The problem
Coaches can still push athletes to extremes, but leaders today must balance corporate needs with employee wellness. Can great work still get done?
By Arianne Cohen
For decades, elite athletics coaches and business executives used
the same strategies to produce excellent performances: They upheld sometimes impossible standards, and pushed their charges to meet them via tactics like yelling, eliciting fear, and—in the worst cases—violence. Once, when Benjamin, the world-class runner, false-started, his then-coach threw a pair of wooden starting clappers at his back. “He was a dictator,” says Benjamin, who has since gone on to cofound fitness-tech company WithU. The behavior of business leaders also went beyond the pale; executives commonly adopted General Electric CEO Jack Welch’s strategy of saying adios to performers in the bottom 10 percent every year. From the 1950s through the 1990s, employees often remained with their companies for decades, working under gruff, paternalistic bosses who didn’t shy away from chewing them out. Workers of that era didn’t think twice about putting in time over the weekend. “It was ‘I make the decisions, you do your work,’” says organizational psychologist and leadership advisor Cathleen Swody. “Very authoritarian.” Many workers had no choice but to log long hours, setting aside their families and personal lives.
In sports, the long-hours strategy has persisted, particularly for endurance athletes, because margins between winning and losing
are tiny, and winner takes all. “If you want to win in these kinds of competitive environments, you have to accept that discipline is 90 percent of the battle,” says Robin Dunbar, emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University. “We are no longer in the era of the Bannister four-minute mile, where training consisted of a couple of laps round the Oxford University running track, then off to the pub.” In many sports, winning means doing more and being better and smarter than competitors—and when that fails, a coach’s dressing-down (or an athlete’s: see Travis Kelce at the last Super Bowl) is tolerated.
While training for the 400 meters, sprinter Tim Benjamin didn’t know the meaning of work-life balance. He trained for a dozen years in a career that peaked with top-five showings at the 2004 Athens Games and 2005 World Championships. He spent his days on the track, in a weight room, or with physical therapists. Beyond that, he optimized all of his day-to-day decisions—sleep, socializing, eating—around how they would affect his performance. Was personal balance part of that equation? “Probably not,” he laughs. “It was pretty overwhelming.”
Benjamin’s myopic, eyes-on-the-prize lifestyle is commonplace among elite athletes. And for decades, a similar “no pain, no gain” approach prevailed at the office. Employees jostled to hold the keys to the last car in the lot, and proved their mettle by skipping vacations. Flash forward to today: In the post-pandemic era, round-the-clock commitment has fallen out of vogue among the rank and file. Work-life balance is now prioritized by 93 percent of employees worldwide, according to one survey of 27,000 workers. Half of respondents said that they’re not trying to progress at their jobs at all, and nearly four in 10 said they’d quit their jobs if asked to come into the office more often.
To a large degree, many leaders are accepting this emphasis on rest and recuperation as the new normal. Yet a good number, especially in the C-suite, accept it only grudgingly: Talk to them behind closed doors, and they’ll tell you that an employee’s focus on work-life balance can create a dilemma when the pressure’s on—and that they’d be quite glad to hear a little less discussion of wellness and to see more managers cracking the whip. They point to the truism that 20 percent of employees shoulder 80 percent of the workload, and note that hard work often involves mild suffering. “The nurturing side of leadership is definitely evolving,” says Erika Duncan, cofounder of HR solutions firm People on Point. “It’s more carrot than stick, and not so loud, but still in transition.”
To be sure, studies highlight the many benefits of preserving work-life balance. A decade of work by researcher Marianna Virtanen at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health finds that long hours are associated with heavy drinking, poor sleep, depression, and other negative outcomes; studies have also found that a manageable level of stress at work reduces a worker’s chances of developing heart disease and other ailments. But none of that helps a leader who’s staring down a make-or-break Monday deadline and needs all hands on deck, pronto. Asking his staff for weekend work might lead to an unpleasant conversation with HR. What’s a smart leader to do?
