Learnings for lawyers from this sensational summer of sport 2021
This is how our 2nd panellist at Fuel+Move's first Community Roundtable describes his experience of life on the football pitch and how that helped him prepare for the lawyer lifestyle too.
Receiving feedback … or criticism more than feedback. It’s tough isn’t it?
And when that criticism is coming at you in a public forum, makes it even worse. But it happens. It happens all the time and for athletes with high volume and intensity.
We’ve already seen Naomi Osaka earlier this year taking action by withdrawing from post-match interviews (even taking fines and sacrificing competition participation for failure to comply with tournament terms and conditions).
Gareth Bale got similar treatment after Wales’ loss to Denmark and departure from Euro2020.
And most recently and horrifically Sha'Carri Richardson who was told about her biological mum's passing away by a journalist at a media interview.
And we see this behaviour mimicked and intensified time and time again as cowardly social media trolls attack athletes for everything from performance to personal attributes.
At least in law we don't have to deal with that.
Whilst having struggled with this barrage of public criticism as a footballer, our Community Roundtable guest and former pro-footballer converted that experience to help him manage his development as a lawyer (including the criticism that's part and parcel in our profession).
That’s collateral beauty.
Of course it would be much nicer for all if the pain had not been so brutally and wantonly inflicted and we could just be a bit kinder to each other. But we can’t always count on the voices around us to do the right thing, and in the absence of that, we take solace in the hope that by coming through challenges we build resilience.
The collateral beauty of challenges is how we use them to propel us forward into a better future. And the people around you - your team in those moments can make or break those experiences and how you respond to them.
How do you convert these challenges into collateral beauty?
Fuel+Move's Community Roundtable panellist, Josh Low enjoyed a 17 year professional football career during the course of which he studied law at night school and Open University to qualify into one of the top global corporate law firms. He is no stranger to the power of team togetherness in sport and recognises its value now that he’s a senior associate:
“teamwork is vital for all of us across the whole firm as we all need each other to provide a complete service to our clients, and this is true from the support staff right up through to the management team. We cannot deliver a first-class service without our whole team working successfully together”
He’s taken many of the attributes, mindsets and approaches he adopted as a footballer and applied them to this legal career and a new found love of golf.
At our Community Roundtable on 20 July, he’ll be joining Howard Stupp and other panellists from Olympic sport to share some of the more ordinary touches which power the extraordinary impact of togetherness for lawyers.
Register here to secure you place now.
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