Eight Career Development Lessons from Elite Sport
- Jun 11
- 9 min read
Written by Dawn Sanders, Performance Coach
Dawn Sanders, Director of WinWell, is a trusted and respected Performance lifestyle. Wellbeing, career, and transition coach, having worked in elite sport for over 20 years.
Want to stop losing your top talent? It’s time to change the career development playbook. In high-performance sport, an athlete’s career development needs and transition support needs aren't treated as afterthoughts. They are viewed as critical pillars of sustained, elite performance to retain talent and enable them to thrive as people as well as performers. When athletes feel they can manage the life demands placed upon them, they feel they are taking proactive steps towards their future career and are clear on their identity beyond the performance arena, they perform better in the present, show greater leadership capabilities, and feel able to be a part of a high-performance environment for longer.
Research by David Lavallee in the Australian National Rugby League found that athletes who engaged in career transition planning demonstrated longer team tenure and longer playing careers, alongside improved performance outcomes, reinforcing the value of career development as a retention strategy rather than a distraction from performance.
If businesses want to retain their best people, it might be worth considering the approach in supporting the career development of elite athletes. Employees don't leave just for higher salaries, they leave because they can no longer see a future where they are currently standing and want managers and leaders to support their life and career aspirations and goals.
To build a powerhouse retention and career development strategy, here are the core lessons business leaders might want to borrow from the world of high-performance athlete career development support.
1. Be intentional about career development
The biggest challenge I have seen managers have, and as a manager myself, I have made this mistake too, is trying to squeeze career conversations into the end of an annual performance review. When these meetings have formal processes surrounding them, time is limited and tethered to a formal assessment of past output, employees naturally look backward and try to outline how they have met their KPIs. It often feels like a ‘‘let's think of something to add to my development plan’’ conversation that is driven by the manager rather than the employee, as they look to put something in that box.
If you are intentional about career development, it needs to have as much weight in the conversation as any performance objectives and outcomes and have as much time and space to talk about it as technical skills and competencies. It’s about making career development an intentional conversation. Think about dedicating some recurring time and space purely for growth, completely divorced from KPIs, ratings, and salary discussions.
2. Build absolute psychological safety
If your team members don't trust why you want to have a career development conversation, they will tell you what they think you want to hear ("I love my current role and want to climb this specific ladder") rather than what they actually want ("I'm feeling stagnant and want to explore project management"). The ability to enable someone to bring their whole selves to the conversation can only happen if a psychologically safe space is created free of judgment, preconceived ideas or repercussions from what is heard.
Creating this safe space enables freedom for your employees to share their hopes, dreams, and goals for the future. So, before even thinking about having a career development conversation with someone in your care, explore how you will create psychological safety above all else. What conditions will you create to enable this to happen? How will the contract for this conversation ensure that someone who comes into this meeting knows the intention of the discussion? I would also suggest that, as a manager, you will need to think about how you want to normalise career pathways and outline the fact that they aren't always linear, and actively reward honesty when employees express a desire to pivot or try something new.
3. Ask, don’t solve
Many leaders avoid career conversations because they feel immense pressure to have all the answers. They worry that if an employee wants a promotion or a new challenge they can't immediately provide, they worry the conversation will fail.
But great coaches don't dictate an athlete's career path, as the outcomes are never truly known, they guide it. If you take more of a coaching approach to your career development conversations, it frees you up as a manager to feel you must have all the answers and empowers your employee to feel they are resourceful to be able to take action towards the next right step in their own career development journey. You might want to think about using powerful, open-ended questions that force the employee to self-reflect:
"What does the ideal next chapter look like for you?"
"What strengths are going to help you get there?”
“What’s currently stopping you from getting there?”
"If you could shadow any other person or department, which would it be?"
“How can I best support you to get there?”
Your job isn't to hand them a pre-packaged career solution, it's to help them discover it, as this will serve them well throughout their life and their career, as this form of self-awareness and self-guidance can be a skill for life.
4. Coach the "whole self" (look for the clues)
Anyone who supports high performers knows that it’s important to help them develop a broader sense of self-worth and identity beyond their sport’s identity, so winning and losing don’t define them. Or if an athlete is having challenges in their personal life, their sporting life can be impacted too. The same goes for your employees.
Don't be afraid to ask broader questions about their whole self, rather than just their current "work self." When you limit the conversation to the parameters of their current job description, you limit their thinking about what careers might impact life and vice versa. Many elite athletes have so many different passions and interests outside of the sporting role that you see on your TV screens. From passions and interests in sustainability, music, arts, and financial management to mentoring young people. Your staff might also have talents that are hidden from their working environment because they haven’t yet had the opportunity to let these skills shine in their current role. What if someone had a hidden creative talent you were unaware of that could really help your social media campaign? Without asking or facilitating these wider, holistic conversations, you may not know what talents are already there within your team.
So as part of that coaching conversation, be confident to explore their passions, side projects, and outside interests. If they aren't sure what their broader passions are, help them look for clues. Ask them: "What kind of content do you naturally gravitate toward or scroll through on social media when you have free time?" What someone consumes when nobody is paying them to do so is a massive clue toward their intrinsic motivators. A finance analyst who spends hours scrolling through architectural design accounts or behavioural psychology articles is giving you a blueprint of where their mind wants to grow. Bring those insights into your career development conversations.
