Non-Negotiables & Delicate Balances

In December 2025, I attended and presented at the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) World Congress in Hong Kong, China. For me, the conference felt like a genuine celebration of international sport psychology. Around the same time, I was in advanced discussions about delivering a development project with a mid-sized Finnish company, with annual turnover of roughly €10–15 million. I had several face-to-face meetings with senior management, who were enthusiastic about the idea of operationalising elements of sport psychology and mental skills training to enhance human performance in the workplace. Convincing the HR team, however, proved rather more difficult. Before long, I was confronted with a deceptively simple question: “What do sport psychology-based mental skills have to do with business development?” Not quite prepared to turn myself into a car salesman, I carried on with my online presentation, proudly showcasing a few of my own college-era athletic achievements along the way. The lessons I drew from high-performance sport seemed to provoke the sort of reaction one might expect after admitting, in polite British company, to microwaving one’s tea.

At the ISSP World Congress, I was immersed in presentations that stretched well beyond the traditional image of sport psychology as simply helping athletes perform better under pressure. Among the most memorable was Costas Karageorghis’ (2025, December 9) presentation on the relationship between music, psychological experience, affect, and wellbeing. Equally thought-provoking was Kristoffer Henriksen from the University of Southern Denmark, who spoke of coaches as architects of high-performance sport environments. That metaphor stayed with me. If coaches are not merely instructors of individuals but active designers of the psychological environments in which people develop, perform and thrive, then the relevance of sport psychology begins to look considerably broader. Listening to these ideas in Hong Kong, the boundaries between sport psychology, leadership and organisational development seemed porous. Professor Stewart Vella’s (2025, December 12) keynote address reinforced that sense of an expanding field, inviting reflection on where the boundaries of sport psychology begin and end.

Hong Kong - ISSP 2025

In Henriksen's work with colleagues (2025) on Danish high-performance sport environments, the role of the coach was organised around two simple ideas: non-negotiables and delicate balances. The non-negotiables were not technical drills or fashionable performance interventions, but fundamental ways of leading. Values mattered, not as words displayed on a wall, but as expectations that had to become visible in everyday behaviour. Coaches were deliberate about what they stood for, what kind of culture they wanted to create, and the standards athletes were expected to uphold. Structure mattered too: clear season plans, predictable meeting rhythms, explicit expectations and regular opportunities for reflection and feedback. So did seeing the athlete as a whole person, rather than merely a performer, and taking responsibility for leading not only athletes but the wider staff surrounding them. Henriksen and his colleagues describe these as aspects of the environment that coaches were unwilling to compromise because doing so could weaken the very foundations on which sustained performance depended.

And yet, alongside those non-negotiables sat the delicate balances: questions for which no value statement, policy or coaching manual could provide a permanent answer. How intensely should we push while still protecting sustainable development? When should the needs of the individual take precedence over those of the group? How much attention should go to the very best performers and how much to those immediately behind them? And when should athletes be given responsibility rather than guidance?

Away from the conference, I was also captivated by the Hong Kong Design Expo, where office concepts integrated green spaces into darker interiors to create small areas for employees to step away and reset for ten or fifteen minutes. It was a simple but striking reminder that performance environments are shaped not only through leadership and culture, but also through the physical spaces people inhabit.

This distinction between non-negotiables and delicate balances began to open up a much larger question for me. There is nothing uniquely sporting about the need for values that translate into everyday behaviour, structures that create clarity, or leaders who see the person behind the performer. Nor is sport alone in having to navigate the less comfortable questions for which there is rarely a permanently correct answer: how hard to push, how much autonomy to allow, when the needs of an individual should outweigh those of the group, or how to sustain performance without gradually undermining the people expected to deliver it. These are questions of coaching, certainly, but they are also questions of leadership. And once viewed through that lens, Henriksen and colleagues’ distinction between non-negotiables and delicate balances offers an intriguing way of thinking about the environments we create inside business organisations as well.

Which brings me back to the question I was asked in Finland: what does sport psychology have to do with business development? Perhaps more than we first assume. Businesses, like sports teams, are human performance environments. They depend on people making decisions under pressure, working with others, sustaining motivation, recovering from setbacks, and performing within cultures shaped by leadership. Sport psychology does not offer a blueprint for business, nor should lessons from elite sport be transferred uncritically. But it does offer a well-developed way of thinking about the conditions in which people perform. For business leaders, that may mean becoming a little more deliberate about their own non-negotiables, and a little more skilful in navigating the delicate balances.

At Lasse Eini Co. we help leaders and organisations identify the non-negotiables that give performance environments clarity and coherence, while navigating the delicate balances that leadership inevitably demands. Drawing on insights from high-performance sport, psychology and organisational development, we work with leaders to create conditions in which people can perform, develop and sustain performance over time.

Curious what this might look like in your organisation? — Book here.

References

Eini, L., & Williams, T. (2025, December 8). Psychological flexibility is associated with reduced depressive symptoms following sports injury: Moderated mediation study [Conference presentation]. 16th ISSP World Congress, Hong Kong, China.

Henriksen, K., Dideriksen, S., Kuettel, A., Schlawe, A., & Storm, L. K. (2025). The coach as an architect of Danish high-performance sport environments. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 80, 102877. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2025.102877

Karageorghis, C. I. (2025, December 9). It’s all about the music: An odyssey into exercise hedonics [Keynote address]. 16th ISSP World Congress, Hong Kong, China.

Vella, S. A. (2025, December 12). The past and the future of a field: Embracing and optimising the role of sport psychology in mental health promotion in sport [Keynote address]. 16th ISSP World Congress, Hong Kong, China.