How India's Women Won: The Pain to Power Formula
When India's women's cricket team lost three matches back to back, most people wrote them off. But Captain Harmanpreet Kaur did something different. She turned ...
Avinash Chate - Best Corporate Trainer conducting leadership session From Pain to Power: What India’s Women’s Cricket Triumph Teaches Us About Winning at Work There are moments in sport that go far beyond the scoreboard. They become lessons in character, leadership, resilience, and belief. When I reflected on the journey of India’s women’s cricket team, I saw something every professional, manager, sales leader, and team member can learn from. Many people focus only on the final victory. I focus on what happened before the victory. The losses. The criticism. The doubt. The emotional pressure. That is where the real transformation begins. Key takeaway: Pain is not the end of performance. If handled with maturity and purpose, pain can become power. As Avinash Chate, I have spent 15+ years working with leaders and teams across industries, and I have seen one truth repeatedly: success is rarely built in comfort. It is built in the difficult moments when people decide whether they will shrink or rise. That is why this story matters in the workplace. You may not be playing a World Cup final, but you may be dealing with a failed project, a missed target, a rejected idea, a conflict in your team, or a personal disappointment. The emotional pattern is the same. The question is simple: what do you do next? Pain Is Real, but So Is the Possibility Hidden Inside It When a team loses repeatedly, the external narrative becomes very harsh. People begin to question capability, leadership, and future potential. In organizations, the same thing happens. One quarter goes badly, one presentation fails, one client is lost, and suddenly people start behaving as if the story is over. I strongly disagree with that mindset. Setbacks are painful because they attack more than results. They attack identity. They make people ask, Am I good enough? Can I recover? Will others still trust me? These are not technical questions. These are human questions. And that is why recovery also has to be human. In my corporate training sessions, I often remind teams that emotional recovery is the first step to performance recovery. If people are carrying disappointment, anger, embarrassment, or fear, they cannot bring their best energy to the next challenge. This is also why emotional intelligence matters so deeply in leadership. If you want to understand this better, I recommend reading Why Emotional Intelligence Is Crucial for Effective Leadership in 2023 . Leaders who can process pressure without passing panic to the team create stronger cultures. The Pain to Power Formula I Teach Over the years, I have observed that high performers do not deny pain. They convert it. That is the foundation of what I call the Pain to Power Formula. 1. Accept the setback without excuses The first step is honesty. Not blame. Not drama. Not denial. Honest acceptance. When teams avoid reality, they delay recovery. But when they say, “Yes, we failed here. Yes, this hurt. Yes, we need to improve,” they reclaim c…
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By Avinash Chate — Maharashtra’s #1 Corporate Trainer & Motivational Speaker. Published 2026-04-19.