Box, Box: Leanne Meyer on What Formula 1 Teaches Leaders About Going the Distance

Ask anyone on the Tepper Executive Education team about working with Leanne Meyer, and sooner or later Formula One comes up. It usually starts innocently, somewhere around mid-morning. A participant asks a question about sustaining performance, and before long the whole room is deep in a discussion of pit stop strategy. 

“I can’t help it,” Meyer admits with a laugh. “Formula One is one of the best leadership case studies I know. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”

Meyer, an executive leadership coach, author, and longtime member of the Tepper School faculty, spends her days with senior leaders who are capable, committed, and, as she puts it, “tired in a way a long weekend doesn’t fix.” That observation sits at the heart of her program, Leadership Agility and Sustaining Team Effectiveness, which runs October 13 and 14 in Pittsburgh.

“The question leaders bring me is rarely ‘How do I get better?’” she explained. “It’s ‘How do I keep going, and keep my team going, without burning down to the studs?'"

Meyer argues that Formula One has been working on a solution to that question for decades. For example, a Grand Prix isn’t won by the fastest car over a single lap. It is won by the team that best manages its energy, its equipment, and its people across the full race distance. 

We asked Meyer to take us into the pit lane and share four lessons that can help professionals lead stronger, more sustainable teams.

Stopping is a strategy, not a weakness

Fans of Formula One know that a team brings its driver in for fresh tires a few laps before a rival, and the extra grip is enough to jump ahead once the rival makes their own stop. The pit stop that looks like lost time is often how the race is won.

“Leaders treat recovery as a reward for when the work is done,” Meyer explained. “The research says the opposite.” 

She noted that short, regular breaks reliably restore energy while the lift from a vacation typically can fade within a few weeks of returning to work. “The best leaders I know plan their pit stops before they need them.”

The Best Drivers Know When to Lift

“Lift and coast” is when a driver eases off the throttle just before a braking zone to save energy and protect the brakes. It costs a fraction of a second and can decide the result. For Meyer, it captures the link between sustainability and agility, the two ideas at the center of her program.

“When we run flat out for too long, we don’t just get tired. We get rigid,” she explained. “Stress narrows our thinking, and we fall back on our most practiced moves. That’s the very opposite of agility.”

Tires Wear from the Very First Lap

A tire doesn’t suddenly give out on lap 40. It loses a little grip through every corner, and engineers track that wear from the moment the lights go out. Meyer sees the same pattern in micro stressors: the missed handoff, the meeting that always runs over, the late-night message that didn’t need an answer.

“None of it feels like a crisis,” she explained. “But together it wears away the grip you need for the moments that matter most.”

Nobody wins alone

A modern pit stop takes under three seconds and involves around twenty people. It works because of clear roles, relentless practice, and a debrief after every session. Studies of structured team debriefs find performance gains of roughly 20 to 25 percent on average, a finding Meyer builds directly into the program.

She is just as interested in what happens on team radio. “Listen to the best drivers and you hear this remarkable calm at over 300 kilometers an hour,” she said. “That calm is trained, and it spreads. So does panic. Whether you realize it or not, your team is running on your tone.”

From the Pit Lane to the classroom

Over two days, participants in Leadership Agility and Sustaining Team Effectiveness work on their own real challenges: their energy, their presence under pressure, the conversations they have been putting off, and the rhythms that either drain or renew their teams.

They leave with two sustainability roadmaps, one for themselves and one for their team, along with a peer coaching group to keep them accountable after the program ends.
And yes, we can confirm there is a very good chance a pit stop or two will make an appearance.

“In Formula 1, ‘Box, box’ is the radio call that brings a driver into the pits,” Meyer explained. “I’d love for this program to be that call for leaders. Come in, refuel, make a plan, and go back out ready for the rest of the race.”

Leanne Meyer is an executive leadership coach, keynote speaker, and Adjunct Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, where she previously served as Executive Director of the Accelerate Leadership Center. Meyer is the author of Climbing the Spiral Staircase and works with senior leaders across healthcare, law, technology, and financial services. She is also, as you may have gathered, an avid Formula One fan.

Learn more about this program and register by clicking here.