Exciting Moments in Sports and Business

This weekend, there were a lot of sporting events that caught my attention. Xavier Gipson’s punt return touchdown giving the Jets a win was the most exciting for me. That got me comparing it to some of the other events I watched, trying to compare them for degrees of excitement.

The Sunday walk-off hit by Isiah Kiner-Falefa (IKF) gave the Yankees a 4–3 win in a game where the Yankees were no-hit for ten innings and then got the win in extra innings was exciting, but it did not compare to the excitement of the punt return. Coco Gauff’s and Novak Djokovic’s tennis wins in the U.S. Open were certainly exciting, but I don’t think it had the drama of the punt return or IKF’s walk-off hit. For that matter, does a game-winning goal from a penalty shoot-out in soccer, or a 3-point winning jump shot in the last tenth of a second in the NCAA basketball final game, or a 30-foot putt to win a golf championship create the same excitement and drama as that punt return? Of course, if you were a Buffalo Bills fan, you would not have felt that same excitement or appreciate the drama of the punt return.

So, what creates great excitement? I suggest it is a moment of excellence resulting from an unexpected exceptional individual achievement that created a successful ending to something that you were invested in, such as watching an athletic competition. Also, there are different degrees of excitement and events that cause them and athletes or teams that accomplish them. A lot depends on your interest level and the length of your time investment in watching the event. Think about this for a moment, and let’s see if this could be applied to a business or professional setting. I might even call this a WOW! factor.

Clients, patients and businesses engage various types of professionals to provide a service to assist in an action that cannot be done independently of a specialist. It could be done by other equally skilled professionals, but they all need to be sought out, vetted and engaged. So, a question could be how to distinguish yourself and also create an exciting end to an engagement. One way is by your responsiveness to resolving the issue, by listening to the client…really listening, asking relevant questions, not appearing rushed or distracted, explaining alternative procedures, meeting the deadline, returning calls promptly, making check-in calls when you said you would, and following up after the project or procedure is completed to get a status update. The drama might be missing, but the WOW! would not.

If you are the person seeking out the professional, then might I suggest you use these criteria to evaluate them, their performance and whether they created a WOW! factor.