5. Uncover and transfer "super strengths"
Elite athletes often struggle to see how their highly specialised skills can translate outside of their specific sport into a career beyond the world they can currently see. Employees face the exact same cognitive bias, and people can’t often see what is possible and where their strengths may add value to a business beyond what they currently know. They might pigeonhole themselves based on their current job titles and let self-imposed barriers or imposter syndrome block their growth. I have seen this ever more present in supporting women in career development conversations. As a manager a wonderful gift that has been given to you is to enable people to understand and connect to these strengths and from there begin to grow and flourish to a way of thinking where so many more career opportunities feel possible and within reach. In recognising these strengths, it is important to help people connect to the how as well as the what they have achieved, as the people I have managed often downplay the part they play in making things happen, especially when it’s about something that doesn’t feel like a technical skill.
Coaching career development, you have a wonderful opportunity to identify and connect to their unique "super strengths", those innate capabilities like high emotional intelligence, rapid problem-solving, exceptional crisis management, or helping other people feel heard and supported. These need to be backed up by real-life examples where you or your employee has deployed these strengths to make it feel real and tangible and not just philosophical. Show them how these strengths are highly transferable to different roles and work together to dismantle the real or perceived barriers holding them back from taking the next step.
6. Make growth bite-sized
For athletes, a massive five-year career plan can often feel overwhelming, but breaking it down into manageable process goals that are actionable, realistic, and can fit around life, training, and competition commitments makes it feel more achievable. Athletes often get limited time for personal development around the demands for elite sport, so it's understanding what and how career development, learning, and holistic growth can realistically be integrated on top of the ‘day to day’ demands. It’s about giving bite-sized things a go, networking with people and hearing about their career pathways, trying short courses, shadowing people, getting as much experiential learning as possible, but constantly reflecting on these experiences and what they have taught the person in your care.
Break learning and growth down into digestible, bite-sized opportunities. Instead of a massive training course, suggest a short micro-learning module, a 15-minute mentorship chat, or a small stretch assignment. I often recommend giving the free Open Learn courses a go, as there is such a great range of bite-sized topics for people to try and then ask someone to self-reflect on what they have learned about their career needs as a result of that experience. Quite often it is about giving something a go, ruling it out, and exploring why it doesn’t meet your needs. Crucially, provide regular moments for reflection. When employees can pause and consciously connect the micro-steps they are taking today with their ultimate long-term aspirations, momentum builds rapidly.
7. Make it motivational
The more motivational you can make any career conversation, the better. Inspire people to want to engage with learning and development and a rewarding and purposeful career journey. There will be great career pathway stories you can share about the things people have gone on to achieve, including yourself, to act as role models to inspire others about what is possible if you take the first right step. People are more likely to engage if they can see efforts will be rewarded, as learning and development takes time, bravery, vulnerability, and energy to think about what's next, moving beyond the secure known world of the present.
8. Make it purposeful
Regardless of what someone’s career aspirations might be, as people in a growing technological world, we want to know that the work we do has meaning and purpose. As a manager, it is important to connect people’s strengths, values, and objectives to the wider goals, vision, and ambitions of the company. Everyone wants to feel that they play a small part in the jigsaw of making things better for the company and for other people. I would also consider how you go about coaching people to better understand their personal values, as for me, this hugely aligns with a sense of purpose. Teams and leaders often create time and team development sessions to build organisational values, but may not spend the time working with individuals to understand their personal values. When someone feels there is a strong alignment between their personal values and the organisation’s values, they can genuinely connect to the company's why and will want to engage and be motivated by what the company wants to achieve. But how much do you know of that individual’s values?
Coaching individuals to identify and articulate their personal values is one of the most impactful things a manager can do. It's the foundation of sustainable performance, so take the time to ask yourself how well you actually know the values of the people you lead, and if there are any gaps, how can you use some of the coaching tools to create a better sense of awareness?
The bottom line
When people can see a clear, supported, and psychologically safe future within your organisation, one that values who they are as a whole person, the strengths and values they bring to the aspirations of the business, they have absolutely no reason to look for it somewhere else.
By having great intentional and impactful career coaching conversations, you aren't just helping them grow you are ensuring they keep winning for themselves and for your team and will be your future leaders to establish a culture that thrives for years to come.
The best retention strategy starts with a different kind of conversation
If you are ready to create the psychological safety, intentional growth spaces and coaching skills your team needs to thrive long-term, I’d love to help you bridge the gap. Email me at dawn@winwell.org.uk to discuss how we can adapt these elite sport principles to fit your unique business.
Read more from Dawn Sanders
Dawn Sanders, Performance Coach
Dawn Sanders is a leader in coaching the lifestyle, wellbeing, career development, and transitions needs of elite performers, having supported Great Britain's Olympic and Paralympic athletes for over 20 years. She is passionate about developing the person behind the performer to enable them to thrive in high-pressure, high-risk, high-reward environments.
