In 2016, the Cronulla Sharks won their first NRL premiership after 49 years of trying.
I was their performance dietitian for eight seasons.
What I watched that team build in the years leading up to that title wasn’t just a talented playing group. It was a performance system – a set of daily behaviours, team norms and individual practices that compounded over time into something extraordinary.
Years later, I’m now in boardrooms and on conference stages working with some of Australia’s leading organisations. And what I keep seeing, over and over, is that the behaviours that drove a premiership in professional sport and the behaviours that drive sustainable high performance in corporate leadership are not just similar.
They’re almost identical.
1. Both prioritise what happens between the big moments
Most people watching elite sport focus on game day. The performance that’s visible. The result that makes the headlines.
What they don’t see is the Monday recovery session. The Tuesday film review. The Wednesday nutrition debrief. The Thursday captain’s run. The relentless, unglamorous work that happens in the space between the big moments – and that is, in fact, the work that determines the outcome of the big moments.
The best corporate leaders I work with understand this instinctively. They don’t just prepare for the board presentation, the investor pitch, the major product launch. They build the daily habits that ensure when those moments arrive, they’re already at their best. Consistent sleep. Strategic fuelling through the day. Deliberately protected recovery time. The boring, non-negotiable foundations that everyone knows matter and almost nobody does consistently.
In sport, we call this the training-to-competition ratio. In leadership, we call it sustainable high performance. The principle is the same.
2. Both have a non-negotiable attitude to recovery
In professional sport, recovery is not optional. It’s scheduled, monitored, and treated with the same seriousness as training itself. A player who skips their recovery protocol is not praised for their dedication. They’re flagged as a performance risk.
The cultural attitude to recovery in most corporate environments is the opposite. Leaders who take proper lunch breaks, protect their sleep, or leave at a reasonable hour are often subtly – or not so subtly – seen as less committed than those who don’t. The badge of honour is exhaustion, not sustainable output.
The Cronulla Sharks’ 2016 premiership wasn’t won by a team that trained the hardest. It was won by a team that recovered best – and therefore consistently had more to give when it mattered. The research on recovery and cognitive performance tells the same story for leaders: protected recovery time doesn’t reduce your output. It ensures the output you deliver is actually worth delivering.
3. Both rely on nutrition as a non-negotiable performance lever
This one surprises corporate audiences more than any other.
Elite athletes don’t negotiate with nutrition. It’s not something they do when they feel like it or when life isn’t too busy. It’s infrastructure. The timing of meals, the composition of pre-training fuel, the post-training recovery window – these are mapped, deliberate, and consistent.
When I work with corporate leaders, I find that nutrition is one of the last things they treat with the same intentionality they apply to their business. They would never walk into an important negotiation without preparation. But they’ll walk into a high-stakes board meeting four hours after their last meal, running on caffeine and adrenaline, and wonder why they can’t think clearly in the room.
The gut-brain axis – the biochemical communication highway between your digestive system and your cognitive function – doesn’t care whether you’re an elite athlete or a CEO. Fuel it consistently, and it supports sharp thinking, emotional regulation, and sustained focus. Neglect it, and you pay a performance tax every single day.
4. Both require a culture, not just individual excellence
The most talented team in any competition rarely wins the premiership. The most cohesive, best-prepared, most consistently-performing team does.
One of the most powerful things I observed working inside professional sport is how quickly individual performance behaviours spread. When a senior player made recovery a priority, the younger players noticed. When the captain talked openly about sleep, the whole team’s sleep habits improved. Culture is contagious – in both directions.
The same dynamic plays out in organisations. When the CEO eats lunch away from their desk, the leadership team starts doing the same. When a senior leader talks openly about protecting their sleep, it shifts what’s permissible for everyone below them. The performance behaviours of your most visible leaders are the strongest wellbeing policy your organisation will ever have.
A premiership isn’t won by the best individual. It’s won by a group of people who collectively raise each other’s performance. The same is true in business.
What this means for your organisation
The science and the systems that drive elite sport performance don’t stay on the playing field when the athletes hang up their boots. They transfer – completely, practically, immediately — to any environment where sustained performance under pressure is required.
Which is exactly the environment your leaders are operating in every day.
The question isn’t whether the principles apply. They do. The question is whether your organisation is applying them, deliberately, consistently, and at scale, or leaving performance on the table.
