Lando’s Leadership Lessons
We should tread carefully when using high-performance athletes and professional sports as a framework for leading and managing in organizations. Success in sports is defined by winning or losing; outcomes are starkly black-and-white. And, as we’ve sadly come to learn through multiple reports, behaviours we work hard to eradicate in workplaces such as harassment, misogyny, and other forms of toxicity, continue to exist at an alarming rate in competitive sports. Any lessons we draw must be taken with a grain of salt but there is evidence that remembering that there are important contextual differences, some leadership lessons are transferable.
Lando Norris’ recent F1 Drivers’ Championship win with McLaren Racing offers compelling insights for the rest of us. This glamorous world of globetrotting teams, charismatic drivers, dazzling technology, and major sponsorships, some with ethically questionable connections, operates as a travelling roadshow that often lands in countries with problematic human-rights records. Yet even here, amid the excess and contradiction, are leadership lessons worth examining, many tied to evolving our emotional intelligence as leaders.
To set the scene: the team that secured both the 2025 Drivers’ and the Constructors’ Championships was, not long ago, firmly in the doldrums. It has been widely reported that senior leaders at McLaren Racing rebuilt the organization by focusing relentlessly on fairness, progress, and learning, an approach that ultimately propelled their 1,500-person workforce to the top of their industry. Norris, groomed for nearly a decade, is the face of that success. But insiders know the lion’s share of performance comes from grassroots excellence: the engineers and technicians, IT and manufacturing personnel, business operations teams, and managers who create the conditions for victory.
Norris may be the talented, smiling face fans recognize, but credit is broadly shared with the leadership “brain trust” that laid the foundation for McLaren’s resurgence. Still, Norris occupies one of only twenty of the most coveted roles in motorsport, and his story offers valuable inspiration. Here are a few lessons:
1. Great achievements often begin with humble beginnings.
While some teen sensations enter F1 with great fanfare, Norris started as the motorsport equivalent of an intern, full of promise but tasked with menial duties like fetching tea for senior drivers. McLaren nonetheless saw talent, drive, and potential, and invested in developing him over nearly a decade. Many leaders can point to their own version of this modest start.
2. Nice people can finish first.
In high-stakes environments, success is too often associated with ruthlessness, narcissism, and an every-person-for-themselves mindset. The BBC reports that Norris, by contrast, is widely described as affable, grounded, and someone who genuinely celebrates the success of others. His championship is admired openly by his competitors, no small feat in such a fiercely competitive arena.
3. Authenticity and vulnerability are powerful assets.
Ambitious and laser-focused on progress, Norris is equally known for being true to himself and adaptable his race engineer Will Joseph told Sky Sports F1 journalist Ted Kravitz in post race interview. He values family and relationships, seeks support, offers support, and readily acknowledges mistakes and weaknesses. This honesty allowed him to turn struggles into strengths. Leaders who model this kind of vulnerability create permission for others to do the same.
4. He is the product of a healthy culture.
McLaren’s senior leaders embedded a culture of progress, fairness, and learning, even though such an approach runs counter to the cutthroat norms of the sport. They rejected toxicity and invested deliberately in harmony, respect, and openness, believing these conditions fuel long-term performance. Their results prove the point.
5. Success requires the courage to reset and recalibrate.
Norris’ rise was anything but linear. He has been candid in numerous press conferences that there were setbacks, crises of confidence, and moments of profound doubt. He spoke openly about the toll on his mental health and the need to step back, reflect, and rebuild. He credits many people including the team leaders, coaches, and even his fiercest on-track rival, his teammate Australian Oscar Piastri, with challenging him, equipping him with tools, and helping him restore his self-belief. As is often the case, others saw his capability more clearly than he did. He had the courage to act on their feedback.
6. Success demands sacrifice, occasionally, not endlessly.
Norris has been candid about the personal cost of competing at this level: long stretches away from friends and family and other sacrifices along the way. Leaders and managers know there are moments, specific, time-bound moments, when personal sacrifice is required to meet a goal, support a team, or serve clients. While chronic sacrifice is unsustainable, occasional sacrifice is part of responsible leadership.
Lando Norris may never have intended to become a case study in personal leadership, but his ascent shows what can happen when humility meets ambition, when vulnerability is paired with discipline, and when a healthy culture lifts people to heights they could not reach alone. Motorsport may be louder, faster, and more unforgiving than most workplaces. In many respects it is not the real world, one that most of us cannot relate to, yet, the human elements of courage, self-belief, respect, and the willingness to learn, as well as how leaders shape culture and progress remain the same. His story reminds us that extraordinary results rarely emerge from talent alone; they grow in environments where people are supported, challenged, and trusted to become the best version of themselves.