By Tom Barton, Strategy Consultant
Your future leaders might already work for you – you just haven’t given them the environment to prove it yet.
In elite sport, talent pathways often narrow too soon. Coaches pick “the best” early, giving them more resources, better coaching, and tougher competition. Those left out get fewer opportunities – and rarely catch up.
Business does the same. We fast-track “high potentials” and inadvertently sideline late bloomers – leaving a shallower leadership bench and missed opportunities for width.
But some elite sport programmes break the mould also show us how to keep the door open and businesses need to learn from them.
Before we look at lessons learned, a key context to acknowledge is that extra coaching sessions and wider squads cost time and money. Similarly, business, budgets are finite, timelines are tight and leaders can’t give everyone unlimited opportunities.
Successful programmes don’t ignore these constraints – they design systems that keep the pipeline broader within them.
Leadership pipeline problems and sport inspired solutions.
Problem: Early selection narrows the pool
Impact: Potential future leaders are excluded early before their skills have fully developed, meaning you risk losing high-value talent who simply needed more time.
Solution from the best of sport: Don’t select for leadership too early. Keep it broad. Rotate “fast track” spots so more people get exposure or keep leadership training open to your A and B group.
Problem: Lack of exposure to top talent
Impact: Those outside the top tier miss out on the challenge, pace, and learning that comes from working alongside your best performers – slowing their growth.
Solution from the best of sport: Blend teams so more people experience that “high bar” environment.
Problem: One moment defining the future
Impact: A single underwhelming performance locks someone out of advancement, even if they have the potential to excel.
Solution from the best of sport: Assess across multiple contexts – team meetings, project reviews, client feedback – not just one appraisal.
Problem: Failure seen as a finish line
Impact: Employees who fail i.e. consistently don’t meet standards, are written off, leading to disengagement and the loss of a potential leader.
Solution from the best of sport: Build “re-entry points” – secondments, stretch projects or skill sprints that reopen the pathway by testing if they are now ready to scale.
Problem: Pre-judging leadership potential
Impact: When leaders decide too early who “has what it takes,” they unconsciously close opportunities to those outside their mental shortlist and creates chance for missed opportunity.
Solution from sport: Start with the belief that anyone could be a leader. In business, create pathways where everyone has access to leadership skills training, exposure to senior leaders, and chances to lead – then let performance over time, not initial impressions, shape decisions.
Closing thought:
Budgets, timelines, and resource limits are real. But narrowing the pipeline too soon is costly in the long run in terms of developing leadership.
The lesson from sport isn’t “spend more to catch more” – it’s “design smarter”. Rotate opportunities. Blend teams. Build ways back in.
That’s how you create the breadth of high performers you’ll need tomorrow.
Remember – it is about making the path wider and not the standards lower.
Keeping the leadership pipeline open isn’t about making it easier to reach the top. It’s about ensuring more people have a fair shot at getting there.
In business, as in sport, the bar should stay high. Expectations should stay strong. But the timeline should stretch because excellence often emerges late, and true leadership potential doesn’t always arrive pre-packaged.
That’s not softness. It’s smart talent design. And it’s how you create the depth of high performers your organisation will need in the years ahead.
