Winning....

We're doing a lot of work with sales teams right now as they seek to thrive rather than just survive - and as you'd expect with sales teams, the concept of winning is coming up a lot. I think a lot about what winning means and when it's tough out there, when the attention is all on you, when the pressure is cranked up and when your competitors are just as hungry, the meaning of winning is put sharply into focus.

does winning mean beating your opponent - at one level I guess it does but so what? It's not as simplistic as that - referencing your sense of winning to the performance of others puts them in control, not you. Perhaps the real competition lies inside. Perhaps that's the real target, not the one with numbers on and upon which sales teams are often fixated.

If the real target was inside - was us, was about getting better at your job every day, about finding what we're capable of achieving, about discovering how great we can be at dealing with challenging conditions, then we're in control, the performance belongs to us and the journey never ends.

Focusing on the inside gives our opponents a different role too - we want them to be good so they can push us to new heights - we honour them and are grateful for their part in our journey. and how do we focus when the pressure's on, the expectations are high and the fear of failure strong? In the words of Cathy Freeman on that iconic Monday at the Sydney games, just "do what you know." Simple.

Critical Day Focus...

So, just before the Olympics, we were chatting with some of the athletes about the opportunities still left to mentally sharpen up and get the most out of the remaining preparation days. We challenged them to answer the following:

"If out of all of the days you've had to prepare for Beijing, you knew that tomorrow was the critical day to get right in determining your success in China, what difference would that make to how you approached tomorrow?"

If there was a difference that would occur, then it was clear that the absolutely focused, winning mindset was not 100% present every day. How low below that critical day focus could they afford to drop and still feel like they were optimising preparation? How could they maintain that clarity of focus going forward, without pushing too far and making everything seem critically important and thus crank the pressure up too much? How could they learn from what they'd do differently to help extract some extra benefit from the count up to the actual critical day of their final?

The question really focused them in to help make some important choices and stay in control of preparation - choosing to make it the best that it could be and using pressure positively.

So, does a critical day focus do anything for how you might do things differently?

Getting your tactics in Synch

We've just finished the 2 day kick off to the athlete at work^® programme and really enjoyed some interesting conversations around performance in these testing times. One of the most interesting discussions was around the perceived pressure to get more done in less time. Wouldn't we all like that? So, when we talked about being mindful about what tasks people are choosing to do, at what times of day, it seemed to really strike a resonant chord. The group reached the conclusion that they would get more done in less time if they worked more in line with their their natural energy rhythms throughout the day. If this sounds deceptively simple, then that pleases us immensely... it suggests it might just work!

So, stop for a moment and think about which points of the day coincide with your most effective work? When does work feel easiest? Is it in the morning? Late afternoon? Evening?

Now have a think about those times in the day when work seems a little harder. When do you find it tougher to concentrate? When do those meetings just seem to drag? Are there times when you have a slump in energy? For many people, early afternoon is a time of reduced effectiveness - but not everyone, so have a think.

What are you choosing to do with these different times? If you're someone who is most productive first thing in the morning, then how can you make the most use of this time each day? And if you're more of an evening person, what work are you saving up for your best working time? This is when your most challenging and important tasks are likely to get done most effectively and efficiently. So be selective about what you do and when you do it!

Which activities are best left for the naturally less productive times? Perhaps the less taxing elements of your work, or something that you find really energising to do, or you could even choose to meet with someone who you find interesting to work with and who doesn't drain your energy levels (they might even top them up!). In your less productive times it's probably best to avoid the business critical tasks (I know they're all business critical, but some of those emails are less important than others!). You're less likely to do key activities with the quality and focus that they require when everything is feeling like a grind. The key tasks are likely to take longer and you're more likely to make errors.

So, don't just use up your time every day - focus on using your time mindfully. Time is a precious thing and it's even more important to use it optimally in such interesting and challenging times.

Do what I know...

It was interesting watching a clip of Cathy Freeman yesterday reflecting on her gold medal success at the Sydney Olympics, in front of 112,000 people, carrying the hopes of a nation and performing under a huge weight of expectation.

In the midst of all of that hype, excitement, pressure, hope and expectation, as she warmed up, Cathy Freeman simply kept repeating to herself, "Do what I know, Do what I know". Nothing more complicated than that. Some incredibly powerful, simple, self-instruction. Under all that scrutiny, what did she know she could do? She knew she could do what she knew she could. She knew her abilities in detail and simply had to trust that they would be there when she needed them most (no reason to believe they'd suddenly disappear!). No self-instruction like "win gold" or "don't screw up" - simply, "do what I know", which is all about the process. Get the process right and you maximise the chances of getting the outcome you know you're capable of.

So, do you know yourself well enough to trust what you'd get when you do what you know? Have you spent enough time thinking about your process, so that you can trust it under the most intense pressure (as well as when you're having an easier time)?

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, so someone once said, but to be as simple as that, you have to have studied yourself and accepted your abilities in some detail. Go on, be in a position where you can do what you know, and enjoy doing it.

Stating the obvious...

