Performance Play. How Leaders Shape Performance.

Performance looks the same in sport and in business. Results matter. Pressure is constant. Visibility is high. Failure is expensive. There is always a scoreboard — even when no one admits it exists.

From the outside, the objectives look identical. Then leadership shows up. And the similarity quietly collapses.

In sport, performance is treated as something you build into a human being. No one assumes performance. It’s trained. Daily. Physically. Technically. Tactically. Mentally. No coach says: “We’ll focus on technique only. Mindset is personal.”

In business, performance starts from a different fantasy.

Work is distributed.

Technical skills are trained — sometimes.

Tactics are explained — occasionally.

Strategy appears when it changes. Or when it’s urgent.

Mental capacity? Emotional regulation? Decision-making under pressure? That’s assumed.

Resilience is praised. Usually post-incident.

In sport, ignoring mental training would be malpractice. In business, it’s standard practice.

To be fair, business does train people. During onboarding. A few weeks. Maybe a couple of months. Processes. Procedures. How things work

Best investment ever. It’s like training an athlete intensively on locker room rules, reporting lines, and where the equipment is — and then expecting peak performance on the field for the next five years.

In business, training ends. Expectations don’t. Imagine applying that logic to sport.

Or to a child:

“Here’s where you should be by the end of the year / season.

How you grow into it is up to you.

We provide two or three meditations along the way.

We’ll review performance periodically.”

Both systems want excellence. Both operate under pressure. They just don’t agree on one thing: where performance actually comes from.

So the question isn’t whether we want performance.

It’s whether we build it, or just expect it to show up motivated.

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One way of seeing.

Not exclusive.