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.

Performance Fundamentalists

A busy week for us at K2, hence the lack of missives. Back to it though.

We were thinking about the fundamental things that underpin performance this week and as any good student will tell you (!), the first thing to do when thinking about something is to look it up in the dictionary and provide the definition verbatim! So, here you are:

fundamental
• adjective of or serving as a foundation or core; of central importance.
• noun a central or primary rule or principle.

Having thought about that it seemed to us that a lot of the time, when it comes to performance, people forget about fundamentals, or they don't keep remembering them! They presume because they've built the foundation or core once, that they don't have to worry about the obvious things any more. It sometimes seems trivial to go back to work on things that have been put in place long ago, when there's much more sophisticated things to be thinking about and getting better at.

From our work within elite sport, we see that there's an explicit and continual balancing of maintaining and improving fundamentals along with developing high end abilities. There is a constant paranoia that the fundamental skills or tactics could be better, upon which the performance is founded. Is your performance foundation getting ever stronger because you're constantly improving the fundamentals, or is your performance structure getting ever higher with new abilities, but the foundation is being neglected in search of new heights? Any other thoughts on performance fundamentalism? (Check out what we've written about simplicity in our thoughts too)

Footballer Wisdom...

Two words I thought I'd never write next to each other... an oxymoron if ever there was one!

However, take a look at this from Robbie Keane, the Liverpool benchwarmer.

"I'm not being big-headed but I've scored a lot of goals in the last 10 years and it's not just going to go away like that," he told BBC Radio 5 Live."

"I never get down about things. Some players get their head down and cry but I'm too mentally strong for that."

"I've only been here a few months and sometimes it does take a little time to settle in. I prefer to be judged a little further down the line than now."

In keeping with the previous post... he knows his talents aren't just going to go away like that. We're backing him to carry on being a great player. Robust confidence in action folks. How do you compare to Robbie?

Track Records and Perspective

A quick thought for you...

Step 1. Look back over your career and identify your top 10 career highlights (or 5 if you're pushed for time!)

Step 2. You're a common denominator in all of those highlight performances. Which of your personal qualities shine through as instrumental to success in each of those occasions? Are there one or two qualities that are ever presents in all of the successes? Are there any qualities in there that you've taken for granted or forgotten about?

Step 3. Looking back over the last month, how and where have you deliberately exploited those qualities that are obviously so important to your success? How effectively have you been playing to the strengths that you have?

Step 4. Whilst taking some time off over Christmas, when your thoughts turn to work, why not spend some time planning how you're going to kick-off your performances in 2009 completely led by your qualities from step 2. How are you going to bring those qualities to life, one day at a time as you face the early challenges of a new year?

Planning how you're going to perform to your strengths will bring you an extra few essential bits of control and confidence over your performance when you need it most and will help to start the year in style. This helps with controlling the situation and not letting the situation you're in control you.

Opportunity in chaos...

Someone mentioned today that there is opportunity in chaos...

Seems like a sensible assertion. And there is opportunity for sure, providing your know what abilities you have to exploit that opportunity. It's been said that "chance favours the prepared mind" and these two ideas sit nicely together. Opportunity and the prepared mind.

How prepared is your individual, team or corporate mind? Are you self-aware enough to be ready to exploit the opportunity in the chaos? If you don't know yourselves, you'll just know there's an opportunity present. If you do know yourselves, then the opportunity can be exploited to the full.

While the chaos is going on around you, why not take some time out to ensure you're 100% clear on how and why you're going to be able to exploit the opportunity that is inherent?

Not sure what we mean? Then post a comment and let's start talking about how to achieve this... it might mean you succeed and take the opportunities, where others simply sit and observe, knowing another opportunity has just passed them by!

Talents...

When we're in circumstances that look and feel totally foreign, we can often conclude that we don't have appropriate skills to deal with what we're facing. That conclusion comes from focusing on the situation as unique, unexpected, threatening and basically unwanted!

