Treat Your Career Like Elite Athlete Training, Says AT&T Executive

Joe Drygas, Vice President of AT&T’s Global Enterprise Business, believes career growth mirrors athletic development. Having spent 25 years at the company working his way up from inside sales, Drygas told Entrepreneur that the best employees treat their careers the way elite athletes treat training. He compares this to how a quarterback’s role evolves over a career, noting that every new role requires a new version of yourself.

Scheduling Personal Time Boosts Leadership Clarity

Drygas credits a simple daily habit with improving his leadership: deliberately scheduling personal commitments like workouts, meals, and sleep. He explained that removing uncertainty around these routines reduces cognitive overload, giving leaders a clearer sense of structure throughout the day, especially while traveling for work.

Driving AI Adoption Requires Visible Leadership

On the challenge of encouraging experienced teams to embrace AI tools, Drygas said transformation can’t happen through internal memos alone. Instead, leaders must demonstrate new technologies in real time. He runs skip-level sessions with managers, walking them through tools directly and showing how he uses them to run daily operations, so employees can see leadership actively adopting the change rather than just endorsing it from a distance.

Drygas also emphasized AI’s potential to close healthcare gaps by expanding remote patient care and lowering costs, suggesting the same principles could help other businesses scale services globally.

On customer relationships, he said building meeting agendas around client pain points—rather than internal priorities—signals that a company is genuinely listening, even when every issue can’t be resolved immediately.