一名退役奥运选手的精彩后半场：从哈佛到谷歌

    Game Theory Group公司首席执行官文森特•麦卡弗里经常帮助各家公司招聘学生运动员。他并不认识休斯姐妹，但他从理论上推测道：“我可以想象艾米丽和萨拉在她们的运动生涯中可能已经接受过无数反馈意见——有一些非常直接，甚至很伤人。雇主希望招到那些能够很好地采纳建设性批评的年轻人。”

    全球服务公司EY对体育运动和高管层领导力的关系进行了研究。2014年，EY对全球400名女性高管进行了调查，发现52%的人曾经参加过大学级别的体育运动。这些女性与艾米丽和萨拉一样，在课业和训练之间挣扎的过程中，锻炼了她们管理时间的能力——这是不断取得超预期成就的绝好途径。

    确实，在大颈镇长大的艾米丽和她的五个兄弟姐妹（瑞贝卡、大卫、马修、萨拉和最年幼的妹妹泰勒）都取得了超出预期的成就。而所有六个孩子都参加过花样滑冰或冰球运动。

    艾米丽和萨拉认为是父亲引领她们进入滑冰领域。她们的父亲约翰•休斯出生于多伦多，是一名律师，他曾经是康奈尔大学冰球队的队员，还曾经被多伦多枫叶队选中。

    艾米丽还记得，她的母亲艾米按照年龄顺序（艾米丽是第二小的），让所有六个孩子在社区的滑冰场上站成一排，她给孩子们一个个系滑冰鞋的情景。艾米丽和萨拉在三岁左右时就开始滑冰了，她们性格很不一样——萨拉很合群，存在感很强，而艾米丽比较内向安静，非常迷人——但如艾米丽所说，作为孩子，她们都“以自己的方式竞争着”。

    当12岁的艾米丽站在盐湖城的看台上，为取得金牌的姐姐欢呼时，她知道自己也想在奥林匹克赛场的冰面上滑行。她回忆道：“在那之后，我表现得就像是‘我也要当奥运选手。’”她又补充道：“说起来容易，做起来难。”

    艾米丽在大颈高中的化学和生物老师兰迪•阿佩尔回忆起青年时期的艾米丽应对高压的办法：“她的姐姐已经赢得冬奥会金牌，这件事想必对她造成了极大的压力。她也许感觉到了，但她从来不表现出来。”

    萨拉冬奥会冠军的身份使得她登上了《时代》周刊封面。四年后，前往都灵的艾米丽同样肩负着美国的厚望——休斯家的另一位运动员即将夺冠。

    那年她以第七名的成绩结束冬奥会之旅，确实令人遗憾，但这个成绩并没有反映出艾米丽•休斯的强项。她拥有其他可以倚仗的资本——她的头脑和她对成功的激情。她记起父亲总强调她是个“学生运动员”，“学生”永远是第一位的。在学业方面，艾米丽的父母从来不会放松对她或萨拉的要求，即便她们每天要训练五个小时。阿佩尔回忆道，被要求在常规的化学课或程度较难的课程之间做出选择时，艾米丽坚持要选后者。

    艾米丽说：“我总是随身带着课本。每次参赛时，我都会背着这个双肩书包，在前往滑冰场的车上写作业，你知道的。促使学业成绩持续上升，总是非常重要的。”

    如今已经29岁的姐姐萨拉，也从奥运会中找到了一条新的道路。她现在是Kingsbridge Ice Center负责商业开发的执行副总裁，这是一个3.5亿美元的项目，计划在纽约布朗克斯区建立全球最大的综合滑冰场馆。

    两姐妹都拒绝接受单向的职业生涯。萨拉说：“当我们小的时候，我总是震惊于艾米丽的坚韧不屈。她不断工作、工作、工作，简直要把自己累死，但不知怎么搞的，她总能挤出一点时间来寻找乐趣。”

    萨拉补充道：“为了实现有意义的大事，你得保持专注，但也要分出足够的精力，让追逐目标的过程充满乐趣和价值。”（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正

    审校：任文科

    Game Theory Group CEO Vincent McCaffrey, who helps companies recruit student-athletes, doesn’t know the Hughes sisters, but he theorizes: “I would imagine Emily and Sarah have probably received a ton of feedback in their life — some of it very direct and even harsh. Employers want to hire young people who are able to take constructive criticism well.”

    Global services firm EY has studied the link between sports and leadership in the C-suite. In a 2014 global survey of 400 female executives, EY found that 52% played sports at the university level. Those women, like Emily and Sarah Hughes, honed their time management skills while juggling schoolwork and training — an excellent path to consistent overachievement.

    Indeed, growing up in Great Neck, Emily and her five siblings (Rebecca, David, Matthew, Sarah and the youngest girl, Taylor) were all overachievers. All six participated in figure skating or ice hockey.

    Emily and Sarah credit their father for getting them into skating. John Hughes is a Toronto-born lawyer who played hockey for Cornell University and was drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs.

    Emily recalls her mom, Amy, lining up all six kids in age order (Emily is second-youngest) and tying their skates at the community ice rink. Emily and Sarah, who started skating when they were about three years old, are different in personality — Sarah is gregarious with a big presence, while Emily is reserved and quietly personable — but as children, they were both “competitive in our own way,” as Emily puts it.

    When 12-year-old Emily stood in the stands and cheered on her big sister for a Gold medal in Salt Lake City, she knew she wanted her own shot to skate on Olympic ice. “After that, I was like, ‘I want to be an Olympian too,” she recalls, adding, “A little bit easier said than done.”

    Randy Appell, her chemistry and biology teacher at Great Neck High School, recalls teenage Emily dealing with her high-stress position. “The fact that her older sister had already won the Olympic Gold must’ve put an extreme amount of pressure on her. She may have felt it, but she never let it show.”

    Sarah’s Olympic stardom landed her on the cover of TIME Magazine, and when Emily was heading to Turin four years later, she was cast as America’s great hope —another Hughes champion-in-the-making.

    Her seventh-place finish at the Olympics that year was disappointing, but it was not the thing that would define Emily Hughes. She had other assets — her brain and her passion to succeed — to fall back on. She remembers her dad always emphasizing that she is a “student-athlete” and that “student” always comes first. Her parents never gave her or Sarah breaks on studying, even when they were training five hours a day. And given the choice to enroll in the regular chemistry class or an honors course, Appell recalls, Emily insisted she take the advanced class.

    “I always brought my books everywhere,” she says. “I was going to every competition lugging this backpack around, or you know, doing homework in the car on the way to the rink. It was always important to keep my grades up.”

    As for Sarah, who is now 29, she found a new path from the Olympics too. She’s executive vice president of business development at the Kingsbridge Ice Center, a $350 million project to build the world’s largest ice skating complex in the Bronx.

    Both sisters refuse to have one-dimensional careers.“I was always impressed by how tough Emily was when we were younger,” Sarah says. “She would kill herself working, working, working, but somehow, she always found some time to have fun.”

    “To accomplish big meaningful things,” Sarah adds, “you need to be focused but allow enough distractions to make it a fun and worthwhile journey.”