Sports help to build a better world. This beautiful idea can quickly become empty if we don’t fill it with concrete actions. It may become a manipulative marketing activity instead of a core mission. Beyond our discourses about making this planet a better place for everyone, we need to advocate for it.
Sometimes advocacy is understood as an angry attitude of patrolling others for not complying with our ideals. Non-compliers are then “canceled” in social media and judged guilty even before a fair trial. Those images don’t translate the transformative potential of fighting for what we believe in.
Often we need to advocate for things that don’t have a natural space in our culture. For instance, increasing the diversity of teams and leaders in sports organisations with a multiplicity of genders, ethnicities, origins, sexual identities, abilities, and religious beliefs. Or making sports environments more collaborative, kind, and respectful.
Therefore, advocacy requires taking a risk. We need to step up, speak up, and push to the center of the conversation topics that are systematically underestimated. We may be disregarded with indifference and aggressiveness or be laughed at. Our inconsistencies may be pointed out publicly, not to help us improve but to invalidate our ideas and proposals.
It is true, then, that we must be strong to advocate. But the source of our strength doesn’t have to be the desire to point out and attack others. It can be the connexion with the potential good we want to see in people’s lives and the power of community – knowing that people are holding hands with us for the same cause.
So, it starts with our teams discussing how our work in sports could be better and us. Who are the people who could be included? What are the attitudes that could make us kinder to one another? What are the social injustices that we are overlooking in the way we conduct our businesses?
We will not be able to address all causes correctly all the time. We will have to confront our mistakes without “canceling” ourselves and others because of them. Instead, we will have to dialogue with radical honesty to improve together. Some improvements will depend on us, and some will rely on higher instances, such as governments building better public policies.
At Legacy Sport, we are a small team, so we have the privilege of discussing how we build our relationships. Are we creating a sustainable environment for everyone? Do we feel happy to work together?
We are also implementing gradual sustainability policies. Small steps, such as discussing gender equality and racial equity internally, so we can improve our future recruitment processes as the team grows up. Or continuing to develop ways to help major sports events optimize resources when deploying technology.
Advocating internally, in our organisation, or publicly, in social media, manifestations and debates with public and private organisations, can be confronting. We may realise we know less than we imagined and are doing less than we hoped for.
However, the capacity to start or join a conversation in an inviting way that welcomes the contradictions we all have, has the power to make beautiful ideas become consistent, grounded realities.
What is your way of advocating? And what are you advocating for?
TEC – HEART – SPORT is our latest series of articles explaining the mission, vision, and culture that Legacy Sport shares with its community and the world. See below for a summary of each topic we will explore during the series.
Thrill
Expertise
Courage
Humanism
Empathy
Advocacy
Respect
Transparency
Sustainability
People
Olympism
Relationships
Transformation
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