01/23/2025

Setting The Gold Standard

What CEOs can learn from an Olympic champion

What can executives and senior leaders learn from world-class athletes? So many things. Take two-time Olympic champion Michelle Gisin—who overcame an enormous setback to win back-to-back gold medals in alpine skiing. I have worked with Michelle as her performance psychologist since 2015, and developed five critical strategies that help her to achieve excellence in her sport—even in the face of a debilitating illness. It’s well worth looking at her career to understand what she’s been able to do.

Michelle is one of the most decorated Alpine skiers in the world, placing on World Cup podiums in every discipline—Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super G, Downhill and Combined. In an era when competitors tend to specialize, this is a remarkable feat. She was the first Swiss woman to win gold in Alpine Combined in the 2018 Winter Olympics. In the 2022 Winter Olympics she took the  bronze in Super-G, then won the Alpine Combined event by more than one second—a significant margin in ski racing. But the path was anything but easy.

Adapting to adversity

Michelle achieved this strong standing by competing in all the races in each discipline, and building up a huge number of great results and ranking points. The physical demands of competing so much, however, were far more intense than those on her competitors specializing in one or two disciplines. A key focus of my work was to help her manage her energy as effectively as possible.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Chief Executive.