As Wimbledon captures global attention this summer, beneath the rallies lies some essential learns transferable to the workplace: mental resilience, self-awareness, and the ability to thrive under pressure.
There are no mid-coaching talks for tennis players – they compete alone with internal dialogue and the pressure to perform, especially when the stakes are high. It’s a psychological challenge that reflects today’s workplace.
According to the World Economic Forum, skills like resilience, flexibility, and emotional intelligence now top the list of most critical workforce capabilities, surpassing many technical skills. Similarly, in LinkedIn’s 2024 Workplace Learning Report 89% of L&D professionals say building soft skills is a top priority to help employees overcome hurdles.
So, what can L&D leaders take from this unique perspective?
1. Self-awareness is the foundation
Self-awareness is the cornerstone of emotional understanding, decision-making under pressure, and sustainable performance. It’s the first skill great athletes (and great professionals) must master.
Wimbledon champions have spoken openly about managing emotions. Roger Federer admitted that frustrating early career struggles were turning points in developing his emotional maturity. For professionals, self-awareness is equally critical, recognising what triggers stress, how we react and how we can consciously respond better.
Pro tips:
Incorporate emotional Intelligence training
- Offer sessions that focus on identifying emotions, naming stress triggers and developing regulation strategies.
- Use validated assessments to increase insight into personal behaviours and preferences.
Normalise conversations about emotions at work
- Encourage leaders to be open with their emotions to their team e.g. “This week I’ve felt a bit overwhelmed, so I took time to reset…”
- Use team check-ins to ask how people are feeling, not just what they’re doing.
2. Resilience is built, not born
Just like elite athletes, employees under pressure are constantly navigating internal dialogue that can shape their performance. Novak Djokovic once said: “If we all trained our minds as much as we are training our muscles… we would maximise our potential.”
Tennis players – just like remote workers – are managing long periods of sustained time and pressure alone, where the only source of communication is their internal dialogue.
Resilience is forged through failure and reflection, as well as learning how to cope adequately during pressured situations to maximise success. Whether that’s a match loss or win, or a missed deadline, it’s how people grow that matters.
Pro tips:
Normalise failure as part of growth
- Encourage leaders to share their missteps and lessons learned.
- Reward learning over perfection – shift the focus from “What went wrong?” to “What did we learn?”
Encourage open dialogue without fear
- Promote regular check-ins and team retrospectives.
- Commit to learning that helps managers actively listen and validate concerns without judgment.
3. Pressure is internal, learn to reframe it
Andy Murray once said: “The only pressure I feel is the pressure I put on myself to win.” Reframing pressure as a challenge, rather than a threat, shifts our physiological and mental response. In the workplace, this means helping employees move from fear of failure to focus on performance and learning.
Remember stress isn’t the enemy – only the perception of it. Science shows that perceiving stress as a threat can impair brain function and decision-making. If we reframe pressure as a challenge, our physiology responds by improving focus, confidence and outcomes.
Pro tips:
Train teams to reframe stress
- Offer workshops or frameworks on mindset, emotional intelligence and cognitive reframing.
- Coach people to help them understand that pressure can be a challenge to rise to and not a threat to avoid.
4. Support systems still matter
Tennis may look like a solo pursuit, but even the greatest champions never succeed alone. Behind every top tennis player is a support system of coaches, physiotherapists, psychologists, nutritionists and family all working in sync to help the player perform at their peak.
The same truth holds in the workplace. While individual accountability is important, employees need support systems that don’t just react to crisis, but actively help prevent burnout, isolation, and disengagement.
Pro tips:
Develop managers as coaches.
- Coach managers to ask empowering questions, give developmental feedback and check in regularly – not just during performance reviews.
- Reward behaviours like mentorship, empathy and team development.
Foster peer-to-peer collaboration
- Create formal and informal opportunities for employees to connect – buddy systems, mentorship programmes and cross-functional project teams.
- Promote psychological safety within teams so that asking for help is seen as a strength, not a weakness.
5. Reflection drives growth
After every match, tennis players conduct detailed reviews of their performance: What worked? How did they respond under pressure? They use this insight to fine-tune their mindset, technique and strategy.
The workplace needs the same mindset. Yet, in many organisations, the pace of work doesn’t leave room for reflection. Employees move from task to task without pausing to learn from the experience. When we slow down to reflect, we grasp opportunities to build self-awareness, reinforce what went well, and adjust what didn’t.
Pro tips:
Make reflection routine, not rare
- Integrate short reflective exercises into the end of team meetings, projects or training sessions (e.g. “What’s one thing we’d do differently next time?”).
- Encourage a ‘pause and learn’ moment in weekly one-on-ones.
Use structured frameworks
One of the models we use at Insights is the Reflections Model:
- Learning – When was I learning, what’s my top learn, what gaps have I spotted?
- Productive – When was I most/least productive, what does that tell me, what might I want to focus on next to improve this?
- Having Fun – What has contributed to enjoyment in my role, what has been missing, how might I get this balance right?
- Sense of Belonging – When was my sense of belonging strongest and what has challenged this and why?
Just as Wimbledon champions are shaped by both skill and mindset, your people, too, can learn to perform under pressure. To bounce back from setbacks and thrive in high-stakes environments.
Success in today’s workplace takes preparation, grit and teamwork. So make your organisation the kind of place where champions grow under pressure – and beyond.
