A Guide to Skateboarders’ Ethic in the Workplace
Whenever we think about ‘skateboarding’, the word is unlikely to invoke visions of suits, ties and big conference rooms. At a first glance the activity is galaxies away from anything remotely professional.
The truth, though, is that if one reflects beyond the knee jerk reaction of instinctive visions of skateparks and ripped jeans, we actually find a surprisingly vast amount of transferable skills that can be applied anywhere from the concrete all the way to the workplace.
Going in for the Fall
Anyone who has stepped foot on a skateboard understands one simple rule: you are going to fall. Paradoxically, the better you get at it, the likelihood of getting intimately aquatinted with the concrete increases.
The more skateboarders become ingrained in the culture and the activity itself, it becomes natural to push oneself past every point possible. This implies learning new tricks, improving posture and style, expanding to new terrains, or simply skating faster. Regardless of the specific goal, skateboarders know that they are leaving their houses to fail repetitively and disproportionately to the number of tricks they will land. A five second trick may take months to perform, if not worse.
That type of mentality is a valuable asset to any company. Skateboarding teaches you that goals take time to be reached, and most importantly, that failed attempts do not define your work for they are rather an integral part of success — the building blocks of greatness even.
Another parallel is skateboarders’ capacity to see ‘the big picture’ as an infinite process of incalculable steps. All obstacles, when overcome, are not a final conquest, they just mean you can push further and improve beyond that point. Skateboarders do not land one trick and stop skating as soon as they land it, instead they are excited to move onto the next one. In the office, this would mean that a completed project is not the end of a task, but rather the opportunity to move onto something more challenging.
Calculated Risks
To the untrained eye, a skateboarder throwing him/herself down a handrail or large set of stairs may give the impression that the person in question has a death wish. The absurdity of the visual disruption of daily urban settings contributes to an excusable misinterpretation of that person’s sanity. And this response is not about the stunt itself either, for acrobatic gymnasts are more likely to perform extremely complex routines without having their mental faculties questioned.
The truth is, even when a trick goes wrong, there is a much greater amount of calculation and skill involved than meets the eye. Of course, this is a generalisation, and generalisations have exceptions, but if you ever see a skateboarder trying something that looks scary in the streets, chances are that (s)he is 90% sure of what they are doing, with the other 10% being courage and resolve to adapt quickly to a new obstacle and terrain. In other words, if you see a skateboarder jumping down 10 stairs, chances are he has done it to perfection before on some other 5 stair set.
In the workplace, this type of approach will reveal many important personal skills. First and foremost, it shows that this person is willing to spend many hours in the shadows, quietly perfecting his/her trade, just for a chance to do it right when the time comes. Second, the ability to achieve an equilibrium between having enough skill to know what one is doing and still be courageous enough to push the boundaries of a comfort zone, is what turn good projects into great projects. A skateboarder will always push the limits, but never at the expense of destroying everything in the process. This mindset of consistent preparation and courageous expansion is something seldom taught in business schools.
No Rules Make for Good Problem Solvers
I have struggled with the accuracy of labelling skateboarding a ‘sport’ ever since forever. There are no rules, methods, ways to win, nor obvious or continual health benefits to it. From my perspective skateboarding is uniquely situated somewhere between being full blown Art through motion, or a mere unstructured and spontaneous mixture of coordinated movements. As such, if one steps on a skateboard for long enough to be legitimately deemed a skateboarder, our minds and worldviews will be fundamentally changed in the process. Creativity, self-motivation, re-interpretation, adaptation (among many other adjectives), are absolutely central prerequisites for a person to stay on the board for a substantial amount of time.
This set of qualities is not a checklist to be a good skateboarder though, you do not have to possess them in order to thrive, for it is the act of skateboarding itself that rewires your mind progressively as time goes by.
The lack of a clearly defined structure to skateboarding (rules, point systems, etc) automatically means that each individual will have to create his/her own approach. This will be done through a vast range of available tools, depending on the specific context of the person in question. For example, skateboarders inserted in large communities of their peers will take cues from those surrounding them, either by imitation or direct knowledge exchange. Skateboarders from more secluded scenarios will most likely recur to videos and broader media references. Although, imitation of movement and behaviour is but a tiny component of a broader set of resources at one’s disposal.
