Unlocking the Value of Work-Ready Skills From Sports

This summer’s Olympic and Paralympics Games in Paris were a powerful reminder of the skills and competencies people across the world develop through sports participation. With the events concluded and most of the 15,000 athletes returning to their everyday lives, it’s a key moment to remember that the value of sports participation extends far beyond the playing field, equipping individuals with a robust set of valuable workplace competencies. The parallels between sports and professional skills are striking, from teamwork and leadership to time management and resilience.  

Currently, approximately 7.8 million high school student-athletes and over 530,000 student-athletes are competing at the collegiate level. However, we do little in the workplace to formally recognize the transferable skills these athletes are developing, likely underestimating their value. Today, as more employers consider skills-first hiring in their approach to an ever-changing world of work and learning, sports skills acquisition can provide a powerful case study beyond traditional systems.

Sports, as a learning environment, offers a unique learning ecosystem with principles worth exploring and adopting:   

• Discipline, strategy, and commitment.   

• Diverse relationship dynamics between coaches, players, and competitors.   

• Grounded in performance but optimized through measurement, assessment, coaching, and feedback to promote measurable improvements.

To explore these opportunities further, JFFLabs hosted a LinkedIn Live event with a panel of experts to discuss the unique value of sports experiences and their role in the skills-first movement. Our panelists explored how athletic experiences can drive workplace advancement and skills development, support career transitions, and adapt to new technologies. 

“Early on in my career during interviews, when I was asked a question [about] how I work on teams, I often would reference my experience as a college athlete,” said Nyema Mitchell, vice president of Solutions, Design & Delivery at JFF, and a former Divison I college basketball player. “What it means to be able to work with different people, how to adjust my leadership skills, as well as how to give and receive feedback.”  

Connecting Athletic Experiences to Professional Success  

Competencies such as teamwork, perseverance, and feedback management are invaluable in the professional world, where time management, prioritization, and the ability to cope with failure are crucial.  

Matt Airy, the co-founder and chief coaching officer of Dream Team, found a promising connection between sports skills and fields like software sales. He pointed out that athletes possess a unique ability to deal with failure and focus on growth through process-oriented goals and resilience in the face of setbacks. “We find that athletics is a great framework for setting people up to, instead of looking at failure as a value judgment about who they are or the quality of their work or the quality of them as a person… an opportunity to grow and to learn,” Airy said. “We think about winning and learning versus winning and losing.” 

Anne Shadle, vice president of performance science at HITE EQ, brought a background in performance psychology to her perspective on sports skills translation. She underscored the importance of traits like self-discipline and emotional regulation, cultivated through sports, and how they can support functioning in high-pressure work environments such as the military or special operations. Shadle also discussed her work in conducting early interventions with high school and college athletes to use sports for positive social change, enhancing emotional and cognitive flexibility, teamwork, and discipline to benefit broader societal and professional contexts.

Ellen Flaherty, director of learning at Unity Technologies, brought her experience as a collegiate basketball player to the virtual table. Along with preparing her with the invaluable time management and prioritization skills developed by student-athletes, basketball offered an analogy for skills development and articulation, especially when it comes to technology skills. Flaherty explored how to apply a sports framework for the teaching and learning of technical skills, emphasizing the “micro-skills” and competencies that require practice to hone holistic skills. “You’re teaching how to dribble a ball for the first time, and that’s how we need to teach tech to people who are coming to our software for the first time, as well.” 

Despite widespread participation in sports, most athletes do not transition to professional athletic careers. The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) estimates that out of one million high school football players, just 3% go on to play at the Division I level. The odds of becoming a professional or Olympic athlete are even lower: the same NCAA research found that in a survey of seven popular sports, the chances of going from college to pro ranged from .5% to 7%.    

Randy Osei, CEO of Athlete Technology Group, reflected on his personal experiences, sharing that his journey toward entrepreneurship began when an injury hindered his professional athletic aspirations. Turning to coaching, then brand and business management, Osei observed firsthand professional athletes’ often-short career spans and was driven to prepare athletes for life beyond sports by bridging the knowledge gap and facilitating transitions into technology and entrepreneurship. Osei’s experience underscores the importance of preparing athletes for the future of work and leveraging their sports-derived skills in new professional contexts. 

The discussion also touched how emerging technologies and shifting regulations have opened up new opportunities for collegiate and amateur athletes. For decades, student-athletes were prohibited from earning any income related to their sports participation, but since 2021 they have been allowed to benefit from Name Image Likeness (NIL), which allows them to create and monetize a personal brand. Panelists explored potential uses for NIL as a pioneering “earn-and-learn” model affecting college athletes in acquiring financial literacy, career readiness, and entrepreneurship training. Osei outlined some of these opportunities for athletes, citing NIL as a way to develop entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, and business development skills, and to bridge the gap for athletes as they transition into life after sports. Flaherty highlighted the positive impact of NIL on women athletes and sports that receive fewer resources and attention, noting that NIL has provided these athletes with increased visibility, recognition, and a platform to amplify their voices. 

Looking Ahead 

The JFFLabs Lifelong Learning incubated practice aims to identify and codify diverse learning experiences and connect these to education and workforce systems. Our mission, in line with Jobs for the Future’s North Star, is to unlock human potential and enable learners and workers who face systemic barriers to advancement to access quality jobs and careers. We are excited to introduce new models and collaborate with the athletics field, focusing on exploring the unique potential impact of sports skills and mapping them to workplace talent acquisition, retention, or advancement practices.   

Please join us as we envision a world where we can translate diverse skills to create greater opportunities for people to access and advance in quality jobs and careers. Our work is just getting started, and we’d love for partners equally passionate about exploration and solutions development to reach out and collaborate.