Certificate in Executive Leadership in Sport
CEO-level judgement from elite sport, captured and made teachable. Leadership, culture, decision-making and long-term organisational success — drawn from a career at the very top of the game and built for the leaders coming next.
Facilitated by Brian Cook AM · 10 modules
Built for the leaders coming next
Most leaders in sport are promoted for performance, not prepared for leadership. This course is for the people ready to close that gap — and for anyone serious about leading well in a high-performance environment.
- Middle and senior leaders in sport ready for the next level
- Heads of department and executives
- Coaches and players transitioning into leadership
- Sporting administrators and board members
- Business leaders with a serious interest in elite sport
Bottle a career’s worth of CEO judgement
This course captures the thinking behind building successful clubs, leading change, and translating off-field strategy into on-field success. You finish with a practical leadership framework you can apply inside your organisation the very next day.
Define Leadership On Your Terms
Separate leadership from management and build a model that fits the modern game.
Shape Culture Deliberately
Understand culture as the behaviours you reward — and learn to change it on purpose.
Build High-Performance Environments
Balance psychological safety with accountability, and design out groupthink.
Make Better Decisions
Recognise the bias and blind spots that quietly derail executive judgement.
Lead Through Adversity
Understand the causes of decline and how to lead a genuine turnaround.
Sustain Performance Over Time
Maintain hunger, standards and resilience long after the first success.
Ten focused modules
Filmed across one structured day and broken into focused, self-paced modules — opening with an executive welcome and closing with a live-style Q&A.
What Leadership Really Is
Leadership definitions, direct versus indirect leadership, and empowerment over control.
Culture: The Behaviours You Reward
What culture really is, why culture change is hard, and the leadership behaviours that shape culture.
Psychological Safety, Accountability & Groupthink
Safety versus accountability, groupthink risks, and inclusive leadership behaviours.
Values-Driven Leadership
Values in action, recruitment and reward, and evaluating performance through values.
Purpose, Strategy & Competitive Advantage
Purpose versus strategy, competitive advantage, and what endures in organisations.
Performance Indicators & Alignment
KPIs and KPAs, aligning people to strategy, and avoiding vanity metrics.
Bias, Decision-Making & Blind Spots
Confirmation bias and overconfidence, status and comparison traps, and improving executive judgement.
Resilience, Motivation & Sustaining Performance
Resilience under pressure, post-success letdown, and reframing goals.
Turnarounds, Decline & Leading Through Adversity
Causes of decline, common leadership errors, and leading effective turnarounds.
Your Leadership Framework & Final Reflections
Personal leadership frameworks, support teams and development, and final advice and reflections. Closes with a live-style Q&A.
Brian Cook AM
[INSTRUCTOR BIO PARAGRAPH 1 — Open with the headline of Brian’s career: decades at the helm of elite sporting organisations, the titles built, and the scale of what he led. Make the credibility undeniable in the first three sentences.]
[INSTRUCTOR BIO PARAGRAPH 2 — Connect that experience to this course: the judgement, the culture work, the turnarounds and the decisions that this program distils for the next generation of leaders in sport.]
Choose how you pay
- 10 self-paced modules (4–5 hours of content)
- Executive welcome and a closing live-style Q&A
- A practical leadership framework you can apply immediately
- Downloadable resources and frameworks
- Flexible payment — pay in full or spread over 6 or 12 months
- Certificate of completion from Apogee Sports
Frequently asked questions
Who is this course for?
It’s built for middle and senior leaders in sport ready to step up — heads of department, executives, administrators, and coaches or players moving into leadership. Business leaders with a genuine interest in elite sport get just as much from it.
How is the course delivered?
Entirely online and self-paced. The content was filmed across one structured day and broken into ten focused modules, so you can move through it on your own schedule and revisit any module whenever you need to.
How long does it take to complete?
There’s 4–5 hours of core content. Most people work through it across a few sittings, and you can move at whatever pace suits you — there’s no deadline.
What will I walk away with?
A practical leadership framework you can apply inside your organisation straight away, plus a certificate of completion from Apogee Sports. The focus throughout is judgement you can use, not theory.
Do I need a background in elite sport?
No. The lessons are drawn from elite sport, but the principles — leadership, culture, decision-making, turnarounds — translate directly into any high-performance organisation.
How much is it, and how do I pay?
The course is $990 AUD. You can pay in full, or spread it across 6 monthly payments of $165 or 12 monthly payments of $82.50 — choose your option at checkout. [Add invoicing / team-enrolment details here.]
Lead like the people who built the game
Thirty years of executive judgement, distilled into one course you can start today.