Firms often need workers to go above and beyond, but now must also consider their well-being.
A business’s success often relies on many people putting in long hours and weekends.
Why it matters
Leaders must learn to instill more self-motivation in workers, while also balancing wellness needs.
The solution
Winning…
with a Work-Life Balance?
View Contents
It was:
‘I make the decisions,
you do your work.’”
“
But experts point out that businesses don’t need to win everything all the time; in fact, many firms purposely differentiate themselves, maximizing their footprints in specific niches in order to avoid head-to-head competition. But workplace leadership has more room to evolve. While some bosses are still slinging around profanity, it’s behavior that is rarely tolerated by employees. Nick Valentino, vice president of market operations at Bellhop Movers in Atlanta, learned this lesson when his company’s Pittsburgh office hired a logistics manager with great references—and more than half of the movers quit. On an office visit, Valentino observed that the new manager “yelled at the poor performers to do better, and he yelled at the top performers for not being perfect.” Today’s employees see the boss as a collaborative partner who provides support and guidance—not epithets and abuse. A collaborative boss might watch a presentation, then ask the presenter how they think it went, and what they want to tweak for next time, as well as what kind of support would be helpful. “It’s helping the employee reflect, which garners more of their buy-in, rather than hurling commands at them,” says Swody.
This shift toward collaboration, which had been gaining momentum for a decade, revved into turbo gear after the pandemic, as employees shifted their lives away from an overriding focus on work. “For younger generations, it’s now about working to live versus living to work,” says culture and change expert Alma Derricks, senior client partner at Korn Ferry. Some younger workers have accepted that home ownership is not in the cards for them, and spend their disposable income on travel and events. “They’re not digging in at work,” says Derricks—which creates a challenge when bosses need them to.
But experts say bosses haven’t abandoned cracking the whip; today’s whip is just fuzzier and softer. And, okay, maybe it doesn’t crack. Pros say that with careful messaging it’s still possible to elicit high productivity, but that a leader’s framing is critical. Words like “must” and “required” are verboten, as is any suggestion that staffers aren’t working hard. “I haven’t heard the term ‘mandatory’ in a long time,” says Duncan. She finds that when bosses make requests thoughtfully, with an awareness of the other person’s well-being, the work gets done. “Generally speaking, people don’t have a problem working non-traditional hours if there’s flexibility around it,” she says. For example, a leader might let team members pick their shifts over the weekend, or allow them to trade their weekend hours for future vacation days. She sees more success with “kind candor,” an approach that creates an expectation of mutual caring; it has taken hold far beyond executive offices.
Former athletes, meanwhile, have their own perspective on how to optimize performance. They say it comes down to a trait shared by both high-achieving athletes and businesspeople: intrinsic motivation. “Those employees push themselves, demand more of themselves, and continually get to higher levels of performance,” says former world-class track-and-field athlete Mark Richardson, now a performance expert at Korn Ferry. What’s more, he points out, they possess a self-awareness that allows them to self-regulate and avoid burning out. “A leader’s challenge is to create the conditions that flood employees with that intrinsic motivation,” he says.
Leaders and sports coaches must work with what they’ve got. In the office, ace employees tend to fall into certain categories, each of which comes with great strengths—and some weaknesses.
The Preparer
They do their homework, full stop. Though not terribly creative, they rise through the ranks due to their machine-like ability to stay on top of everything, always.
You have to work on what matters in the near term, then preserve time and energy so you can work on the long term.”
“
Home
Post Game-Day
Know Thyself
Eye for a Star
Winning…with a Work-Life Balance?
Leadership at the Top
World-Class Athletes on the Job
Every Four Years: The Challenge of Staying Long-Term
Bosses haven’t
abandoned cracking the whip; today’s whip is just fuzzier and softer.”
“
Pure talent or smarts
(or both) enable this employee to opine on reports they’ve never read, and produce sharp strategy and insight—that's usually right—in
a snap. Getting them
to buckle down is
another matter.