Another great example of skateboarding’s vast spectrum of influence is that of architecture. The way that a person based in Barcelona skates will greatly differ from one in Beijing, mostly because the cities have different urban plans, construction materials, architectural types, and even cultural attitudes towards skateboarding or physical activity in general. Skateboarding is virtually the act of seeing potential where there is supposed to be none, and then finding the tools to exponentiate said potential, where there are none.
In the workplace a skateboarder’s mentality translates into efficiency, creativity and innovation usually at little or no additional cost. If one’s mind is wired to interpret the world strategically and differently, while making the most of every resource available, that mindset is usually transferable to every other area of life. Once you understand how malleable the world is, this becomes a way of existing in said world and not just another skill in one’s toolbelt.
The Devil is in the Details
At this point in the article you are probably noticing that there is a vast range of concepts that you might have thought to be inherently incompatible with the idea of what a skateboarder is. Attention to detail may be another thing to catch you off guard.
In spite of the chaotic, loud and sometimes even aggressive appearance that the act of skateboarding may carry, every skateboarder is aware of the enormous impact of small details. Only someone who has never heard the sound of a pebble dragging across the floor after hitting a wheel is not aware of how traumatic and humbling that experience is: To be on top of the world one minute and kissing the floor the next, because of a quasi-invisible object; A scenario made even scarier if happening just before a stair set or a handrail.
Bottomline is that skateboarders are hardwired to study every nook and crony of a place before even considering starting a serious session. A crack on the floor, a puddle of water or a piece of trash can be the difference between ‘Death or Glory’ (to quote The Clash).
In the workplace this is translated into a very simple concept: ‘Details Matter’ — To not make hasty decisions, to understand the task at hand, to be as prepared as possible before and during a task of whatever size or magnitude. Skateboarders intimately understand the importance of not taking any unnecessary risks, because the main objective or project is already challenging enough as is.
Mindfulness
In spite of the apparent chaos that skateboarding transpires, the incredible complexity of minute movements requires anyone stepping onto a board to be in the moment, and to know how to breakdown large tasks into manageable pieces. Anyone who ever tried to learn any trick on a skateboard will know that the multiple, split-second, choreographed movements require one’s full attention — and failure to do so can have catastrophic repercussions.
That type of capability to remain grounded in the present task is something valuable whether you are learning how to kickflip or writing a final report. After a considerable amount of time on a skateboard the methodical, patient, and ‘in-the-now’ attitude is bound to become second nature in everything one sets one’s mind to.
Social Versatility
Skateboarders come from all walks of life and are inserted into a culture that fosters and encourages individuality. It is not uncommon to find skateboarders from different genders, sexual orientations, religious backgrounds, ethnicities, races, musical or fashion preferences, among many other differing denominators.
Unlike conventional workplaces that value homogeneity among their workers centred around a common task or chore, skateboarding is more in tune with contemporary workplaces that celebrate and value people’s differences as being major assets. In this way skateboarding is a perfect starting point for a lifetime of manoeuvring multicultural and diverse environments in a natural and meaningful way.
Individual Team Player
In spite of being a training ground for complex sociocultural interactions, skateboarding is ultimately an individualistic activity. At the end of the day, you can only fit one person on a skateboard.
But that does not mean that skateboarders are inherently incapable of navigating environments that require complex social interactions. For example, at a skateboarding session, beyond the core group of skateboarders, it is not uncommon to also find a photographer and a videographer. If said session is on the streets, one usually has to negotiate with bystanders, the police or hostile pedestrians.
Workplace relations are not likely to be as intense as a street skateboarding session, but the bottom line is that skateboarders are wired to navigate social scenarios while focusing on their individual tasks properly. In an office, such background would be highly beneficial for either group or individual projects. That is because skateboarders are usually capable of performing single tasks as a part of a team’s greater project, or be individuals harmoniously working across a greater corporate structure, capable of getting things done.
