tried to carry into my work every day since.
If you liked this, you can also check out:
Olympic Reflections #1: The People
Olympic Reflections #2: Interviewing
Olympic Reflections #3: Across Sectors
#olympics #executiverecruiting #resilience