The Dazzler
This employee’s output is nearly perfect. Even if they’re neither fast nor skilled at maximizing profits or clicks, their work quality is unsurpassed.
The Perfectionist
Need a report, article,
or presentation? This colleague will get it done. Such dependability is greatly appreciated
among staffers. Is the
work excellent? No.
But is it done? Yes.
The Workhorse
A leader’s challenge is to create the conditions that flood employees with that intrinsic motivation.”
“
Read more about
Gold Medal Leadership
Know Thyself
Know Thyself
Eye for a Star
Eye for a Star
The Four Faces of Workplace Excellence
Read more about Gold Medal Leadership
Eye for
a Star
But experts point out that businesses don’t need to win everything all the time; in fact, many firms purposely differentiate themselves, maximizing their footprints in specific niches in order to avoid head-to-head competition. But workplace leadership has more room to evolve. While some bosses are still slinging around profanity, it’s behavior that is rarely tolerated by employees. Nick Valentino, vice president of market operations at Bellhop Movers in Atlanta, learned this lesson when his company’s Pittsburgh office hired a logistics manager with great references—and more than half of the movers quit. On an office visit, Valentino observed that the new manager “yelled at the poor performers to do better, and he yelled at the top performers for not being perfect.” Today’s employees see the boss as a collaborative partner who provides support and guidance—not epithets and abuse.
A collaborative boss might watch a presentation, then ask the presenter how they think it went, and what they want to tweak for next time, as well as what kind of support would be helpful. “It’s helping the employee reflect, which garners more of their buy-in, rather than hurling commands at them,” says Swody.
This shift toward collaboration, which had been gaining momentum for a decade, revved into turbo gear after the pandemic, as employees shifted their lives away from an overriding focus on work. “For younger generations, it’s now about working to live versus living to work,” says culture and change expert Alma Derricks, senior client partner at Korn Ferry. Some younger workers have accepted that home ownership is not in the cards for them, and spend their disposable income on travel and events. “They’re not digging in at work,” says Derricks—which creates a challenge when bosses need them to.
But experts say bosses haven’t abandoned cracking the whip; today’s whip is just fuzzier and softer. And, okay, maybe it doesn’t crack. Pros say that with careful messaging it’s still possible to elicit high productivity, but that a leader’s framing is critical. Words like “must” and “required” are verboten, as is any suggestion that staffers aren’t working hard. “I haven’t heard the term ‘mandatory’ in a long time,” says Duncan. She finds that when bosses make requests thoughtfully, with an awareness of the other person’s well-being, the work gets done. “Generally speaking, people don’t have a problem working non-traditional hours if there’s flexibility around it,” she says. For example, a leader might let team members pick their shifts over the weekend, or allow them to trade their weekend hours for future vacation days. She sees more success with “kind candor,” an approach that creates an expectation of mutual caring; it has taken hold far beyond executive offices.
Former athletes, meanwhile, have their own perspective on how to optimize performance. They say it comes down to a trait shared by both high-achieving athletes and businesspeople: intrinsic motivation. “Those employees push themselves, demand more of themselves, and continually get to higher levels of performance,” says former Olympic track-and-field athlete Mark Richardson, now a performance expert at Korn Ferry. What’s more, he points out, they possess a self-awareness that allows them to self-regulate and avoid burning out. “A leader’s challenge is to create the conditions that flood employees with that intrinsic motivation,” he says.
View Contents
Home
The (Tough) Economics of the Games
Winning It All—After Hours
The Competitive Spirit
Post Game-Day
Winning...with a Work-Life Balance?
Eye for a Star
Know Thyself
Leadership at the Top
Where Are They Now?
Snaring Medals...And Then, Consulting?
The Home Office, with Trophies in the Closet
World-Class Athletes on the Job
Every Four Years: The Challenge
of Staying Long-Term