Tonight, I watched a re-run of The Celebrity Apprentice. Jennie Finch (pictured left), an Olympic gold medalist, was fired for being too sweet and lacking the competitive spirit to compete in business.

In my book, I make quite a few references to my days playing basketball. I played on city and provincial teams from the time I was 12 years old until my second year of university. I credit sports with teaching me so many life and business skills.

Which is why I find it so odd that both Finch and Nadia Comaneci, another Olympic gold medalist who was fired from Celebrity Apprentice, didn’t bring the skills learned in their sports into the boardroom.

At first, I couldn’t understand why both Finch and Comaneci failed so miserably in the boardroom when they had such fire in their respective sports. But then the lightbulb went on.

Sports has a defined beginning and end. You win based on a very specific set of actions. To win in sports, one team has to score more points than the other. In basketball, this means shooting the ball into the net and scoring more points than the other team. In softball, this means getting as many runs as possible. In football, you score more touchdowns than the other team. I could on.

To win in business, it’s much more complicated. It’s not as simple as writing a business plan, opening your doors, making a sale, then retiring a millionaire. You have to play mind games. You have negotiate. You make a play and it can either lead to bankruptcy or your first million.

What makes sports and business similar is that both involve strategy. In sports, a coach needs to put the right player into the game at the right time. A player needs to have her game face on and keep distractions out of her mind. Other players have to execute the plays in order to shut down the defense.

Yet the difference between the two is the role you play. In sports, you’re a player. In business, you’re a politician. Athletes don’t rely on persuasion to convince their coach, their teammates or their fans that they can do the job. Not unless the athlete has been caught using steroids.

In business, you have to rely on a variety of tools to win. While the path to win in sports relies on being faster, being quicker and doing more than your opponent, in business, you can do all those things and still fail.

For both Finch and Comaneci, their competitive spirit got them into the boardroom. However, sports did little to prepare these 2 ladies for the nuances of succeeding in a business environment.

Photo courtesy jenniefinch.net