What if the reason your leadership team is underperforming has nothing to do with talent and everything to do with how they spend their time?  

There’s a striking contrast hidden in plain sight between the world of elite sport and the world of corporate leadership: athletes spend the majority of their time training, while corporate leaders spend the majority of their time performing. This imbalance, highlighted in Kobi Omenaka’s LinkedIn post, may be one of the most overlooked reasons why leadership development so often falls short. 

The performance-to-training ratio 

In professional sport, the model is clear and non-negotiable. An elite athlete trains consistently for hours, days, weeks, even to compete for a fraction of that. Every single performance is the output of an enormous investment in deliberate practice, recovery, coaching and reflection. The performance is the tip of the iceberg. 

Corporate leaders, by contrast, are expected to perform from day one — and keep performing, especially if they’re already a high-performer. Back-to-back meetings, constant decision-making and relentless execution leave little to no structured time for the kind of deep skill development that actually builds capability and builds great teams. Leaders are essentially asked to play the game every single day, with almost no time on the training ground. 

What “training” actually looks like for leaders 

It’s time to rethink what leadership development means in practice. 

It’s not just about sending someone to an annual offsite or a two-day workshop. True leadership training — modelled on the athletic approach — would look like: 

• Regular, structured reflection on decisions made and outcomes achieved 
• Coaching and feedback loops that are ongoing, not once-a-year performance reviews 
• Deliberate practice of high-stakes skills like difficult conversations, strategic thinking and stakeholder influence — in low-stakes environments 
• Recovery and renewal built into the rhythm of work, not treated as a luxury 
• Scenario-based rehearsal, much like an athlete drilling specific plays before game day 

The cultural barrier 

One of the most powerful tensions discussed is cultural. In sport, no one questions why an athlete trains. It’s an expectation and is heavily resourced to accommodate. In corporate environments, taking time away from “doing the work” to develop skills can be perceived as unproductive or even self-indulgent. Leaders who block time for learning are sometimes seen as less committed than those who are perpetually “busy”. 

This cultural norm in some organisations actively works against the very development organisations claim to prioritise. The result? Leaders who are experienced but not necessarily growing, where they’re performing on instinct rather than continuously refined skill. 

The competitive edge of the training mindset 

Organisations that do invest in a training mindset for their leaders — viewing coaching, reflection and deliberate skill-building as core to the leadership role — tend to develop more adaptive, resilient and effective leaders over time. Just as an athlete who trains smarter outperforms one who only performs more, a leader who invests in structured development outperforms one who only accumulates more years of experience. 

The solution: Building the training structure in  

The gap between how athletes and corporate leaders approach development is actionable. If your organisation is serious about building exceptional leaders, it’s time to stop treating development as a side activity and start treating it as core to the role itself. Audit how your leaders actually spend their time. Build in the training. Create the coaching culture. And give your people the space to grow, not just perform.  

LEAP 

This is precisely the problem that LEAP, our in-house self-paced program, was built to solve.  

LEAP provides the consistent, structured embedding framework that most leadership development programs simply don’t offer. Rather than a one-off intervention or an annual event, LEAP operates as an ongoing development rhythm. Its purposeful training cadence is designed to sit alongside the demands of the role, not compete with them.  

Through its five-step learning cycle of Learn, Reflect, Apply, Plan and Review, LEAP mirrors the way elite athletes approach their craft: building capability incrementally, embedding it through repetition and reflection, and ensuring that every insight translates into on-the-job behaviour change. 

Across five progressive modules, from Leadership Foundations and Leading Self, through to Communication and Leading Through Coaching, LEAP gives new and emerging leaders the structured “training ground” they’ve never had access to before. 

Each module is designed as a 4–6 week learning experience, creating the space for real application, genuine reflection and compounding growth over time. This isn’t just content; it’s supporting leadership growth for leaders to perform better because they’ve had ongoing training. 

For HR leaders and HRBPs navigating tighter budgets and growing capability gaps, LEAP is a cost-effective solution for enterprises. It’s scalable, self-paced and accessible — without compromising on the quality of frameworks and expertise that we’ve refined over 25+ years.  

The best investment you can make in your organisation’s performance isn’t another high-stakes hire. It’s ensuring the leaders you already have are given the structure, support and space to keep improving.  

The best athletes in the world didn’t get there by playing more games. They got there by training smarter. 

It’s time your leaders did the same. 

For more information on LEAP, download the Capability Deck or get in touch.