What business leaders can learn from top athletes

The business world can learn a lot about recovery as a key part of performance from professional athletes.

I’ve yet to speak to a business leader who didn’t think their business was a high-performance environment, but what is often less understood is the idea that high-performance doesn’t mean continually performing at the highest level all the time.

While many of us can operate at very high levels in the short term, it simply isn’t sustainable in the medium to long term for most people. Instead, high performance is understanding the rhythms of your daily and business life and being able to manage your energy accordingly. This encompasses prioritising periods of recovery in the same way an athlete would.

Managing the big games and events

Athletes tend to be experts at managing their energy and prioritising high performance. Let’s consider UK tennis player Andy Murray. His career success at elite level is well known, but even he can’t be ‘Wimbledon fit’ all year round. Murray would have anticipated and prepared for the big events, de-loading and recovering after each big event, before going again.

I believe there are a lot of parallels between the way an athlete approaches their schedule and business. In fact, it’s fair to say that business can often feel like an endurance sport with occasional sprints. Or perhaps that should be an endurance sport with frequent sprints. Either way, wouldn’t it be great if you saw yourself as a ‘corporate athlete’ and managed your energy accordingly? That’s the key to high performance and we call this cadence.

Based on an athlete’s training model, cadence is a simple four-step approach to help you manage your energy and optimise for high performance (without burning out). The first phase is ‘predict’; the second phase is ‘prepare’; the third phase is ‘perform’; and the final phase is ‘recover’.

Predict

When are big events coming up in your professional life? I call these your ‘Wimbledons’ and they are often more predictable than we think. For a retail business, this might be a new product launch, Black Friday or the sales’ season, for example. Can you identify these busy times and then prepare for them? The same idea also applies to our personal lives; a baby coming into the family, a child going to a new or specialist school or a house move all require energy.

Prepare

We often overestimate what we can achieve in the medium term and underestimate what we can achieve in the short term. In other words, small actions can have a big impact when done consistently over time. By focusing on one or two daily non-negotiables in the areas of strength, health, energy, mood or motivation, you can set yourself up for success, boost your resilience and keep yourself in a state of readiness for the unpredictable life events that occur.

Perform

An important part of cadence is staying vigilant for red flags, indicators that you may be pushing too hard. Learning how to spot and respond to these flags ensures you keep chronic stress and burnout at bay. A red flag for me is a twitching muscle under my left eye. It’s not perceptible to others but highly irritating to me. It’s an early warning sign that I need to get a little extra sleep or a moment of recovery.

Recover

An athlete is as focused on their recovery as they are on their training and it should be no different for us, as corporate athletes. Recovery might include what I call ‘slivers of recovery’, micro breaks that take just a few minutes at a time but can have a big effect on productivity. Indeed, research from Cornell University has shown that taking short breaks can boost concentration, focus and productivity. Examples of breaks you can take include a brisk 10-minute walk (proven to boost mood and energy), exposure to natural light, chatting to a colleague or friend, or simply daydreaming out the window letting your mind wander for brief period of time.

Cadence is your competitive edge

By applying the principles of cadence, you’re not only giving yourself a competitive edge but also optimising your health and wellbeing. At a time where burnout is increasingly prevalent, this is vital. What actions could you take today to implement cadence in your daily life? I encourage you to see yourself as a corporate athlete, striving for success via a series of daily actions that balance performance with recovery. This is the key to high performance in life and work.