How Delta uses Tom Brady to train 100,000 employees in a winning mindset

Business leaders look for inspiration everywhere, from observing the success of their peers to turning to industry veterans for insights. But Delta CEO Ed Bastian decided to build a close relationship with seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady to shape the airline giant’s leadership — and Brady’s wisdom is reshaping the company’s playbook.

“He’s a great leader,” Bastian recently told Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell on the Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast. “He has a brilliant mind. He has a way of continuing to push the limits.”

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The leader of the $42.2 billion business doesn’t want his operating philosophy to exist in an echo chamber. Bastian explained that after a few years at the top, companies stop realizing how difficult it is to maintain success. Many can fall into the trap of repeating the same formula over and over in hopes of sustaining that momentum — but Delta’s CEO says that’s the wrong approach. What really drives success is constantly evolving.

“What took you to the top is to keep reinventing yourself, keep thinking differently, be bold, challenge all the strategies that made you great to sustain even greater performance,” continued Bastian. “And I don’t know anyone, at least in the world of sports, for so long on a global stage, who has done it better than Tom.”

The American football star and ex-husband of Gisele Bündchen is bringing his own leadership style to the company’s more than 100,000 employees with his “Tom Brady playbook.” Younger employees ask questions about how to succeed, advance, and deal with challenges; he also participates in a series of videos that Delta workers watch as part of the company’s learning and development experience.

Employees hear directly from Brady about lessons from his own career — and Bastian says he turns to the legendary quarterback “very often” in this transformation.

“Instead of just listening to me all the time, bringing different voices into our rooms, our leadership meetings and our 100,000 employees, to share what excellence means — not just achieving it, but sustaining it — Tom is a huge advocate of that,” said the CEO.

Brady’s career in the corporate world after retiring from football

Brady first partnered with Delta Air Lines in 2023, when the champion athlete — whose mother was, fittingly, a flight attendant — signed on as a strategic consultant for the Fortune 500 company. Bastian said his team needed continual inspiration to keep climbing the industry rankings, and the five-time Super Bowl MVP was the perfect choice.

“He will talk to our people about excellence, resilience, high-level performance and results,” Bastian told CNBC in 2023, shortly after announcing the partnership. “He’s played with the best teams in the world. I think we run the best airline team in the world, and by bringing our two brands together, something special is going to happen.”

Earlier that year, Brady had retired after an iconic 23-season run in the NFL; however, he was not yet ready to end his career. Since 2023, he has also been establishing himself in the business world; He became a partner in companies such as NoBull and CardVault, in addition to participating in events at large companies, including Cisco and Cloudera. At Delta, he says he’s helping to inspire people and develop a great team of employees.

“In this new chapter of my life, continuing to do things like this really fuels my personal growth in so many ways,” Brady told CNBC alongside Bastian in 2023. “I’m excited to share many of the lessons I’ve learned.”

The American football icon says successful teamwork “always starts at the top”; Leaders must inspire others to maximize their opportunities and potential. And even after decades of performing at the highest level, Brady says he is not immune to criticism. In fact, he encourages them; says that settling for his reputation would be “the worst thing to do.” Throughout his football career and now as a strategic consultant, he continues to value being mentored to sustain his continued success.

“I was always one of the teammates,” Brady told Bastian on a 2024 episode of the Delta Gaining Altitude podcast. “Some of these guys were totally new, but I wanted them to treat me like it was my first day on the job too.”

Even in the early years of his football career, success did not come immediately, and Brady learned a lot from failure.

He started as a backup quarterback, on the bench, for his California high school team that didn’t win a single game. Although he played as a starter at the University of Michigan, he was selected only in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft, 199th overall.

Still, he persisted and became one of the greatest athletes of all time. Maintaining resilience in the face of failure is essential for success in any profession, from sports to business.

“The reality of your company and your career is overcoming adversity,” Brady told Shontell at the Fortune Global Forum in 2024. “The only way to do that is to fail, and the only way to fail is to put yourself in uncomfortable situations.”

“If you fail and then find a solution, together with the people you work with, to overcome that failure, you gain a lot of self-confidence — and by gaining self-confidence, you will have a better chance at the next opportunity to succeed.”