The Secrets of Great Performance
I recently had the pleasure of hearing two slightly different takes on this from two very different people at a great evening at Bowles "inspirational learning" centre near Tunbridge Wells. The first was Graham Williams, Director at The Human Dimension and the second was Geoffrey Durham, magician and entertainer (some of you may remember him as the Great Soprendo in the 1980’s). Graham Williams told us about how top athletes combine focus, commitment, resilience and social connectedness to perform and how “corporate” athletes combine these elements too for success in career and business. For Geoffrey Durham it is all about exceeding expectations……and in his line of work “if I fail to do so once, I’m fired”. In one instance Geoffrey “died” on national television when a trick went spectacularly wrong and the very next day his agent received 70 phone calls. Every one was a cancellation – Geoffrey’s next 6 months work was cancelled overnight as a result of one mistake! As a result Geoffrey has learned to love his mistakes – he analyses them, he understands them, he “gives them a hug” but most importantly he learns from them.
Learning is an important element for the corporate athlete and Graham Williams drew the distinction between explicit knowledge – theories, models etc and tacit knowledge – the stuff we learn through experience, modelling, visualising and, as in Geoffrey Durham’s example above, by accident. If you think of a child learning to walk, they don’t read a book or attend a seminar – one day they get it into their head to stand-up and when they fall down they learn something. You might think they’d be discouraged but instead they try again and again until they have learned how to put it all together and suddenly they are walking (and then, as a parent, your life changes forever…again)
In order for us to do things, certainly significant or challenging things, we need a reason – in the child’s case there is a deep historical survival instinct that motivates them to walk and this makes them very “committed” to learning how to walk. Part of the motivation is the desire for “social connection” – if I walk I can get to my mum and be fed and cuddled, she can no longer ignore me and then I learn that I also get praise, I get love – I’m in heaven!
Are children resilient as they learn to walk? Maybe not at the outset but they learn to be resilient as they deal with the frustration of falling down again and again. Are they focused? You bet. But here again they intuitively (or accidentally) learn one of the secrets of performance that of where to put their focus. When a baby first tries to stand they are focused on the goal of getting to mum on the other side of the room. After they’ve fallen down a few times they learn to focus on more immediate needs like balancing and in this way they focus not on the outcome but the steps required to get the outcome they want.
When a track athlete is preparing for a race their focus is not on winning but on the next step in their routine – they are immersed in the process and running the race is just one step in a process that doesn’t even end with how they finish but continues with what they do after the race. Their goal is to win but that is not their focus. Similarly in order to perform the corporate athlete needs to learn how to shift their focus from broad to narrow – a broad focus to see and set the goal, a narrow focus on the steps to take them to their goal. This is what Loehr and Schwartz call "appropriate focus" in their exceptional book on developing the corporate athlete: "On Form".
In Exceptional Performers!TM terms focus, commitment, resilience and social connectedness are reflected in the mental, spiritual and emotional dimensions of our being. We also include the physical dimension as this is the engine room of our performance and the way in which we use (and abuse) our physical being inevitably influences our mental, emotional and spiritual performance. The learning dimension comes from the habits and behaviours we develop – the steps we take toward our goals. Exceptional Performers!TM programmes help people to integrate and apply their “explicit knowledge” with their “tacit knowledge” in the form of high performance habits and behaviours and to focus on the steps required to achieve their goals so that they “exceed expectations” every time.
Please contact us to find out more about how Exceptional Performers!TM can help you or your people by emailing us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or calling 01273 564105 for a free initial consultation.
See Geoffrey Durham perform his amazing Newspaper Trick (as was featured in The Fifty Greatest Magic Tricks of All Time (Channel 4 UK)) or click on The Human Dimension to learn more about their impressive work.
You can find out more about Bowles here.
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 24 October 2007 )