Taking the lead towards healthy performance: the requirement of leadership to elevate the health and performance teams in elite sports

Abstract

Where not too long ago we serviced athletes; nowadays, we have the responsibility to lead a multidisciplinary team that is mandated to protect the athletes’ health, ensure competition availability and ability to compete at peak performance. In essence, our roles have shifted from being a service provider to a health and performance manager who steers a multidisciplinary team of specialists. In this viewpoint, we question whether we really have the skills to lead a ‘team’ like this effectively. We provide a potential definition of leadership and discuss the importance of leadership for health and performance teams with recent literature. Finally, we share our baseline ‘leadership’ pearls that allow you to elevate collaboration through leadership.