Peak Performance

6^th May 2007

Peak performance is about control. To perform to your maximum capacity requires skill, knowledge, experience and commitment. We all know this, and yet we do not all perform at our best all of the time. In fact many of us under-perform more or less consistently. When we do put in an exceptional performance occasionally, it seems like a fluke; an accident that is not replicable..... until the next fluke occurs.

But there are performers in all fields of work and life who seem to produce peak performance time after time. Clearly they have the skills, knowledge, experience and commitment. But they also have something else as well; the capacity to control their state of mind.

Your state of mind is really about the specific chemistry of your brain and the associated nervous and endocrine systems within your body. Much of what happens within these systems is not under direct, conscious control and some of it is probably completely inaccessible. But there are a number of things we can do to maximise our control within these vital areas of the system.

To begin with, it is useful to know that the synaptic connections between the 100 billion or so brain cells which we each possess, work better under certain biochemical conditions. Being in a state of heightened anxiety and threat sensitivity can be useful when there are genuine threats to our well being, in our immediate environment. But this kind of state can also be inimical to clear, rational thinking and problem solving. In fact, if you are in the thrall of a 'flight or fight' adrenalin rush, your neo cortex (the bit that does the problem solving) is less likely to function at its peak capacity.

You are simply in survival mode.

Peak performance requires a lot more than simple survival. An adrenalin rush timed to perfection can be useful, but sheer aggression motivated by fear, anxiety and desperation tends to lead to clumsiness and disaster.

Remember Paul Gascoigne?

It is not just a surfeit of adrenalin, however, that can cause problems. Another common response pattern, which often keeps us out of trouble, but which is also sometimes a barrier to peak performance is inhibition. Inhibition keeps us out of trouble by causing us to hesitate before committing ourselves to a course of action or words which we might later regret.

The problem is, inhibition can just as easily mean not doing or not saying what actually needs to be done or said. Inhibition can be useful in building good relationships and these are significant in achieving peak performance, but actually, some authentic, well timed, honest words and actions are also essential for meaningful achievement.

So, there are at least two state related challenges to be met when striving to achieve our best, besides the all the obvious ones of acquiring the necessary skills, knowledge and experience in the first place.

The first challenge is learning to control and select your state of mind, at will, consciously and easily, as well as being able to move seamlessly from one state of mind to another and back again with perfect timing and finesse.

The second challenge is, knowing when to trust your unconscious mind; when to allow your unconscious beliefs and attitudes to take over; in other words knowing when to ease up on the inhibitory brakes and turn up the throttle. This requires some conscious (and semi-conscious) reviewing of beliefs and attitudes which we won't be going into here but we will on the Peak Performance workshop on 20 June- see below.

A couple of weeks ago I said something on a workshop that gave me pause for thought. I said that you couldn't be in two states of mind at once. Well that's not necessarily true. In fact, I have often preached the virtue of being able to do precisely this. In retrospect, I think what I was trying to say was that you cannot be in two, contradictory states of mind at the same time. Fairly obviously, you cannot be happy and sad at the same time (although we could go into the Michael Neill idea of being happy about being sad, or being sad about being sad and, contrastingly, being sad about being happy, or being happy about being happy, but we won't because there isn't time and you can read the book).

You can, though, be simultaneously relaxed, focused, alert, motivated and precise all at the same time, for example. In fact this is quite a killer combination.

For the next bit, you can think about your own favourite sport, hobby, job, or other performance activity, but I am going to say a little bit about rugby. I grew up with rugby in various guises. At the age of nine, I was at Stourfield junior school and was one of several boys who played a form of rugby in the playground at school. It was more like British Bulldog, which we also played, but there was a ball, though not generally a rugby ball. This was insane because the playground had the standard tarmac surface, so was not especially gentle on the knees and elbows, and also because the head teacher frequently threatened dire retribution on boys who played rugby in the playground. In addition to these twin threats, which were enough to give any nine-year old an adrenalin rush, I was also younger, and therefore smaller, than many of the other participants.

The added quality which enabled us all to participate, in spite of these significant deterrents, was an uncompromising sense of our own 'heroism' and the shared value of 'bravery'. It was actually completely nuts and it was only years later that I realised just how nuts it was. But there was something else. Rugby is a very positional game and it requires good spatial awareness; being able to map out a variety of possible routes and angles of running; knowing where everyone was (and bear in mind we did not have different coloured kits on to facilitate identification of the opposing team); and also being able to circumvent all the other kids in the playground who were not actually playing rugby (most of them).

Completely nuts.

It did, however, stand me in good stead when I came to play real rugby several years later at secondary school. Now I was never very good at rugby because I lacked ball skills and anyway rugby isn't played with a ball in any geometrically meaningful sense of the word 'ball'. But I did possess some other qualities which I had learnt back at primary school on the tarmac.

First was a bizarre sense of fearlessness. I am not claiming any credit for this. I think I was mad. But the thing was, and this is what really interests me now, that I had an unshakeable set of beliefs.

