What Can Leaders Learn from Elite Athletes About High-Level Performance?

WITH THE SUPER BOWL around the corner, what can business leaders learn from elite athletes about high-level performance?

Be like Roger. And Michael. And Simone. And Usain. And many others.

That’s key advice for business leaders seeking to improve their impact and excel in a sustainable, long-term way that’s good for them and everyone around them.

The Roger, in this case, is none other than Roger Federer, the tennis legend considered an exemplar of athleticism and sportsmanship.

But underlying Federer’s and other top athletes’ outsized success is rigorous devotion to routines and practices that optimize their state of mind and body for high-level performance. This matters to effectiveness in the business domain, too, where such practices are often ignored or dismissed, even though they support one’s centeredness and capacity to maintain focus, be creative, and make good decisions, even under great pressure.

The takeaway? Leaders in any organization can enjoy higher performance on every dimension if they establish a discipline of daily, weekly, monthly, and annual practices that systematically support their centeredness.

So why does maintaining practices that yield a high-performance state of mind matter so much for leadership? Here’s why.

The Need for a Performance-Enhancing State of Mind

A key thing athletes and leaders share is the need for a performance-enhancing state of mind. Specifically, both perform best when they are able to enter and maintain a calm, alert state under high stress, whether facing match point on the tennis court or an unexpected setback at the negotiation table, as research suggests. This ability to focus and perform under stress is what sets the Michael Jordans and Roger Federers apart from the rest—they may not be the best overall athletes, but they’ve truly mastered the all-important mental part of the game.

The problem is that most business executives, even high-performing ones, don’t recognize the value of mental state like elite athletes do, so they don’t develop skills and habits to get to that state consistently and effortlessly. Indeed, executives often see themselves as industry or functional domain experts—whether in tech, health sciences, finance, or as an engineer, designer, or head of operations. But they fail to recognize what’s often their most primary role or function: leading others to set vision, build and evolve the team, solve problems, and navigate challenges collaboratively.

Most executives also think that performance is a function of effort: more effort, more results – the “no pain, no gain” mantra historically embraced by athletes. The reality is that this is not the key to productivity. Pushing hard alone isn’t sufficient and can be counterproductive. Coherent, creative, efficient, intelligent thinking and decision-making are what drives productivity. For this, a calm and alert state of mind is key — a state of centeredness. Athletes train to optimize this state.

Here’s how they do it.

They Embrace a Growth Mindset

Great athletes focus on process over outcomes. We don’t have control over all outcomes, but we do have control over our process. Leaders must stop obsessing over outcomes and “perfection,” and embrace challenges as opportunities for growth and improvement. Some of the most successful leaders in sports, like former Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Walsh, exemplify this mindset; he emphasized focusing on continuous improvement, not winning.

Committing to high standards and constantly learning, striving, and improving is critical. When leaders try to control everything and everyone around them, they fail to understand the value of differentiating what they and their team have control over and what they don’t.

They Practice Deliberate Practice

The researcher Anders Ericsson pioneered the idea of “deliberate practice” after observing that elite athletes, musicians, and other high-performers practice consistently in a particular way.

That is, they identify key skills they want to improve—whether a complicated sequence on violin or a tricky shot in basketball—and practice it relentlessly with the help of feedback from knowledgeable coaches. In this way, deliberate practice is far superior to naïve practice, which is essentially doing something repeatedly, without expert guidance or feedback loops, and hoping for improvement.

Leaders will perform better if they embrace deliberate practice just like athletes do. It means identifying key skills that will benefit your overall leadership effectiveness—such as inviting more input from your team—and then practicing in a deliberate manner. Have clear goals around your leadership skill development—“I will raise my team’s 360-degree ratings of my openness to input by 50% within two months”—and solicit regular feedback from colleagues. Great leaders are always practicing in a deliberate way.

They Sleep Like Their Life Depends on It

Sleep optimizes a leader’s state of mind and, in turn, overall performance. The link between sleep and physical, emotional, and cognitive capacity is well-established. “Rest and restore” is now a fundamental principle in athletic training and similarly applies to leadership.

Sleep and rest are critical for peak performance, as illustrated by Federer’s goal of 10-12 hours of sleep every 24 hours. He’s not alone: LeBron James says he averages nine hours, and Usain Bolt considered sleep a critical part of his sprint to multiple world records. Simone Biles, considered the greatest gymnast of all time, similarly prioritizes nine hours of sleep.

Yet the culture of business executives promotes the idea that sleep time is time wasted or a sign of weakness, and too many think they can perform well on 3-4 hours of sleep. They can’t. For example, evidence shows that for most of us, operating on fewer than six hours of sleep is equivalent to operating while drunk. In the U.S., over $400 billion of productivity is estimated to be lost each year due to sleep debt.

They Meditate to Be Great

Regular practice of meditation—even if just minutes a day—promotes positive physical and mental health outcomes, including lower anxiety and better concentration and memory.

NBA stars like Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, and the late Kobe Bryant all used meditation to perform at their best.

Research shows meditators demonstrate more coherent brain signatures. There are different forms of meditation, but most are based on finding quiet time to clear your mind, often coupled with deep breathing to enter a relaxed state.

Meditation can also involve mental imagery. Federer utilized visualization to enhance his performance, picturing himself succeeding physically and mentally on the court.

They Exercise for Excellence

Of course, physical fitness is necessary for athletic performance. But it’s not just for athletes; it’s critical for leaders.

Maintaining physical fitness not only increases energy levels but uplifts mood and enhances focus. Three or more hours of moderate aerobic exercise per week increases mitochondrial density and supports neurogenesis, thereby enhancing energy levels and brain power.

Higher-intensity aerobic exercise once or twice a week has a material impact on increasing VO2 max, which is associated with reduced stress, anxiety, and depression, along with improved cognitive function, memory, and overall brain health. The bottom line: exercise is an important practice for effective leadership.

They Eat Right

Don’t forget about nutrition. Aim for the right volume of calories for your size and activity level, along with balanced proportions of nutrients. A healthy diet has been linked to every kind of health outcome, but is notoriously challenging for busy people to get right.

During her tennis career, Serena Williams maintained—and still does—a healthy, largely plant-based diet as part of her philosophy of “eating to live” rather than vice-versa. Novak Djokovic ascended to arguably the best men’s player of all time, and he credits a consistent, healthy diet as a key factor.

So What?

It’s logical that our inner life affects our outer behavior, and healthy mind-body practices place us in a position to realize more of our potential.

A more balanced, rested, energized, clear mental state enables us to function at a higher level in our thinking, feeling, and more complex leadership capacities.

The benefits of being a leader athlete are countless if leaders intentionally practice leadership and work to foster a high-performance state of mind by engaging in a routine of activities that support leadership growth at all levels. Individual and organizational success will naturally follow this proactive approach to leadership fitness, no matter your playing field.

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Jeremy Blitz-Jones is a Leadership Coach at Peak Leadership Institute, an organizational behavior firm. His background is in organizational development, with a focus on leadership, strategy, and process optimization. For the past 15 years, he has been designing learning experiences for tech companies, schools, and nonprofits, exploring innovation, education, management, and personal growth. He has worked with teams from organizations including Harvard Medical School, F5 Networks, Angellist, and Google. Laurent Valosek is CEO of Peak Leadership Institute. He has 35 years of experience as an entrepreneur, educator, and researcher, including serving as CEO of three tech start-ups and leading a strategy management consultancy. He has worked with executives from companies such as Google, Salesforce, Superhuman, TikTok, and Roper Technologies. Laurent has published numerous research papers on human development and leadership and teaches a course at Stanford University called Leadership from Within.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:17 PM
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