Sports have a way of teaching lessons that extend well beyond the field, court, or pool. I’m reminded of that often right now. With three kids involved in competitive sports and one preparing for college, I’ve found myself thinking back to my own years as a competitive swimmer and, more importantly, about how many of the qualities organizations look for in their leaders are developed long before someone receives their first leadership title.
In executive recruiting, we spend a tremendous amount of time evaluating experience. Has someone led through transformation? Built a team? Navigated change? Developed talent? Delivered results? Those things matter, but experience alone doesn’t tell us how someone will lead.
Some of the qualities that differentiate great leaders are much harder to capture on a résumé: coachability, resilience, accountability, self-awareness, adaptability, and the ability to contribute to something bigger than individual success. Interestingly, sports provide an early training ground for nearly all of them.
High Expectations Can Be a Form of Investment
One of the lessons that has stayed with me from competitive swimming is the impact a great coach can have on performance. The coaches who got the most out of me weren’t necessarily the ones who told me everything was okay. One coach in particular had high expectations and wasn’t afraid to tell me when I wasn’t meeting them. After a poor swim, or when he knew I hadn’t given my best effort, he challenged me. I responded to that because the expectation came with something equally important: the belief that I was capable of more.
That distinction matters in leadership. Strong leaders don’t avoid difficult feedback in the name of maintaining a positive culture. They create environments where people know what is expected, understand where they are falling short, and receive the coaching and support necessary to improve.
Leadership development isn’t about making people comfortable all the time. It’s about creating the conditions for people to grow. The best leaders know when someone needs encouragement, when they need additional resources, and when they simply need to hear, “You’re capable of better than this.”
Talent Gets You in the Door. What Happens Next Determines Success.
Executive recruiting has reinforced something sports teaches early: talent is only part of the equation. By the time candidates reach the executive level, most have impressive experience. They’ve earned promotions, led teams, delivered results, and developed deep functional expertise. The harder questions are often the more important ones:
- How coachable are they?
- How do they react when their idea isn’t selected?
- Can they acknowledge a mistake and take accountability for it?
- How do they respond to difficult feedback?
- Can they adapt when the business changes direction?
- Do they develop talented people who may eventually surpass them?
- Can they put the needs of the organization ahead of their own ego?
Those qualities don’t always show up in a job description or résumé, but they often determine whether an executive who looks great on paper actually succeeds within an organization. For HR leaders and hiring teams, that means evaluating leadership talent has to go deeper than matching experience to requirements.
Resilience Isn’t About Never Losing
Every organization says it wants resilient leaders. But resilience is sometimes misunderstood as the ability to simply push through difficult circumstances. Sports offer a better definition. You can prepare exceptionally well and still lose. You can execute the plan and still encounter an unexpected outcome. You can perform well individually while the team falls short.
Business isn’t much different. Leaders will lose great candidates. They will make hires that don’t work out. Transformations will hit roadblocks. Strategies will change. Promotions will go to someone else. Acquisitions won’t integrate exactly as planned.
The leadership question isn’t whether setbacks will happen. It’s what happens next. When something doesn’t go as planned:
- Do you become defensive, or curious?
- Do you assign blame, or examine what could have been done differently?
- Do you carry the disappointment into the next challenge, or learn from it and move forward?
Organizations don’t need leaders who have never failed. They need leaders who know how to respond when they do.
High-Performing Teams Require Leaders Who Don’t Need to Be the Star
Sports also teach a lesson that becomes increasingly important as someone’s leadership responsibility grows: individual performance and team performance are not the same thing. The best player doesn’t automatically make the best captain. And the smartest person in the room doesn’t automatically make the best executive.
Strong leaders create environments where other people can succeed. They hire talented people, share credit, develop successors, challenge their teams, and make decisions based on what the organization needs rather than what gives them the most visibility.
From an HR and talent strategy perspective, this is critical. When evaluating leadership talent, we shouldn’t only ask, “What did this person accomplish?” We should also ask, “What became better because this person was leading?”
- Did their people grow?
- Did the team become stronger?
- Did they develop future leaders?
- Did they leave behind better processes and stronger capabilities?
- Is the organization better positioned because they were there?
That’s often a much better measure of leadership impact.
The Leadership Qualities That Never Make the Résumé
As an executive recruiter, I spend a lot of time looking at résumés. They tell us a great deal about career progression, scope, accomplishments, industry experience, education, and functional expertise. But some of the qualities that ultimately determine leadership success are much harder to capture in a bullet point:
- Coachability: Can they receive feedback and actually do something with it?
- Resilience: What happens after something doesn’t go their way?
- Accountability: Can they own both the wins and the misses?
- Self-Awareness: Do they understand their own strengths, gaps, and impact on others?
- Adaptability: Can they change course when the business requires it?
- Developing Others: Do people become better because they worked for this leader?
- Team Orientation: Can they put organizational success ahead of individual recognition?
That’s why great executive recruiting and talent assessment don’t stop at the résumé. The responsibility of HR leaders, recruiters, and hiring executives is to understand not only what someone has done, but how they operate when things don’t go according to plan, how they respond to being challenged, and what happens to the people around them when they lead.
Sports may begin teaching those lessons long before someone’s first job. But organizations should continue looking for them throughout someone’s entire career. Because experience may tell us whether someone can do the job, but how they lead tells us what kind of impact they’ll have once they’re there.
About Morgan Booker
Morgan has over 18 years of Talent Acquisition, Employee Relations, and Human Resource Business Partner experience. She joined The Christopher Group in 2022 as a Recruiting Manager and has since been promoted to Recruiting Director. Morgan’s focus is partnering with executive Human Resources candidates across the United States to fill Human Resources executive roles. To learn more about Morgan visit her bio page.