Rooting for the Home Team
For all its individualism, skateboarding fosters a surprising sense of community. Of course, there will be exceptions, but for the most part people who love skateboarding tend do so even when other people are landing tricks. This may be due to the underdog roots of the activity, or maybe because of the exceptionally personal ties people tend to form with skateboarding… Whatever the reason, it is very common to see skateboarders rooting for one another with the same passion (or even more) that they would apply to their own tricks.
In a work culture increasingly obsessed with competitiveness, this kind of unfiltered supportiveness for those performing similar tasks to ours is an essential tool for the betterment of any company. The lines between ambition and destructive competition are becoming blurry in the workplace, and skateboarding teaches valuable lessons in empathy through the rational understanding of another person’s struggle.
In other words, because skateboarders quickly learn how hard it is to skate, they live through other people’s struggles quite intensely, because they can visualise very clearly the complexity and hardship involved in the process. Transposed to a work environment this mindset means that, regardless of the task, it will never be a bad idea to root and support our colleagues that are rowing in the same boat as we.
Reality? No. Realities!
Skateboarders are hardwired to interpret their surroundings in ways they were not meant to be. This is not to say that skateboarders are this enlightened group of people who can look past the obvious uses of everyday life. What this means is that the act of skateboarding, the immersion in its culture and lifestyle, automatically trains one’s mind to recognise the plurality of approaches available to quotidian urban terrain.
For a skateboarder, benches, stairs or handrails, serve far more purposes other than sitting, climbing or holding.
Sure, everyone with the proper training can learn how to find multiple approaches to whatever task is at hand. What is different in skateboarders is that such worldview becomes the only plausible and natural way of living — a second nature of sorts. Skateboarders do not need to be told to find alternative approaches to anything, because doing so is the rule and not the exception.
This integrated worldview can greatly impact how an individual performs in the workplace. The ability to instinctively see various ways to reach one goal will ultimately impact productivity.
And by the capacity to envision alternative routes I do not mean shortcuts; this trait is centred around efficiency, not time. A person capable of seeing several angles will find the optimal approach and therefore exponentiate the task’s potential, impact and efficacy. A skateboarder in a workplace context will always make a meaningful contribution to the planning of any journey and its endless possibilities.
Above and Beyond
As I mentioned earlier, one of the many reasons I will always be hesitant to label skateboarding as a ‘sport’ is the physical punishment it inflicts on those who love it more. The wear and tear effect that skateboarding can have on one’s body, especially over the years, should be enough to safely categorise skateboarding as something inherently harmful to one’s health. And even with such consequences, skateboarders continue to lay their bodies on the line, day after day, and year after year.
I recently saw a meme depicting on one side a football player holding onto his knees on the floor during a match, and on the other a skateboarder flying over a large set of stairs well on his way to a vertiginous slam; The caption over the former read ‘Pretends to be hurt’ while the latter said ‘Pretends not to be hurt’. This meme encapsulates a very important character trait that skateboarding implants into people: perseverance. When being hurt is the norm — whether physically through falling or emotionally through lengthy battles with a trick — everything else involved in the process of achieving a goal stops being scary and becomes just another step.
The mindset that sees pain, struggle, disappointment or frustration not as things to be avoided but rather as essential parts of any achievement, is an increasingly important tool in any modern workplace. As tasks become more complex and demanding with ongoing digital revolutions and demanding markets, it is an asset to know in one’s core that things take time and effort (sometimes to a point of exhaustion) if they are to be fruitful.
In a nutshell, when faced with a challenge a skateboarder in the workplace will probably think something in the lines of ‘if my skateboard hasn’t killed me yet, this most definitely won’t’.
When a person pushes their body and mind’s limits to the brink ‘just for fun’, no one can tell what that person is capable of with more pressing motivations.
From Skatepark to Office
Overall, as we have seen, skateboarders have a ton of transferable skills that can be as valuable at the skatepark as they are at the office. Resilience, humility, flexibility, creativity, passion, humanism, are but some of the inherent features that skateboarders carry within themselves — whether they are aware of them or not. So, if you are a skateboarder entering the workforce try to be more aware of the amazing cultural and personal baggage you are bringing to the table. Or, if you are an employer or head of Human Resources, be on the lookout for such individuals, for if they are well-guided they have the potential to make exceptional contributions to wherever they find their work-home.
