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An Athletic Trainers Competitive Advantage

Shelby Daly

How does an athletic trainer create a sustainable competitive advantage that is versatile to any role they come across?


The challenge is accepting that clinical skills alone are not enough to separate athletic trainers from other providers in a competitive environment. Clinical expertise has diminishing returns. At some point an AT reaches a certain level of achieved proficiency & by adding more clinical skills it does not keep producing greater returns. By pairing clinical proficiencies with leadership literacy, there will be a synergistic or emergent outcome that creates a unique competitive advantage that attracts all stakeholders & creates more opportunities.



Leadership can produce an ever-increasing value & consistently achieve new or different outcomes. This provides a sustainable competitive advantage. To truly differentiate ATs, our leadership behaviors need to be public, frequent, & boldly trans-industrial, it must transcend the health care industry & not be only intra- or interprofessional. There is more value to leadership beyond just clinical expertise. It creates effective & efficient productivity that adds real value & produces real change.


This value differentiation creates a competitive advantage to make you stand out due to generating more value. Reputation is perhaps what benefits most when leadership capacity becomes associated with your work. When people believe that their connection with you results in making an impactful difference, that advantage transcends your current network & your results.


Leadership capabilities to help transcend your skills:


*Contextual Intelligence - Ability to apply explicit and tacit knowledge to real world situations & making that knowledge work in multiple contexts

*3D Thinking - Intentional & systematic integration of hindsight, insight & foresight into strategic thinking & decision-making practices

*Communitarianism - Social advocacy & volunteerism for local issues or issues that have a direct and immediate impact on you or local community

*Cognitive Diversity - Diversity that is based first on the differences in thinking processes, assumptions & experiences, regardless of physical characteristics


Leadership is a competitive advantage when added to clinical proficiency because it allows the practitioner to generate outcomes & influence that others can't or won't, it is a commodity for those who know how to leverage it & a liability for many who don't.


Recruiting & retraining quality students & clinicians can be a competitive advantage, and one of the most cost-effective initiatives that an AT can do for their clinic is to intentionally practice leadership.


Kutz, M. Finding a Competitive Advantage. NATA Leadership Column Series. April 2022.


Shelby 8/2024

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