Inside the Leadership Mindset: Perspectives From CEOs and GMs

The GM/Sporting Director View

Leaders overseeing sporting operations, whether GMs, Sporting Directors, or equivalent, naturally orient around the factors that shape competitive output. Their responses concentrated on the elements that influence readiness, week-to-week reliability, and the effectiveness of the coaching environment.

How GMs Interpret Head Coach Failure
Most common factors contributing to Head Coach failure

GMs largely attribute Head Coach underperformance to execution issues within the core leadership remit. Managing talent effectively, maintaining alignment with the front office, and assembling the right support staff stand out as defining factors. These structural responsibilities carry far more weight than in-game decisions or external pressures. The data points to a modern view of the role: coaches succeed when they manage people well, integrate into the club’s strategic direction, and build an environment that consistently drives competitive advantage.

What GMs Identify as Their Biggest Organizational Pain Points
Biggest pain points in 2025

Injury prevention and player availability emerge as the most common concerns for GMs, highlighting how heavily performance models depend on a healthy, reliable roster. Performance consistency and pathway strength follow, underscoring the link between immediate competitiveness and long-term depth. Recruitment challenges and financial constraints do appear, but far less frequently. The core pressures for GMs remain rooted in keeping players fit, sustaining reliability week to week, and ensuring development structures can support the demands of the season.

What GMs See as Their Opportunities for Growth in 2026
Opportunities for growth in 2026

Given how often injury prevention and player availability appeared as pain points, it is no surprise that optimizing player health and conditioning stands out as the strongest opportunity for growth. Availability is the foundation of competitive performance, and GMs view improvements in this area as the most immediate and impactful lever. Strengthening the talent pipeline and building competitive depth follow closely, emphasizing the need for both long-term readiness and short-term resilience. While long-term development features, it is a secondary priority compared with the immediate gains available through better health management, deeper squads, and more reliable progression pathways.

The President/CEO View

Senior executives such as Presidents, CEOs, and similar roles, operate with a broader remit. Their vantage point reflects long-term organizational resilience: financial sustainability, cross-department alignment, leadership continuity, and cultural clarity.

How Presidents and CEOs Interpret GM Failure
Most common factors contributing to GM failure

Presidents and CEOs view GM underperformance primarily as a failure of clarity and leadership. The most common themes center on the ability to define and execute a coherent business plan and team identity. Executives also emphasize the importance of building a strong front office, recruiting capable staff, and maintaining a productive relationship with the Head Coach. Accountability across the department and alignment with ownership also feature. Tactical, media-facing, or league-navigation issues are not seen as major factors in the failure of a GM. The emphasis is firmly on strategic coherence, staff quality, and organizational leadership.

What Presidents and CEOs Identify as Their Biggest Organizational Pain Points
Biggest pain points in 2025

Financial sustainability and cost control stand out as the most pressing concerns for executives, reflecting the economic pressure many organizations are navigating. Just behind this, strategic alignment, succession planning, cultural cohesion, and commercial momentum appear as closely grouped priorities, underscoring how interconnected these elements are in shaping long-term stability. Governance clarity also features as a common challenge, while external reputation plays a much smaller role. The overall picture reinforces an executive focus on keeping the organization aligned, resilient, and positioned for sustainable growth.

What Presidents and CEOs See as Their Opportunities for Growth in 2026
Opportunities for growth in 2026

Presidents and CEOs see the strongest opportunity in modernizing the sporting model, reflecting a clear focus on bringing greater cohesion, sophistication, and integration to the performance and operations environment. Diversifying revenue streams follows closely, highlighting the commercial pressures shaping strategic decision-making. A broad set of organizational priorities, such as financial resilience, partnerships, governance, innovation, and long-term capability, sit just behind the top themes, each viewed with similar importance. External-facing areas such as global reach and fan engagement appear far less prominent, reinforcing an emphasis on internal modernization over outward expansion.

Across roles, sports, and organizational structures, senior leaders point toward the same core priorities: healthier squads, deeper pathways, stronger alignment, and more resilient organizational models. These are themes we engage with every day in our work with ownership groups, executives, and performance leaders. As clubs look ahead to 2026 and beyond, this shared outlook offers a timely opportunity to reflect, reassess, and explore where targeted support could strengthen the path forward. We are always open to conversations with leaders who want to compare their situation with these trends or explore how to turn these insights into tailored, practical steps.