It has been many months since his dual-role with the senior squad and tenure as head coach of the junior national hockey programme. But the memories of working for the Fédération Française de Hockey and missing out on qualification for the London Olympics must still be painful.
“It would have been a no-brainer to stay with the team and go to London,” he says. “But I guess the window to begin an MBA came up because of narrowly missing out on qualification, and I grabbed that opportunity with both hands.”
Chris has just finished the full-time Executive MBA Programme at Henley and has wasted no time in setting up his own personal development company, as well as consulting FTSE 100 clients for his London-based firm.
But back home in the Southern Hemisphere, sports were the only thing on his mind.
“As you can probably tell by my voice, I’m Australian,” he jokes. “Growing up there you are blessed with access to excellent facilities and you have the opportunity to play any sport under the sun.”
Chris played cricket, Australian rules football, basketball, soccer, tennis and hockey – virtually “every sport you can think of” – before turning his hand to sports coaching. After studying the equivalent of Sports Science at undergraduate level, he worked and managed various sports equipment brands before coaching in 11 international tournaments.
“My goal at 20-21 years of age was to coach international sport and I was fortunate to get that opportunity in France,” says Chris. “It’s something I love doing and I find it very rewarding. Sport has always been important to me.”
It must hurt to achieve your goal but then miss the opportunity to compete on the biggest global stage. But Chris isn’t bitter. It led him to the MBA at Henley on a cultural diversity MBA Scholarship – a path that has since allowed him to make great strides in business management.
“At that time, and probably five years prior to that, I’d always had a desire to begin an MBA,” he says. “I attended an MBA fair in London at start of 2011 to really get a feel for the different programs, and I felt that Henley came across as unique.
“The program was structured around experiential learning and collective teamwork. Henley MBAs had study visits to Shanghai and Cape Town – which were both excellent - and those trips influenced my decision.”
Chris worked as a consultant for an NGO in South Africa and worked with high-growth SMEs in China in a HR consulting role during his EMBA.
If his path was simply a transition from Australia to the UK to become a successful consultant, that would be an interesting story. A career switch from international sports coach to business management - even more so. But Chris is now something of an entrepreneur.
The Henley EMBA – a consistent figure in the UK’s MBA Rankings – has given him many new opportunities.
With entrepreneurial ventures, Chris merges his sports expertise with MBA skills; he provides performance coaching and consulting services at Chris Rowohlt Associates and his website, meandteam.com.
In ten months at Chris Rowohlt Associates, he has worked with start-ups through to FTSE 100 companies - across a wide range of sectors. Through his website, clients can contact Chris for personal development – as well as some inspirational blog posts on sports leadership.
“The time I spent at Henley really made me stop and reflect on where I’ve been and where I want to go moving forward,” he says. “I found that really valuable. The course teaches you so much in so little time that you find out your strengths and identify your weaknesses.
“An MBA certainly opens doors but like anything; it’s what you put into it that you get out of it. The opportunities to network and the quality of the cohort were definitely a strength of the MBA. Henley is very international and has quite a small cohort; I liked the intimacy.”
A distinguished sports coach, it is not surprising to hear that Chris is big on leadership. It is a key quality MBAs must have and his dissertation, on leadership development and motivation, acted as a “bridge between my skills coming from sports coaching” and business.
Sport is still his passion and working in personal development allows him to leverage those coaching qualities. “Unlocking people’s potential is where my passion sits,” he explains. “I have an ambition to be the CEO of a major sports organization sometime in the future, but I’m enjoying where I’m at right now.”
Far from hindering his chances of making it big in business, coaching gives him a strategic base to work from.
“There’s a great Mike Tyson quote: ‘Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face’,” Chris says. “In businesses, when change happens things can go wrong, and managing when things go wrong is what coaching is about. Those lessons are really relevant and applicable in a business sense.
“All of the soft skills, such as collaboration, team work and stakeholder management, are all parts of sports and business.”
The London Olympics may have slipped his grasp, but Chris has a new set of goals. A passion for sports, it seems, can never be diminished.
After studying an EMBA at Henley, he has a new lease of life.
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