Cognitive Flexibility: How Pilots and Athletes Think, What Leaders Can Learn

Have you ever wondered how a professional athlete stays calm and collected in the third hour of a tennis match, making rapid decisions amid the emotional turmoil of the moment, with thousands watching? Or how a pilot maintains focus during a technical malfunction that requires an immediate change in plans and flight route? Observing pilots and athletes, I recognized the same pattern in both; they maintain a relationship with pressure. They display the ability to change their thinking in the moment when getting pulled towards an emotional or rigid reaction.

Pilots’ tasks involve switching between monitoring and active intervention; they constantly update their mental models in response to changing situations. Pilots embrace flexibility in thinking, behavior, and psychology, without dwelling on how it should have been, and focus on the required action in the moment.

Similarly, athletes demonstrate the ability to focus on their goal and weed out distractions such as noise, errors, or the little negative voice in their head. More broadly, individuals in high-pressure professions demonstrate the capacity to adapt to the demands of both situations and environments. There is much to learn from pilots and athletes about adaptive brain function.

Cognitive flexibility, in simple terms, is the ability to switch from what you are currently doing or thinking to what the situation actually requires, and to do so quickly. It means being able to suppress an emotional reaction or an instinctive response when the moment calls for a different action, and redirecting your focus to the action that matters. While it is primarily a cognitive function, it does not operate in isolation. Cognitive flexibility draws on self-regulation, problem-solving, and decision-making simultaneously. Dajani & Uddin (2015) define it as the capacity to disengage from an ineffective task or thought pattern and activate a new response set. It is considered a fundamental executive control function that supports planning, behavior adjustment, and attention control.

Among executive functions, cognitive flexibility is the most complex. It builds on two foundational skills: the ability to suppress an automatic response (inhibitory control) and the ability to hold and use information in the moment (working memory). Diamond (2013) states that attention or task shifting depends on these two abilities developing and working in coordination.

While cognitive flexibility involves mental functions such as switching between tasks or controlling attention, it also includes the ability to switch between emotional and non-emotional states and transform one's emotional responses. It can help with emotion regulation and better coping in stressful situations by shifting thinking, using effective coping strategies, and developing greater stress tolerance, thereby avoiding tunnel vision or rigid patterns.

Why It Matters:

It is no coincidence that brain capital emerged as a key topic of discussion at the World Economic Forum this year. Leadership today looks different compared to a decade ago. Markets shift overnight, technology changes fast, and the volume of information and stimulation is increasing more than ever. As a result, leadership factors shift as well. Attributes or decisions that made sense in a previous situation might no longer fit the current one. This is why cognitive flexibility matters. Usually, as humans, our first response to new situations is to default automatically to what we already know and fall back on past patterns. Cognitive flexibility is what allows us to set that reaction aside and engage with the new situation on its own terms.

Cognitive flexibility is as effective in the meeting room as it is in the cockpit. Leaders with limited cognitive flexibility display rigidity and resistance to new ideas, tend to stick to known strategies and patterns even if they are ineffective, have difficulty shifting their perspectives, and struggle to control emotional responses. Of course, this does not mean acting intuitively or constantly changing decisions; it means keeping an adaptive perspective that adjusts to changing situations.

Here, preparation and knowledge also play a part. Having a plan and being prepared are important when addressing uncertainty. Professional athletes, for instance, keep a notebook of opponent strategies and their own strategies, which they review between breaks to get out of the rigid thinking zone, which is often the case in high-pressure situations. Balancing preparation, knowledge, and experience with mental flexibility is what makes the difference.

Developing Cognitive Flexibility

There is much to learn from pilots and athletes in how they think under pressure and in changing situations that can be applied to daily life:

• Introduce Novelty. Disrupting routines and exposing oneself to novel situations or environments. Behavior is mostly guided by automatic responses. Under pressure, we tend to unconsciously act with automatic patterns even when the situation changes. Having a conscious break and interruption into that pattern moves the mind from reacting to responding. Frequent exposure to new situations trains the brain to cope better with uncertainty.

• Excel in Open-Skill Sports. Research shows that open-skill athletes, even if amateur, have greater cognitive flexibility compared to the general population. Sports that involve changing, unpredictable, and externally paced environments, like tennis, soccer/football, skiing, or surfing, improve cognitive and emotional processes.

• Seek Alternate Perspectives to Avoid Continuation Bias. Find alternative ways of looking at everyday tasks. Actively seeking other opinions broadens situational awareness. Rigid thinking often stems from confidence in a single plan, and without external input, it is easy to remain committed to a course of action simply because it was the original one. Actively requesting feedback, particularly in environments that foster psychological safety, is one practical way to interrupt this pattern.

• Manage Cognitive Load. When there are too many competing demands to focus on, the capacity to shift perspectives and respond adaptively narrows. Consciously managing overload and task saturation supports flexible thinking.

• Keep a Challenge Log. Like athletes, trying to maintain a notebook or log recording previous challenges and the solutions deployed, along with alternate strategies to consider next time. This helps re-appraising and re-framing challenges.

• Leave Mistakes & Errors Behind. Studies found that individuals prone to rumination showed higher switching costs and decreased ability to process negative emotional information. Practicing letting go of unresolved situations frees up the cognitive resources needed to respond flexibly to what is in front of you. Present-moment awareness practices, such as briefly naming what you are or acknowledging physical symptoms such as clenched shoulders, fast heartbeat, or emotions like anger, help return focus to the present situation.

In volatile and uncertain times, flexible thinking is a strategic skill to develop.

However, cognitive flexibility is not about being overly flexible or bending in every situation. On the contrary, it is much more important to know what must stay and what can bend. Flexing too easily risks losing credibility, while those who never flex become rigid and disconnected from changing realities. The key lies in maintaining balance without altering the main goal.

References:

Dajani, D. R., & Uddin, L. Q. (2015). Demystifying cognitive flexibility: Implications for clinical and developmental neuroscience. Trends in Neurosciences, 38(9), 571–578. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2015.07.003

Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750

Genet, J. J., & Siemer, M. (2011). Flexible control in processing affective and non-affective material predicts individual differences in trait resilience. Cognition & Emotion, 25(2), 380–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2010.491647

Gholami, R., Abdoshahi, M., & Naeemikia, M. (2022). The role of cognitive flexibility, metacognition and positive emotion, and cognitive emotion regulation in psychological burnout in skilled girl athletes. Journal of Exercise and Health Science, 2, 75–90.

Koch, P., & Krenn, B. (2021). Executive functions in elite athletes – Comparing open-skill and closed-skill sports and considering the role of athletes' past involvement in both sport categories. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 55, Article 101925. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2021.101925

Mohan, A., Simonovic, B., Vione, K. C., & Stupple, E. (2025). Examining flight time, cognitive reflection, workload, stress and metacognition on decision making performance for pilots during flight simulation. Ergonomics, 68(8), 1335–1347. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2024.2404642

Stasch, S.-M., & Mack, W. (2023). Why the stability-flexibility-dilemma should be taken into consideration when studying pilots' multitasking behaviour. In Proceedings of the AHFE International Conference. https://doi.org/10.54941/ahfe1003846

Yu, D., & Pei, N. (2026). Exploring the interplay of cognitive flexibility, self-regulation, and perceived control in enhancing psychological recovery among competitive athletes. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, Article 1789097. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1789097