What business leaders can learn from elite sport

Sport metaphors are everywhere in business, and most of them are clichés. But some of what happens in a professional dressing room translates directly into leading an organisation, because the underlying problem is the same: getting a group of people to perform under pressure, week after week.

FORGE co-founder Paul Wood spent 17 years in professional rugby league, most of it with Warrington Wolves, including Challenge Cup wins at Wembley and England honours. These are the lessons that carry over.

1. Standards are set by what you tolerate

Every team has a written standard and a real one. The real one is whatever the leaders let slide. In elite sport, the best teams hold standards in the small things, because the small things are what break first under pressure.

2. Trust is earned in training, not on match day

You can’t ask someone to put their body on the line for you if you haven’t shown up for them in the hundreds of sessions nobody watched. In business, the big moments rely on trust built in ordinary weeks.

On match day you find out how much trust you built when nobody was watching.

3. Preparation is a competitive advantage

Elite teams review, plan and rehearse relentlessly. Many leadership teams walk into their most important meetings unprepared. Treating key moments like fixtures, with preparation and a debrief afterwards, raises performance quickly.

4. Everyone needs to know their role

A team where everyone tries to do everything is chaos. A team where everyone knows their role, and trusts others to do theirs, is fast. Clarity of role is one of the simplest ways to build alignment.

5. Recovery is part of performance

Athletes plan rest as carefully as training, because without it performance falls away. Leaders who never recover make worse decisions and take their teams down with them.

6. Honest feedback is a sign of respect

In a good dressing room, people tell each other the truth because they want to win. Feedback isn’t personal. Leadership teams that can’t be honest with each other will always be beaten by ones that can.

7. Pressure reveals culture

Anyone can look aligned when things are going well. Pressure shows you what your culture really is. The work is building alignment, resilience and trust before the pressure arrives.

From the dressing room to the boardroom

These lessons sit at the heart of The ART of Leadership, the framework behind everything FORGE does. Paul brings them to organisations through keynotes and sessions and through our leadership programmes, alongside co-founder Krystian Liptrot’s experience of school leadership and building businesses.