When the call comes
When Liam Livingstone recently spoke about the communication he received after being left out of the England white-ball cricket team, it struck a chord with a lot of people in the game.
Not because it was unusual — but because it felt familiar.
Moments like this don’t sit on the fringes of professional sport. They sit at the centre of it.
Selection, deselection, contracts, releases — they are constant.
And yet, for something so common, it’s an area the system still struggles to handle well.
A part of the game we rarely examine
Professional sport is very good at bringing people in.
It invests heavily in identifying talent, developing players, and creating opportunity.
But it is far less deliberate about how it lets people go.
For many athletes and coaches, the moment of exit is brief, unclear, and at times impersonal.
Not always. But often enough to notice a pattern.
What stays with people
Having experienced this side of the game myself earlier in my playing career, what stays with you isn’t just the decision.
It’s how it’s handled.
Whether the conversation is direct or delegated. Whether there is clarity or vagueness. Whether there is any sense of what comes next.
Those moments tend to linger — not because people expect to be selected forever, but because they expect to be treated with a degree of care and honesty at the point it matters most.
Why this happens
In many environments, this isn’t deliberate.
It’s a by-product of the system.
Leaders are under pressure to win. Attention is constantly shifting to the next fixture, the next selection, the next problem to solve.
Difficult conversations can feel like a distraction from performance, rather than part of it.
So they get shortened, delayed, or passed on.
Over time, that becomes normal.
What other industries have learned
In the book Superbosses, Sydney Finkelstein describes a different way of thinking about leadership.
His research focused on leaders who consistently produced exceptional talent — not just within their organisations, but across entire industries.
One of the ideas that sits underneath that work is that the best leaders understand the flow of talent.
They don’t just focus on who is currently inside the organisation. They recognise that people move on, develop elsewhere, and continue to shape the leader’s reputation long after they have left.
As a result, they pay attention to how people leave.
In many cases, they see that moment as a test of leadership, not an administrative task.
They invest time in those moments. They offer clarity and honesty. They help people think about what comes next. And they maintain relationships beyond the point of exit.
Not out of sentiment, but because they understand that leadership extends beyond the time someone is working for them.
A gap in sport
This is where professional sport can feel out of step.
Exit is often treated as an endpoint.
In reality, it is part of a longer journey.
Players move between clubs. Coaches move between systems. Careers rarely follow a straight line.
How someone leaves an environment shapes how they speak about it, how they carry themselves into the next one, and whether they might return later with greater experience.
In that sense, exit isn’t just operational.
It’s reputational.
What better could look like
This doesn’t require a new framework or a more complicated process.
It comes down to how leaders approach the moment.
It means having the conversation directly, rather than delegating it. It means being clear about the decision, even when it is difficult to hear. It means taking the time to explain, not just inform. It means recognising that the relationship doesn’t have to end just because the role has changed.
None of this makes the decision easier.
But it changes the experience of it.
Why it matters
In high-performance environments, there is often an assumption that people will simply move on.
And they do.
But they don’t forget.
They carry those experiences into their next dressing room, their next coaching role, and their future conversations about the game.
They shape how environments are perceived, often in ways that poor leaders never fully see.
This is where the thinking in Superbosses is most relevant.
The most effective leaders understand that their influence doesn’t end when someone leaves.
If anything, that is when it becomes most visible.
The moment sport often gets wrong
Deselection, release, and transition are not side issues in professional sport.
They are part of the job.
Handled well, they build trust, credibility, and long-term connection.
Handled poorly, they leave a different kind of mark.
For a system that invests so much in developing people, this remains an area worth examining more closely.
Not so decisions can be softened.
But because how they are handled says more about leadership than the decision itself.
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