Leadership Lessons Learned in Unexpected Places

The best leadership lessons learned don't always come from corner offices or business school case studies. Sometimes they show up on a tennis court with your ten-year-old, a bucket of balls, and a patient coach who keeps telling you to breathe.

Several years ago, I started taking tennis lessons with my daughter. She'd been wanting to learn, we found a great teacher, and when she asked if I'd join her, I said yes. I figured I'd spend an hour a week hitting balls, bonding with my kid, and maybe getting some exercise.

I didn’t expect that I'd walk away with some of the most useful insights about leadership, growth, and getting out of your own way that I've encountered in years. Turns out, the tennis court has a lot to teach us about how we show up in our lives and careers.

Here are five leadership lessons I learned in the most unexpected place – and how they apply to the work you're doing to lead differently.

Be a Creative Player, Not a Reactive One

In tennis, there's a difference between creating your shot and just reacting to whatever comes at you. Creative players take control. They decide where the ball goes. Reactive players? They're just trying not to miss, constantly chasing, always on defense.

I was still very much in the "OMG please just let me hit the ball over the net into the blue part" phase of tennis. But I could already see the difference between the moments when I was thoughtfully placing a shot versus frantically swinging at whatever came my way.

Here's what this looks like in leadership: Are you building a career and life on your terms, or are you just reacting to whatever gets thrown at you? Are you creating the conditions for your success, or are you constantly in damage control mode?

Most high-achieving women I work with are incredibly skilled reactive players. They're brilliant at responding to crises, managing expectations, fixing problems, keeping all the plates spinning. What they're not so great at? Getting on offense. Deciding what they want and going after it with intention.

This is personal growth work at its core – learning to stop waiting for permission, stop reacting to everyone else's agenda, and start creating your own path forward. It's the difference between climbing someone else's ladder (reactive) and building your own (creative).

Question to ask yourself: Where in your life are you playing not to lose instead of playing to win? What would it look like to get creative and win on your terms?

Keep Your Eye on What Actually Matters

In tennis: keep your eye on the ball until it hits the strings. In leadership: keep your eye on what you're actually trying to accomplish.

This sounds obvious until you realize how often we lose sight of the actual goal. We get distracted by performative busy-work, by what we think we're "supposed" to be doing, by comparison with what everyone else is doing, by the need to look like we have it all together.

I can't tell you how many clients come to me saying they want one thing (a promotion, a business launch, more work-life integration) but their daily actions are pointed in a completely different direction. They've taken their eye off their actual goal and started chasing someone else's definition of success.

The leadership lesson here is simple but not easy: Know what you're aiming for. Then keep your focus there, even when it's uncomfortable, even when everyone else is looking somewhere else.

This is what self leadership actually looks like – the ability to define your own target and stay focused on it despite all the noise telling you to look elsewhere.

Do Not Forget to Breathe. 

I held my breath for the entire first half of our first lesson. Even when my coach explicitly told me to breathe, I still found myself holding my breath. It wasn't until he equated it with breathing like boxing that I got it. You breathe out when you punch. You breathe out when you hit the ball. 

And as soon as I started to breathe? My game improved significantly.

Why do we hold our breath when we're trying hard? Because we're tense. We're afraid of messing up. We're trying to control the outcome through sheer force of will. We're performing instead of being present. We’re in our heads instead of in our bodies. 

Here's the thing about breathing in leadership: When you're holding your breath, you're operating from stress and anxiety (and probably somewhere deep down, fear.) When you're breathing, you're operating from presence and power.

Every time I catch myself holding my breath – in a difficult conversation, before hitting "send" on an email that sets a boundary, when I'm about to do something that feels risky – I know I'm in reactive mode. I'm performing instead of showing up authentically. I'm trying to control something I can't control. (I like to control things so this happens a LOT.) 

This is one of those leadership lessons that sounds too simple to matter. But pay attention this week: How often are you quite literally holding your breath? In meetings? While writing emails? When you're doing hard things? Rushing from one thing to the next without stopping to think about what’s most important? 

