Rise of the Executive Athlete

You can’t call your newsletter Leadership Unplugged and only talk about what feels comfortable and safe. Some ideas make you pause, reflect, challenge your own thinking, and maybe even disagree completely. This may be one of those topics. So let’s talk about what it really takes to stand out. Not slightly, or just enough to be considered successful. But operate at a level only a very small percentage of people ever reach, and even fewer are able to sustain.

LEARN something.

The pioneers who lead and create change in companies, industries, and communities are rarely easy to stand next to. They are intense. They care deeply. They move quickly, push on opportunities others ignore, and take risks others won’t. From a distance, they are admired. Up close, they can be hard to work with and even harder to follow. Because at that level, the game changes. The moment you step into those environments, you are no longer competing with average. You are operating alongside people who match your intensity, intelligence, and work ethic, and often exceed it. To achieve incredible things in leadership or business, you need a level of intensity many people underestimate.

Unfortunately, we seem to have built a narrative that you can reach that level of performance without a corresponding increase in pressure, responsibility, and demand. That somehow you can operate at the top while maintaining the same cadence, boundaries, and emotional load as earlier in your career. It is a compelling idea, but it does not hold up in practice. As you step into higher leadership roles, cognitive strain, time pressure, and consequences increase. You carry more variables and more ambiguity. This narrative is already hurting companies. Emerging leader surveys suggest many good leaders are opting out of senior leadership roles because they understand what those roles demand. But when they opt out, the space is often filled by those who underestimate the demands of senior roles, are incapable, do it for the title or are simply unwilling to give what it takes. Over time, that lowers the quality of leadership at the top.

Now, this is not an argument in favour of burnout or hustle culture. But it is a pushback on the idea that executive performance comes without trade-offs. The answer is not lowering expectations, but raising capability. We need to develop executive athletes, leaders trained to handle sustained intensity with discipline, recovery, and focus. Not so they sacrifice their lives for work, but so they build for the game. That is a skill, a learned habit, and for many organisations, a capability we desperately need because leadership is not getting any easier, and our people deserve better.

REFLECT on an idea.

That proverb is over 400 years old, but you’ve probably heard it as: “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” It’s a reminder that you can’t have everything. You can’t expect the high six-figure salary, the influence, the status, and the seat at the C-suite table if you’re unwilling to acknowledge the intensity and trade-offs that often come with it. If we can’t talk honestly about those realities, we can’t develop the strategies and systems needed to handle them well.

SMILE a little.

“I carry the weight of hundreds of people and millions of dollars, then completely switch off at night.”

Yeah right!

DO IT to get results.

Here is a tip for aspiring executive leaders from someone who has burnt out in both the public sector and corporate environments, and over the last two years has made it a mission to embed executive performance in the work we do. Stop treating this like an executive job. Start treating it like an executive lifestyle.

Just like a professional athlete, you are an executive athlete. Off-field performance impacts on-field performance. Your lifestyle and discipline will impact your executive performance at work. Once you make that switch, you stop seeking work-life balance like it’s a zero-sum game. You start designing a life that gives you the energy you need for work and for yourself, and then some.

Do you have the energy for both work and life?  Take our free Energy Lab survey.