What competing for volleyball’s Team GB taught Chris Gregory about pressure, failure and winning

Chris Gregory’s journey from elite athlete to performance mentor reflects the mindset required to compete at the highest level. 

A former Team GB volleyball player and five-time British champion, he represented Great Britain on the world stage, including at the Volleyball World Cup and the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, securing eight international medals across his career.

Years spent operating in high-pressure, high-performance environments now shape the work he delivers to organisations and leaders.

Today, as an Olympic speaker, Gregory translates the disciplines of professional sport into practical strategies for resilience, energy management and sustained excellence. Drawing on first-hand experience of international competition, he focuses on the small, repeatable standards that separate potential from podium-level performance.

In this exclusive interview with the High Performance Speakers Agency, Gregory discusses mindset, resilience and the principles that help both athletes and leaders excel under pressure.

Q1: At elite level, athletes are routinely exposed to scrutiny and pressure. From your experience competing on the world stage, how did those environments shape your mindset and resilience?

Chris Gregory: “Competing on the world stage, I mean, ultimately you're exposed. So you're exposed to a lot of pressure.

“And as an athlete, you understand that pressure is a privilege because that level of discomfort that comes with either a sink or swim or fight or flight moment that you're exposed to teaches you a lot about yourself.

“You either obviously fight and you have grit, determination, and that's kind of drawn out of you, or you get a chance to reflect when things didn't go so well, and that allows for growth as well.

“So, it taught me a lot about comfort zone and that if you want to grow, you need to expand your thresholds of where you're comfortable and be willing to get uncomfortable.”

Q2: In high-performance sport, mindset often separates marginal gains from major breakthroughs. What does “Mindset Behind Your Mission” mean in that context, and why is it critical for sustained success?

Chris Gregory: “The mindset behind your mission delves into the growth versus fixed mindset approaches to things. And we need to try and get out of this kind of fixed mindset approach to problems, to the way that we look at the world, to the way that we look at each other's kind of capabilities and so on.

“So to achieve higher levels of growth and fulfilment, it's about digging more into that growth mindset, and that's to do with things like praising effort rather than talent. But also understanding what your goals are and reverse engineering those and having good mentors and leaders in place to help facilitate more of a growth mindset culture.

“And that growth mindset will allow your employees, your staff, your teams, your leaders even, to flourish, to develop, and to achieve higher levels of fulfilment in and outside of work.

“So we take a deep dive into the growth versus fixed mindset approaches and how we kind of draw the growth mindset out.”

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Q3: Professional sport is built on preparation, standards and accountability. Which lessons from that environment do you think business leaders still fail to apply effectively?

Chris Gregory: “I think some of the biggest lessons from performance sport revolve around preparation a lot. Athletes prepare themselves well for training, for performance, you know, turning up to a certain standard every day. And as an athlete, there's a huge cost if you don't do that. You're going to fail, you're going to lose, you're not going to get very far.

“But in the workplace, to a point, you can often get away with it. But you make things an uphill battle. So there's an individual element to this, and there's a team and company culture element to this.

“And on an individual level, it's about focusing on things like your recovery, your stress management so that you're able to turn up and deliver to a high standard.

“And if you don't do that, not only will you suffer and not get the most from yourself and get the best performance from yourself professionally, but your team and the people around you will pick up on that as well. So it seeps into the kind of wider team. 

“So yeah, focusing on yourself and your own standards first as a leader, as a member of staff, as a team player, and that's going to help with the overall kind of wider company culture as well.”

Q4: When you address sporting audiences, from grassroots athletes to elite performers, what core message do you want them to leave with?

Chris Gregory: “I hope they take away a range of things. A lot of inspiration, I hope they find a lot of kind of engagement in it, and they find it quite galvanising.

“I do like to be quite motivational, inspirational, quite positive, but also kind of very true and kind of realistic with the problems and the issues and the mentality that I see consistently day-to-day.

“So, I hope it's really impactful, and I hope it's also very practical as well. So, looking at real science, real scientific solutions to things, practical solutions that you can apply in the real world. Yeah, educational, inspirational, galvanising, energising, all those things.”

This exclusive interview with Chris Gregory was conducted by Chris Tompkins of the Motivational Speakers Agency.

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