Your body knows when you're operating from fear versus confidence. Breathing is the bridge back to yourself – back to leading from a grounded place instead of a panicked one.

Try this: Next time you're about to do something that scares you – set a boundary, have a hard conversation, make a big ask – slow down, and take three deep breaths first. Focus on your inhale and your exhale. Focus on the feeling of the breath in your body. And notice what shifts.

Muscle Memory Takes Forever to Correct (So Be Patient With Yourself)

Before those lessons, I hadn't played much tennis in my life. Summer camp when I was 12, and a clinic on vacation that taught me to do my forehand ALL WRONG.

So when I started lessons, no matter what I thought I was telling my body to do, I kept reverting to the old habit of breaking my wrist on the swing. I probably set the record for most balls hit over the fence in a single hour – three lessons in a row. 

My coach kept reminding me that old habits die hard – that it takes time. So we did the stroke again. And again. And again. My wrist was killing me. I was beyond frustrated. I knew I was doing it wrong but my body wouldn't listen to my brain.

Until – at the very end of lesson five – my body finally started to respond to what my mind was telling it. Not on every swing, but on some. It was a start.

Here's what this teaches us about personal growth work: Your brain is a muscle too. Your neural pathways are like roadways of nerve cells that deliver messages. Travel a road enough times and a mental habit is formed. Those thoughts you've been telling yourself over and over and over again? They die hard.

"I'm not ready yet."
"I need more experience before I can lead like that."
"If I set boundaries, people won't like me."
"I should just be grateful for what I have."

These aren't truths – they're muscle memory. And just like my forehand, they take conscious repetition to rewire. You can't just decide to think differently once and expect your brain to comply. You have to practice the new thought pattern again and again and again, even when it feels wrong, even when your brain wants to default back to the familiar path.

The leadership lesson? Real transformation takes time and repetition. Be patient with yourself. Be consistent. It will pay off.

If you're doing the work to lead differently – to lead with emotional intelligence, to stop people-pleasing, to set better boundaries, to trust yourself more – and you keep slipping back into old patterns? That's not failure. That's muscle memory. Keep practicing. Your brain will catch up.

You Can Start Something New at Any Age (And You Should)

I learned tennis in my late 40s. My daughter started at 10. We were both beginners. Neither of us had an advantage except that she was a little less afraid of looking foolish. 

The lesson I have learned over and over again (and each time it gets a little bit easier) is that I can start something completely new, be genuinely terrible at it, and the world doesn't end. In fact, it's fun. It's humbling. It reminds me that growth requires being willing to suck at something before you get good at it.

Most of the women I coach have spent decades being excellent at things. 

They're high achievers. They're competent, credentialed, accomplished. And somewhere along the way, they stopped trying new things because they didn't want to be bad at anything.

But if you're not willing to be a beginner at something, you stop growing. And if you stop growing, you start dying a little bit inside.

Starting something new – whether it's tennis, a new leadership role, a career pivot, setting boundaries for the first time, or building your own business – means being willing to hit balls over the fence for a while. It means being willing to fall down and get back up. It means being willing to look awkward and feel incompetent and do it anyway.

This is self leadership at its finest: choosing growth over comfort, choosing possibility over looking perfect, choosing to build your own ladder even when you're not sure how it's going to turn out.

You're not too old. You're not too late. You haven't missed your chance. You can start something new right now, today, even if you have no idea what you're doing.

So Where Are You Playing to Win?

These five leadership lessons – being creative instead of reactive, keeping your eye on what matters, breathing through the hard stuff, being patient with the rewiring process, and staying willing to be a beginner – they're not just about tennis. They're about how you show up in your career, your relationships, your whole life.

The question is: where are you actually applying them?

Where are you playing to win instead of playing not to lose? Where are you still operating on muscle memory that doesn't serve you anymore? Where have you stopped trying new things because you're afraid of being bad at them?

And here's the harder question: what are you going to do about it?

Want more insights on leading differently? Join my newsletter where I share stories, frameworks, and the occasional uncomfortable truth about what it really takes to build your own ladder.