QUESTION I:Show us an activity you enjoy doing. Tell us how you

think it contributes to your personal and professional

development?

Nina Wellmann • IE Business School Application

An activity I enjoy is RUNNING

My dad was a professional and

very successful runner and is

now a running coach.

Therefore, running has always

been part of my life.

Olympic Games – Montreal, 1972

Since I am a child I

enjoyed running with my

parents, friends or in a

club.

Today I still enjoy running

as an activity that helps me

to relax from work and find

my work-life-balance.

FisherMan Friend‘s Run, 2012Texel (Netherlands), 1999

How does running contribute to my

personal and professional development?

Overcome

obstaclesPersistence &

Discipline

Embrace failure Build team spirit

Discipline & Persistence

Running is a sport that teaches you to be persistent and disciplined.

It is not relevant if you start running or if you modify your goals:

As a runner you quickly have to learn that results will not be visible

from one day to the other. Running means being disciplined,

achieving improvements and experiencing setbacks. But regardless

how many setbacks you experience, if you don’t give up you will be

able to reach your goals.

Of course, being disciplined is not always easy. Some days

running seems harder than others, your legs feel tired or your

muscles are sore. But regularly overcoming these negative feelings

and experiencing the joy of achieving your goals helps to build

up stamina.

Running taught me that being disciplined and persistent will lead to success. It moreover

showed me that I have to follow my goals, achieve milestones and never give up on my

dreams.

Overcome obstacles

As a runner you always have to overcome obstacles. It might be a

small hill on your private run or a hurdle in an adventure race.

Running skilled me how to overcome obstacles and to never give up.

In my time as a runner in a club we often had to run uphill. When I

wanted to achieve a good lap time it was important to analyze the

running path, identify the obstacles (for example narrow curves or

steep ascents) and in the end to develop a strategy how to successfully

master this obstacle.

These running experiences helped me to strategically

approach obstacles in my personal and professional

life and to optimally use my strength. Even though

some hills seem too steep or obstacles too high with

the right strategy and sustainable stamina you are

always able to overcome them.

Embrace failure

Embracing failure is part of being a runner.

As humans we do not have the total control of our bodies. There are races or relaxed runs

where we easily reach our goals. But there are also times when we feel tired and weak.

While this is no problem on a relaxed run it is very disappointing when you do not bring the

expected performance in a race that you have been practicing a long time for.

As a runner you experience a lot of failure. It might be that your muscles cramp during a

race, you don’t reach the intended time or you are dissatisfied because your body lost

strength and endurance during a short cold or injury.

Experiencing a variety of failures I learned to

embrace the failure, reflect upon myself

and try even harder - perhaps with an adapted

strategy.

From a professional perspective experiencing a

variety of failures helped me to learn and grow.

Running changes your attitude towards failure and

makes you stronger.

Team spirit

When you talk about running, team spirit is probably not the first word you think about. This

might be right, but even though running normally is an individual sport there are a lot of

situations where you have to fight for your team. As a runner you will participate in relays

or you have to win important points for your team’s result.

Those situations helped me to build up team spirit. In these races I didn’t fight for myself but

I fought for the team. Even though my legs felt very tired and my body asked me to give up,

I continued running to achieve the best possible result for my team. With regards to team

spirit, running is not about developing the ultimate team strategy, it is about fighting as an

individual to lead your team to success and to motivate others to keep fighting.

Running helps me to find my work-life-

balance by having time to process personal

and professional challenges.