Sport Teaches Human Lessons That Business Leaders Should Learn

I am a lifelong swimmer, taking up the sport at age 5. This is a passion that I have retained into adulthood. Swimming has continued to play a significant role in my life, primarily thanks to the life lessons that sport can teach us – especially those that can influence our work performance and behaviours.

Competitive sports can bring out the best in many of us, providing us with the drive and passion to overcome the obstacles in our path. Stories like that of Emily Boyd , a diver from my native Australia who refused to allow personal misfortune to stand in the way of her dreams, never fail to inspire.

Throughout my working life, I have found myself drawing on lessons that I learned from swimming, and from my former coaches such as Peter Bishop who understands the importance of belonging, both in and out of the pool, well before it became a trending topic. Another important lesson was understanding how to take feedback on board and learn from it, no matter how difficult it may be to hear in the moment. The business world has often pulled from great sporting leaders who demonstrate the ability to inspire and influence elite-level athletes. Many sport icons have mentioned how their coaches have acted as mentors, building personal confidence and helping them see abilities in themselves that may otherwise have been lost or disregarded.

Take Serena Williams, a bona fide sensation that revolutionised women's tennis, and has often cited the influence of her father-coach Richard in her development (as has her older sister Venus). In many cases, it seems that sporting achievements – and athlete/coach relationships – are built around an understanding of when to dig deep and work to inspire the human being behind the ambition. This is true leadership, and that's what the world needs. The ability to listen more than speak is often lost in the boardroom, where everybody feels the need to talk the loudest and imprint their perspectives on those around them.

Of course, this focus on humanity also comes from within – and the importance of mental health and personal well-being has become an increasingly prominent conversation among elite athletes. Megan Rapinoe, the World Cup-winning face of soccer in the USA, champions many off-field causes – most notably mental health . If we return to tennis for a moment, Naomi Osaka raised eyebrows but ultimately won accolades when she withdrew from competing in the French Open in 2021, citing her battle with depression . Initially, this was seen as a controversial move. Osaka is a major name in her sport, so sponsors and broadcasters were displeased at the prospect of potential lost revenue. We all need to remember, however, that Stade Roland Garros is a tennis court, not a factory assembly line, and tennis is played by human beings, not robots.

Osaka understood the importance of her own health, and perhaps more importantly, recognised her own worth and power as an individual. Sport is finally catching up with the complexities of the human condition, and it's high time the corporate world did the same. We need to acknowledge and support people to help them achieve their aims, not criticize the acknowledgment of physical and mental limits being reached and breached.

Another lesson I learned from swimming was the importance of teamwork and the bonds I forged with my fellow swimmers. All sports are team endeavours, even if the competitive element is one-on-one. Simply knowing that others are walking the same path builds empathy and understanding and a unified spirit. Spending hour after hour swimming up and down a black line in training, having nothing to show for this but a fraction of a second shaved off my previous time, could have quickly grown alienating. Thankfully, I had teammates to share these achievements with – and to commiserate when things did not unfold according to best-laid plans.

Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from sport is that nothing in this world is certain, and we all need to address the curveballs that life throws. Athletes know better than most. For those who compete in contact sports, one tweaked knee tendon or twisted ankle could change the entire trajectory of their career. For swimming and other so-called 'individual' sports, muscular fatigue can slowly and steadily build through constant training and always striving to perform better than before. Many athletes treat pain as an old friend, considering it an assurance that they are pushing their body to the peak of its limits and preparing to evolve to a new standard of physical excellence, but prolonged physical activity while a body is in the 'red zone' can have long-term consequences .

Speaking for myself, I was diagnosed with Graves' Disease at the peak of my career. That was most certainly not part of the script. I qualified for the Olympic Trials but was not fast enough to make it to the games themselves. Thankfully, the support of my peers and coach – alongside the resilience and tenacity I had built thanks to my time spent in the pool – prevented me from rolling over and giving up. Instead, I took on a Division 1 swimming scholarship that allowed me to swim and study in the USA.

In the world of sport, much like the world of work, you are thrown together with a wide variety of people and personalities. Throughout my time in the States, I swam and studied with many students who had travelled from across the globe, all united by our passion for swimming. This gave me a grounding ability to communicate with a variety of different people and to form mutually beneficial and understanding relationships. On paper, we had little in common outside the pool. However, we were all pulling in the same direction and had the same ambition – to achieve the best results possible. To this day, many of my closest friends date back to my competitive swimming career, despite our geographical distance, thanks to these unforgettable experiences.

If I could use my swimming experiences to offer one piece of advice to anybody looking to succeed in business, it would be to learn how to visualise – and use that vision to encourage hard work. Dreams and ambitions are beautiful things – we all need to have them. By visualising our definition of success, however, we are motivated to put in the time and effort required to make these dreams a reality. Couple this hard work with the sense of self-discipline that sport inspires, and success becomes increasingly likely, in the right environment with people who lift you up and encourage you to reach your goals.

Some people may be natural athletes, just like some people have an affinity for business success. To quote a popular adage, however, "hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy."

I have never met the American swimmer Katie Ledecky, but I'm willing to say that she did not earn seven Olympic gold medals by coasting on her talent alone. I have never met LeBron James, but I'm quietly confident that he practices shooting basketballs long after the final buzzer sounds on his latest game. I have never met Simone Biles, but I'm pretty sure she spent a lot of time in the gym to reach the GOAT status.

The world can feel like an increasingly uncertain place, but if we can draw on lessons learned from sport, we can all stand on firmer ground. That means standing by each other in times of duress, celebrating our shared wins, inspiring each other to strive for greatness – and, above all, channeling our time and passion into what matters most to us.

Key Takeaways

• Sport and business could be considered two sides of the same coin – the key to success is unlocking the potential within an individual.
• If we can recreate the self-discipline and camaraderie found in a sporting environment within the business world, we'll all enjoy our working lives much more.
• Nothing in life is ever as simple as we would like – we need to learn the lessons of professional sportspeople and adapt to changing scenarios.
• Success is personal, and we all have our own definitions of this word, but failing to capitalise on talent by neglecting to visualise and work hard can only be considered a failure.