What Glasgow 2026 Can Teach Your Workplace About Resilience
On Thursday the 23rd of July, roughly 3,000 athletes will walk out for the Opening Ceremony in Glasgow.
10 days. 215 old medals. Commonwealth Games Australia wants to finish it as the number one nation at the table, with the most gold medals across the widest spread of sports.
Behind the campaign pushing that ambition is a single line: our athletes don't just perform, they persist. It's the idea behind UNSTOPPABLE, and the next two weeks are a live demonstration of what that actually looks like.
Becoming unstoppable isn’t built around perfection. It’s built around the preparation and commitment that sit behind a performance. That’s a more useful definition of resilience than most workplaces use, where we tend to treat resilience as toughing something out quietly.
Resilience is trained, not innate
It's tempting to treat resilience as a personality trait, or something certain people are just born with. Sports psychology doesn't back that up, and emphasises that resilience functions more like a skill: built through preparation, support systems and recovery, and rehearsed long before it's tested in public.
Psychologist Angela Duckworth's research on sustained effort — often shortened to "grit" — makes a similar point: the people who hold up longest under pressure usually aren't the most naturally gifted, they're the ones who've built the systems and habits that make holding up possible. What looks like raw toughness in the moment is usually the visible tip of years of unglamorous preparation.
Translating it to a big week at work
Most of us have our own version of a Games final, even without a medal ceremony at the end of it. A product launch. A restructure announcement. EOFY reporting. The pitch that's been months in the making.
And most workplaces handle it the same way: push harder, and hope resilience shows up when it's needed. It's the opposite of how every athlete walking into Glasgow has spent the last four years preparing.
A few things worth borrowing instead: build preparation in before the pressure hits, not during it; make it safe to name a setback without it being held against you; treat recovery as part of the plan, not the thing that gets cut when time runs short.
These map closely to the daily habits our 25 Days 25 Plays program builds. Practices that build confidence, mindset and stress regulation, in 10–15 minutes a day, delivered by Australian athletes who bring their own lived experience.
For leaders: building a resilient team
Individual resilience only goes so far if the culture around someone still expects them to push through regardless. If your team is heading into its own high-pressure stretch, the same thinking applies at a team level, not just a personal one.
A few things leaders can actually do: build recovery and preparation into how the pressure period is planned, rather than leaving people to individually absorb it. Model naming a setback yourself, instead of only ever showing the composed version.
The key takeaway
As the Games kick off this week, watch closely and you’ll see it: Every medal Australia wins will look like a single perfect moment. It won't be. It'll be the payoff of persistence.
You don't have to wait for a big week to start building that persistence. 25 Days 25 Plays builds resilience the same way elite teams do — in small daily habits, just 10-15 minutes a day, that actually stick.