They were unconscious beliefs at the time, but I think they went something like this: pain was merely an irrelevant side effect of physical contact which could be objectified and ignored rather than experienced subjectively (at least during the course of the game); visible injury was some kind of badge of honour; if you paid attention you could almost always work out what the opposition were going to do next; you could always find more energy; you could beat anyone (except for public schools like Sherborne and Shaftesbury where all they did was play rugby all day, every day, but you could always damage them in other ways, even if they were technically unbeatable at the actual game); apart from sex, there is probably nothing better to do with your time than to engage in the orchestrated and civilised violence that is the game of rugby (I think this may still be a deep seated belief but there are physical limitations these days and in my late teens/early twenties, like many of my contemporaries, I got sidetracked by sex and drugs and rock and roll). I also remember a feeling of sheer exuberance, exhilaration and a sense of omnipotence. I know: it is nuts! I really wasn't very good, but it just felt like omnipotence and I believed I could do anything in spite, no doubt, of considerable evidence to the contrary

Later, at Trent polytechnic, I went on to transfer some of these beliefs and commensurate 'peak performance states' to theatrical performances on the stage. I had to learn, the hard way, that not all states of mind relevant to peak performance in a rugby match apply to peak performance on the stage. I have a painful memory of 'A Day in The Death of Joe Egg' where I had to come on and do the first 10 minutes on my own on stage. The first night I got myself psyched up into a rugby-playing 'state' for want of a better idea.

It turned out to be the wrong 'state'.

I went on ready to annihilate everyone and everything in sight and got the adrenalin rush of my life. I was alert to threats and possibilities, but the focus was all wrong. This was an audience who had come to be impressed; not violently suppressed. My chosen state was not appropriate because, although the character I was playing was quite erratic and excitable, I needed to be relaxed enough to remember my lines and to act erratically and excitably. I learnt very quickly that there is a difference between 'acting' and 'being'! The following night I just relaxed and found I had much more control.

Now I don't know if any of that makes any sense to you, or if you can relate to these beliefs and sensations in some other activity at some stage in your life, but what it has done for me, is remind me of a few really critical components in accessing any 'state of mind'. I am not saying I played every game like this, and certainly not in my latter years when the sex and drugs and rock and roll began to have a detrimental impact on my fitness and commitment. But this is what it was like for me at my best.

I have listed these peak performance components, based on my reminiscences above, in the table below. For this week's exercise, please sketch in your own relevant example of a similar 'peak performance' component under each bullet point. If you are reading this in plain text, you will have to draw up your own table (or go to the website and download the table here at /downloads.html - you will have to log in and instructions on how to do this are easy to follow on this web page).

You don't have to use all of my peak performance components. Every discipline and activity has a different set of components for peak performance and every individual has a unique way of achieving their very best. This is just to get you started. You can make up your own table if you prefer. The point of the exercise is to remind yourself of the key components of a past 'peak performance' and to make access to these components easier. In addition, the exercise should simply remind you that you are brilliant and you can be brilliant again, tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.

Oh, and one final thing. You have all done something brilliantly. The only barrier to accessing your own brilliance is formed by your own inhibiting beliefs. This is not the time to be shy or falsely modest. Focus on a time when you felt brilliant and extract all the positive components from that experience. It doesn't matter if anyone else thought you were brilliant or not. You know when it happens. We have all had a best day so we all know how to have another one. Peak performance is about accessing your own positive feelings and beliefs.

Peak performance isn't about whether you are better or worse than someone else; it is about you, being you, at your best.

Peak Performance Components Table

Peak Performance Component (i.e. a belief, feeling, attitude, or sensation)

Give an example here of a time when you accessed a similar component (or make up your own components below)

Total belief in what I was doing.
An unshakeable focus on the end goal - winning (and I mean unshakeable).
Relentless tenacity. This is something which I realise is a key ingredient in 'business success' and which I am having to rediscover.
Precisely the right level of 'arousal', excitement and energy: sufficient to keep going, but not so much that I burnt out before the end of the game.
Peak Performance Components Table (contd.)
Total alertness to every unfolding situation and event around me.
A complete awareness of where everyone was and the direction in which they were moving.
Peak Performance Component (i.e. a belief, feeling, attitude, or sensation)
Give an example here of a time when you accessed a similar component (or make up your own components below)
An unremitting sense of being alive and in harmony with my own nature and nature in general.
A sense of fun.
Being a part of a team which, on good days, shared the same 'peak performance' state of mind.
The capacity to be utterly committed and involved, and at the same, detached, observant and calculating.

OK. Send me your completed forms via e mail, or in the post.

In the meantime, if this is a topic you would like to explore in more depth, we would love to see you on the next workshop:

The HBT 'Achieving Peak Performance' - 1 Day Intensive Workshop

9.00 a.m. Wednesday 20 June 2007, at The Quality Hotel, 47 Gervis Road, Bournemouth BH1 3DD

This is a dynamic, interactive and powerful workshop, providing managers with the skills, knowledge, confidence and self-belief to deliver peak performance in their own role and through their teams. The workshop is strictly for leaders, directors and managers who are already in post, and for aspiring leaders, managers and high potential performers who will be able to apply the techniques immediately.

* Achieving Peak Performance is not a matter of chance.

* It is a deliberate strategy designed to increase your competitive advantage.

* It is the skills, knowledge and especially the attitudes of everyone in the team that make the difference.

* To be the best, model the best, and then exceed their standards and achievements.

The Benefits

* Achieve the results you want to achieve easily

* Increase your own productivity and that of your team

* Create a simple, effective and instantly accessible motivational strategy

* Eradicate self-doubt and massively increase confidence

* Transform excess stress into potent energy

* Exploit your raw talent

* Develop new skills, knowledge and experience easily

* Make a positive impact that your business will always remember

We will show you how the best performers, in any field, achieve their results easily. You will take on new challenges, achieve the things you really want to achieve, and galvanize others into action in supporting your goals.

Workshop Sessions

* Discover the attributes required for peak performance

* Identify peak performance criteria

* Build peak performance attitudes and inspire others to do the same

* Overcome resistance to change (your own and others')

* Achieve peak performance through logical levels

* Learn how to 'model' peak performers

* Coach yourself and others for peak performance

* Make the commitment to action

The delegate rate is £240 per delegate, plus VAT.

More news soon about blogs, and audio downloads. Until next time...

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