Do you know that people perform better when they are clearly focused on playing to their strengths, rather than focusing on how not to have their weaknesses exposed? Pretty obvious really, but there's a big assumption that everyone has their finger on the pulse of their strengths. In our experience, that's not the case

We also know that under pressure people's dominant thinking and behaviour patterns come out... so, if you've spent most of your time focused on what you need to be better at, under pressure, you're dominant thoughts of what you're not good enough at will predominate.

Times are tough, the pressure is on, so make sure that you are absolutely clear on what your strengths are so that you can play to them and drain them dry.

Bleedin' obvious, but not an approach everyone is set up to exploit!

Active Recovery...

One thing that we know from working with the highest level athletes is that they value and actively exploit recovery in order to perform better. This contrasts with the views that we hear in the corporate world, where is appears there is a perception sometimes that sleep and downtime are an inconvenience to getting a job done, rather than an essential influence on a person's ability to sustain excellence and constantly improve.

So, given we're in challenging times, it's worth thinking about how effectively you're utilising rest and recovery to deal with what is essentially a more draining and energy sapping time. Ask yourself whether you're managing to feel refreshed as a result of your sleep. Check whether you're getting any opportunities within the course of a challenging day to get a worthwhile time-out so that you can have a mini re-charge, so you can give a concerted effort again. Check whether you're assuming that you can keep giving your optimum performance without paying attention to the need to rest your brain and body. Are you using rest, recovery and time-out for a competitive advantage? If you work out the ideal recovery strategy for you and put that alongside the optimal performance delivery strategy, then you're going to be winning more consistently.

Don't let the situation you're in control you to make poor performance choices. You control the situation - the situation does not control you.

Attitudes are contagioius...

... are yours worth catching? (Great line that we've seen attributed to Aussie cricket great, Steve Waugh, but I'm sure it came from somewhere else first!).

Actually, do you even know your attitudes? If you're not fully aware of those attitudes, then you're probably not realising how you're infecting people around you! When the conditions around you are really tough, it's absolutely essential that you know how you're attitudes are impacting upon the people you interact with. Mindful use of attitudes is another one of those factors that won't guarantee success, but it's an area that you can control and to be honest, if you don't, you're missing an opportunity to make sure that you've done everything within your power to win through.

So, what kind of attitudes are helpful at the moment in your world? In leadership positions? In team player positions? Which kinds of attitudes create noise that you need to limit the impact of? Who are the great attitude leaders in your environment that you need to make sure get listened to and that you know you need to be around in order to benefit from their mindset?

Ask yourself if you can have then world's best attitude for dealing with current challenges, just for one day. If you can, see how well you can implement that mindset for one day, and then set yourself the same challenge tomorrow!

Negatively stressed? What's your chosen response?

"It's subtle this performance coaching stuff, but it works. This time last year if circumstances had been the same I'd have been sh*!ing myself and unhealthily pessimistic. This year I'm still pessimistic, but understand that this pessimism is actually useful. If I use it appropriately, it helps me to perform better. Also, last year, I'd have eaten crap, drank too much and responded negatively to the stress. Now I think... 'I feel stressed, better go to the gym'."

Roughly these words were said to me by one of our clients last week who has been coached around performing in challenging circumstances. He understands how to perform a lot better now and this new self awareness has enabled him to choose how to respond to the feelings he is experiencing in these testing times, and therefore use them to stay in control and fully confident of his own performance.

Is anyone else feeling the strain? How are you currently responding? How would you like to respond? Are the answers to these last two questions the same?

Keeping your head...

...while all others around you are doing a good impression of something without a head, requires a lot of mental toughness.

Like anything that's difficult, the more you prepare for the challenge, the more of a fighting chance of success you have when the key moments actually arrive. So, given that the playing field has changed somewhat at the moment, the need for top quality preparation becomes ever more important. We've learned a lot from helping people prepare for key sporting moments... and we think what we've learned translates pretty well.

We could write a lot on mental toughness and mental preparation, but that's probably for another day. So, instead of that, have a look at our thoughts on how to use 3 cornerstones of performance (control, confidence and connectedness) to help you have the best chance of delivering a great performance, even when the world around you is making it very tough to do so. It works for people at the Olympic Games... so can it work for you?

Once you've read it, tell us what you think! Go on, we'd love to know that you think.

Paralysed by goals...

Under pressure, we know that people's focus tends to narrow down onto just a few things and very often, this actually means missing out on some really important information that's in the world around you. We think we've noticed quite a lot of attentional narrowing onto those wonderful things called "goals" and it hasn't all been positive! Missing key details can happen when there's no pressure around, thanks to the phenomenon known as inattentional blindness, but under pressure, attentional problems are further exaggerated.

As the economic pressure cranks up, so too does the obsession with delivering numbers and the reliance on those numbers to show no signs impending doom. In our elite sport work, we've seen much more pragmatic approaches to exploiting goals, which we'd like to pass on. We also remember from our days back at university that the science of goals can give a much more balanced view of how to use goals for a positive impact, so we thought we'd right some stuff about that, which we've hopefully made available for you here (go on, click it, it's quite good!).

So, let's broaden the view of goals and what they should be doing for you and have a conversation about making sure goals are adding value in these pressure times, rather than simply helping to reinforce the rampant perception that "we're all doomed, doomed I tell you!".

Read away and share your comments. We can't wait to chat about this!