What is good performance?
Performance is different to output, for instance a football team could have great performance but still lose the game. Rather, performance is the sum of all inputs.
Performance will be influenced by your beliefs and behaviours, it is controllable by you. For instance, if you are upset, it might be important to stop and check in with your emotions to make sure your behaviour and so actions, your performance, are not influenced.
If you know something about how to improve your performance and you choose to ignore it, you are wilfully under-performing.
You don’t need to be delivering peak performance at all times. You need to know when to step back and when to step up. Think to yourself, what is really required, when is this really needed, am I capable of achieving this. For instance, determine if you are being set realistic deadlines.
What do high performers do?
- Believe their talent is only the starting point e.g. don't get complacent
- Can clearly articulate what they want and need to achieve
- Great at analysing their field of play - both internal and external
- Focus on executing their performance plan that they have practiced to achieve their chosen goals
- i.e. the next week, day, hour, meeting
- Plan and preparation, execution, review
- Put everything out of their mind to focus on the task at hand, like doctors in A&E
How can you create optimal performance?
- Step 1
- Be clear on the demands you are facing, including the task goals and objectives
- Understand the key moments ahead
- Predict the field of play, the conditions, the environment
- Step 2
- Be clear on the performance you will need to deliver
- Set your performance goals
- Step 3
- Create and execute a plan to deliver optimal performance consistently
- Build core readiness to perform, start by focusing on the four performance factors
- Step 4
- Practice, with discipline, matching your performance to the environment & key moments
- Plan, execute & review to hone your ability to flex and adapt your performance
Factors that drive disciplined performance
- Psychological prowess i.e. mental readiness, no procrastination
- Being mentally ready
- Removing distractions
- Managing self-talk
- Building confidence & knowing strengths
- Choosing attitude
- Belief systems
- Irrational & rational
- Limiting & empowering
- Recognise, test & re-frame
- Lifestyle choices
- Sleep
- Hydration
- Exercise
- Diet
- Taking advantage of different energy levels
- Rest & recovery
- Performance strategies & tactics i.e. how do I think about my focus, meeting schedule, transitions, day. How am I mentally ready for the next thing coming up?
- Mastering transitions
- Preparation, planning, execution & review
- Deliberate practice
- Understanding new cultures & ways of working
- Celebrating success
- Interpersonal support
- Use the strengths/capabilities of the people around you to support your work to balance you out and fill in the gaps
- Not whose shoulder you cry on but who is on your support team
- Building trust
- Building relationships
- Reading the room/picking up cues
Questions to ask yourself
- What does it take to be the best version of you?
- What is holding you back right now?
- What does a good day, a productive day, look like for me?
- What does a bad, unproductive day look like for me?
- What would I like to build on?
- What are my biggest strengths?
- Who is on my team?
- What conditions do I give myself to provide the best performance?
- Think what are the next 3 months looking like. Then what can you do about it. Book this in for the 1st weekday of every 3 months
Other top tips
- Make meetings worth your time by going in with a goal.
- Adjust how you work for different groups of people. In one meeting it might be better to take notes and reflect back at the other but with other meetings, it might be better to take control because otherwise there is just discussion no actions.
- Being better at performance means you don’t have to be as good at resilience. If we know how to be the best version of ourselves, whatever the situation or circumstances, resilience or the ability to bounce back becomes inconsequential.
- Stress or pressure is the misalignment of perceived demands and perceived resources.
- Perceived demand should be slightly ahead of perceived resources for you to be challenged or pushed.
- Instead of areas for development, what are your strengths, focus on how to grow them. If you focus on your weaknesses, your strengths can waiver