However, if you're aware of all of your talents that have led you to be successful (both contemporarily and historically), then you can start asking yourself some useful questions in relation to what your recipe for success has been, such as:

• What talents do I have that consistently help me deliver success? Which bits of me always play a part in the successes I have? (because no doubt I should be leading with these strenghts now)
• What successes have I achieved in the past, in different roles or circumstances, that used some talents that I've stopped using more recently? (can you bring these "forgotten" talents to life to help now?)
• Rather than just thinking about your "technical" talents in your job, which bits of your personality are going to be particularly helpful right now when dealing with novel challenges?

If you focus on your talent pool and identify/target your talents appropriately, you'll find your confidence levels are likely to be higher.

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!

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!

Valuing the difference you make to People?

I love the piece on Mental Toughness but mostly the thought about choosing to see your confidence as valuing the difference you can make to people. I have never chosen to think about my confidence in this way, I think I've always chosen to shy away from the view of being seen as confident and resilient and preferring to just think of having a 'Positive' 'Can do' attitude. But it is so much more than that when I reflect on when I feel most motivated and performing at my best it's when I am adding value for my team. It's when I know my performance has made a real difference for a particular individual or team. Recognising and appreciating your own attributes in this way, I think I've always worried could be seen by some as over confidence or even arrogance. Now I just think I've been letting myself and others down by not choosing to see my value in this way. I may have been adding value quite unconsciously but now how much better am I going to be!

Mental Toughness...

In some research we were involved in a few years ago, we found a couple of interesting things out about people who were voted as very mentally tough by folks who understood their world.

First thing was that mentally tough people had confidence that didn't break down easily - it wasn't necessarily very, very high confidence, but was more characterised as robust. Any thoughts about how robust your confidence is (confidence in your own abilities!)?

The other interesting thing about the mentally tough folks was that they always thought the team would perform better if they were around, because they knew what qualities they bought to any team they were on. If they weren't there, these obvious qualities would be missing, so the team wouldn't have their undoubted strengths to draw upon. So, why is your team better off because you're part of it and are you maximising the benefits of you being around right now?

If you're going to be mentally tough, you have to invest some time working out how to make your confidence robust and how to ensure you're valuing the difference you make to people. There's more to it than that, but those were two highlight points that seem pertinent right now!

Some more on goals...

We like copying the great coaches from sport who we've worked with and we've noticed they talk a lot about the same things, because they're the fundamentals, until people get it! So, even though we put some stuff up about this last week, it's still important and it's probably useful to keep focusing on goals for a while yet!

We know from working at the Olympics that if you're totally obsessed with the gold medal then when it comes to actually delivering a performance, you'll be thinking about the wrong thing completely. We also know that you have to be totally obsessed with winning the gold medal in order to have a chance of winning! As with comedy, the timing is everything. Focus on the wrong kind of goal at the wrong time and you'll underperform - maybe not by much, but enough to make a critical difference when it matters most.

That's why sports people understand and exploit the complementary difference between process goals and outcome goals in a consistently effective way. If the Outcome goal is the gold medal, little point constantly saying to yourself throughout a race "I've got to get the gold" - that's not going to help. Such outcome focused thinking just gets in the way of the thing that matters most, right now.

Athletes make sure that they have identified, 100% clearly, the gold medal Process targets, the inputs, that they'll need to deliver one moment at a time through a performance. Complete commitment to delivering each one of the inputs, as effectively as possible, creates a much more effective focus for delivering great performances. So, when the pressure's on, they can focus every ounce of desire to achieve the outcome into the controllable, step by step process.

Your goals are probably pretty clear right now, from an outcome point of view. Is there the same clarity and level of discussion about your process goals? Is there the same obsessive drive to deliver on the inputs? If obsession on outputs is not matched by tenacity of focus on the trusted inputs, then you're not setting yourself up to deliver in these challenging times. Worth going back and reading the other stuff we posted on goals!