Culture Intelligence for Sports Organizations
LAI Sports Culture Index™
See it. Build it.Measure it.
Understand the culture people actually experience, act on what matters most, and measure whether it improves.
Culture determines how a sports organization performs under pressure, protects its people, develops leaders, and sustains success over time.
The LAI Sports Culture Index™ is a research-informed system built to give leaders clear visibility, focused priorities, practical tools, and measurable follow-through.
Founding Pilot Cohort
Now inviting 3 to 5 sports organizations to help pilot the LAI Sports Culture Index™.
Built for federations, leagues, athletic departments, officials' associations, youth sports organizations, clubs, sports nonprofits, and organizations shaping the future of sport.
The Leadership Challenge
The higher you lead, the harder it is to see everything.
As a sports organization grows across teams, departments, competitions, regions, and countries, leadership naturally becomes farther removed from the daily experience of the people inside it.
Information may arrive late, become filtered as it moves upward, or never reach the leaders responsible for acting on it. That does not automatically mean leadership is failing. It means complex organizations require better instruments for seeing the culture beneath the surface.
The Sports Culture Index™ helps leaders know:
- 01What is working
- 02What may not be reaching leadership
- 03Where stakeholder experiences differ
- 04Where pressure is changing behavior
- 05What deserves executive attention first
- 06What to do next
- 07Whether the culture is improving
Founding Pilot Opportunity
Help build a clearer picture of culture in sport.
Legacy Athletes International is inviting a limited number of sports organizations to participate in the founding pilot cohort of the LAI Sports Culture Index™.
Pilot organizations will help test and refine how the system gathers confidential perspectives, identifies differences in stakeholder experience, gives leaders focused visibility, and turns findings into practical next steps.
This is not about publicly grading an organization. It is about helping leadership see what is working, understand where experiences may differ, and identify the cultural conditions that deserve attention.
A Strong Pilot Partner
- Has multiple stakeholder groups, such as leaders, coaches, athletes, officials, staff, volunteers, or board members
- Wants an honest picture of how culture is experienced
- Is willing to invite confidential participation
- Has leadership prepared to listen without becoming defensive
- Wants practical next steps, not another generic survey
- Can identify an executive sponsor or internal point person
- Is willing to provide feedback that helps refine the system
What the Pilot Includes
- 01Confidential multi-stakeholder assessment
- 02Ten-dimension culture scorecard
- 03Stakeholder perception-gap analysis
- 04Executive Culture Report
- 05Strengths leadership should protect
- 06Cultural conditions that may require deeper attention
- 07Facilitated executive debrief
- 08Three focused leadership priorities
- 09Customized 90-day Culture Plan
- 10Follow-up measurement strategy
- 11Opportunity to help refine the founding methodology
Pilot findings reflect participant perceptions and organizational context. They are intended to support leadership inquiry and improvement, not to serve as legal, medical, psychological, safeguarding, compliance, or investigative conclusions.
What Happens Next
A confidential process built around your organization.
01
Exploratory Conversation
We learn about your organization, stakeholder groups, current priorities, and the culture questions leadership wants to understand.
02
Pilot Design
LAI defines the appropriate participant groups, assessment structure, confidentiality protections, communication plan, and pilot scope.
03
Listen and Interpret
Stakeholder perspectives are gathered and analyzed to identify strengths, perception gaps, leadership visibility, and conditions worth examining.
04
Turn Insight Into Action
Leadership receives an executive brief, facilitated conversation, focused priorities, a 90-day action plan, and a follow-up measurement strategy.
The LAI Culture Improvement System
See it. Build it. Measure it.
The Sports Culture Index™ is the intelligence engine inside a larger culture-improvement process. It helps leaders move from assumptions to visibility, from findings to action, and from activity to measurable progress.
Understand the culture people actually experience.
Gather confidential perspectives from leaders, athletes, coaches, officials, staff, and other stakeholders to reveal how culture is experienced across the organization.
Strengths to Protect
What is already working and should not be lost.
Perception Gaps
Where leadership and stakeholder experiences meaningfully diverge.
Leadership Blind Spots
What may not naturally reach the executive level.
Pressure Points
Where performance, status, money, reputation, or power may be changing behavior.
Turn culture intelligence into focused action.
Leaders do not need another long report filled with generic advice. LAI turns the findings into a focused improvement plan built around the organization's actual data.
Three Executive Priorities
The areas where leadership attention can have the greatest impact.
Culture Commitments™
Clear behaviors and conditions the organization commits to strengthening.
90-Day Culture Plan
Specific actions, owners, timelines, and measures.
Leadership Tools
Discussion guides, listening frameworks, decision tools, and practical interventions.
Culture Huddles™
Short team conversations that help culture development reach beyond the executive room.
Know whether the culture is actually changing.
Culture improvement should not end with a presentation, workshop, or PDF. Targeted follow-up measurement helps leaders see what improved, what has not moved, and where continued attention is needed.
Baseline
Establish the starting point.
Action
Implement focused culture priorities.
Targeted Pulse
Re-measure the conditions being strengthened.
Compare
Examine movement in scores, stakeholder gaps, and leadership visibility.
Improve
Refine the next set of actions.
Listen → See → Build → Measure → Improve
Multi-Stakeholder Intelligence
Leadership may see 91. Athletes may see 62.
That difference matters.
The full Sports Culture Index™ is designed to compare anonymous perspectives across leadership, athletes, coaches, officials, staff, and other stakeholders. The result is not simply a culture score. It is a clearer picture of where organizational experiences align and where they diverge.
