Leadership and the “Executive Athlete”

In this leadership encyclopedia entry published in the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Leadership and Organizational Change, we define what an “executive athlete” is based on our research.

Abstract: An “executive athlete” is a working professional (e.g., nonprofit leader, small business owner, freelancer, elementary school teacher, CEO) who is able to sustain high achievement in his or her chosen career by balancing performance with rest/recovery. This is critical for leadership as leaders need to have endurance to be effective in the long run. The term is an expansion of “corporate athlete” coined in 1999. The three foundational pillars of an executive athlete include: (1) Executive athletes can be all those who make executive decisions–functions of the prefrontal cortex, (2) Executive athletes compete to be their best selves and not against others, and (3) Executive athletes can optimize their psychology and biology for sustained high performance.

Citation: Stuart, B., O’Steen, H., & Lassu, R. A. (2025). Leadership and the Executive Athlete. In The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Leadership and Organizational Change (pp. 1-5). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.

URL: https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-031-51650-4_44-1