Leadership Trust
Illustrative Sample DataExecutive Leadership
91
Staff
73
Coaches
69
Athletes
62
Officials
58
Perception Gap
33 points
Illustrative sample data only.
What the Index Examines
10 conditions that shape culture from the inside.
The Index examines the interconnected conditions affecting trust, performance, communication, wellbeing, accountability, protection, and leadership visibility throughout a sports organization.
01
Leadership Credibility & Trust
Can leaders be believed, approached, and constructively challenged?
02
Purpose & Values in Practice
Do stated values meaningfully influence decisions, incentives, recognition, and behavior?
03
Voice, Truth & Psychological Safety
Can difficult information travel upward without fear, filtering, humiliation, or retaliation?
04
Power, Fairness & Accountability
Do status, authority, or competitive value change standards, consequences, or opportunity?
05
Human Experience & Wellbeing
Are people developed, supported, and valued beyond their immediate performance or usefulness?
06
Communication & Organizational Alignment
Does accurate information move clearly across levels, departments, teams, and regions?
07
Pressure, Performance & Ethical Decision-Making
What happens when winning, money, reputation, politics, or power collide with organizational principles?
08
Safeguarding & Duty of Care
Are protection systems understood, trusted, accessible, and reflected in everyday practice?
09
Learning, Development & Adaptability
Does the organization learn from mistakes, develop its people, and convert feedback into change?
10
Organizational Awareness & Leadership Visibility
Does leadership accurately understand the culture people throughout the organization experience?
Additional sport-specific modules may examine athlete experience, coaching culture, officiating culture, collegiate athletics, youth sport, governance, medical and performance support, community impact, and organizational stewardship.
Cross-Dimensional Patterns
See where culture stops aligning.
The Index is designed to identify cross-dimensional patterns that ordinary culture averages can miss.
Culture Gap Indicators™
Developing Analytical ConceptsExecutive Reality Gap
Does leadership experience the organization differently from athletes and frontline stakeholders?
Silence Risk
Is important information failing to reach decision-makers?
Values-to-Behavior Gap
Are stated values reflected in what leaders reward, tolerate, and protect?
Policy-to-Practice Gap
Are formal systems stronger than people's confidence in using them?
Star Exception Risk
Do status or competitive value change how standards are enforced?
People-Performance Tension
Are performance demands being achieved at the expense of voice, trust, wellbeing, or long-term development?
These are developing analytical concepts intended to guide leadership inquiry. They are not validated risk determinations or conclusions about an organization.
From Data to Leadership Direction
An executive brief built for action.
The goal is not to give leaders more information. It is to identify the information that deserves leadership attention most.
LAI Executive Culture Report
Illustrative Sample DataCulture Index™
78 / 100
Dimension Scores
Leadership Credibility & Trust
72
Purpose & Values in Practice
86
Voice, Truth & Psychological Safety
61
Power, Fairness & Accountability
84
Human Experience & Wellbeing
76
Communication & Alignment
64
Pressure & Ethical Decision-Making
70
Safeguarding & Duty of Care
88
Learning & Adaptability
79
Awareness & Leadership Visibility
66
Report Contents
- 01Executive summary
- 02Culture Index™
- 03Culture Alignment™
- 04Leadership Visibility™
- 05Culture Confidence™
- 06Strengths to protect
- 07Priority vulnerabilities
- 08Stakeholder perception gaps
- 09Culture Gap Indicators™
- 10Three executive priorities
- 11Executive discussion guide
- 12Customized 90-day Culture Plan
- 13Follow-up measurement strategy
Illustrative sample data. Not the results of any real organization.
The Full Engagement
What an engagement includes.
01
Confidential multi-stakeholder assessment
02
Ten-dimension culture scorecard
03
Culture Gap Indicators™
04
Leadership and frontline perception-gap analysis
05
Anonymous qualitative themes where appropriate
06
Executive Culture Report
07
Executive discussion guide
08
Customized 90-day action plan
09
Optional reassessment and ongoing measurement
Two Products. Two Purposes.
Start with a signal. Move to visibility.
The free LAI Culture Pulse™ gives one individual leader an initial signal. The Sports Culture Index™ gathers confidential perspectives from multiple stakeholder groups to give an organization visibility, direction, and measurement.
LAI Culture Pulse™
A free individual leadership snapshot
- One leader
- 30 questions
- Six dimensions
- Immediate Leadership Culture Report
- Potential strengths, blind spots, and Culture Signals™
LAI Sports Culture Index™
A multi-stakeholder culture intelligence and improvement system
- Leaders, athletes, coaches, officials, staff, and stakeholders
- Multi-stakeholder organizational assessment
- Ten core culture dimensions
- Stakeholder-specific modules
- Perception-gap analysis
- Executive Visibility Map™
- Culture improvement priorities
- 90-day action plan
- Targeted follow-up measurement
Founding Pilot Inquiry
Let’s start with a confidential conversation.
Tell us a little about your organization and what leadership wants to understand. Submitting this form begins a conversation and does not commit your organization to participating.
Founding Pilot Cohort
You cannot improve a culture you cannot see.
If your organization is ready to listen across leadership, athletes, coaches, officials, staff, and other stakeholders, we would be honored to explore whether the founding pilot is the right next step.
The LAI Culture Pulse™ and Sports Culture Index™ are research-informed tools designed to help sports leaders identify strengths, blind spots, and cultural conditions worth examining. Results reflect participant perceptions and should be considered alongside broader organizational context and professional judgment. They are not legal, medical, psychological, safeguarding, or compliance audits.