“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – American inventor, Thomas Edison
Edison, despite struggling with failure throughout his work life, never let it get the best of him. He kept experimenting and learning. His resilience gave the world the light bulb as well as these amazing inventions phonograph, the telegraph, and the motion picture.
Do you have Edison’s resilience to overcome your challenges? Or do you let your failures or missteps derail your dreams? In this post and the next, I’ll examine resilience – what it is, why we need it, and how to develop it – so that you have the strength to keep on moving forward towards your goals.
The Importance of Resilience Resilience is our ability to adapt and bounce back when things don’t go as planned. Resilient people don’t wallow or dwell on failures; they acknowledge the situation, learn from their mistakes, and then move forward. According to the research of leading psychologist, Susan Kobasa, there are three elements that are essential to resilience:
1. Challenge Resilient people view a difficulty as a challenge, not as a paralyzing event. They look at their failures and mistakes as lessons to be learned from, and as opportunities for growth. They don’t view them as a negative reflection on their abilities or self-worth. 2. Commitment Resilient people are committed to their lives and their goals.. Commitment isn’t just restricted to their work – they commit to their relationships, their friendships, the causes they care about, and their religious or spiritual beliefs. 3. Personal Control Resilient people spend their time and energy focusing on situations and events that they have control over. Because they put their efforts where they can have the most impact, they feel empowered and confident. Those who spend time worrying about uncontrollable events can often feel lost, helpless, and powerless to take action.
In other words, resilient people:
Maintain a positive outlook, despite having just lost a promotion or getting turned down for a job. They don’t allow present circumstances to cloud their vision of themselves or their future.
Have solid goals in all parts of your life. This gives you a compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning.
Never think of yourself as a victim. – focus your time and energy on changing the things that they have control over.
It’s inevitable that at times we’re going to fail, make mistakes, have setbacks and occasionally fall flat on our faces. The only way to avoid this is to live a very sheltered life never trying anything new or taking a risk. Few of us want a life or career like that!
Career Success Tip:
Being resilient means that when we do fail, we bounce back, we have the strength to learn the lessons we need to learn and we can move on to bigger and better things. Next post will be on developing resilience. Also see Climbing the Career Walls.
Some time ago, I spoke to a community service club and gave my fifteen-minute “This-Is-What-Fundraising-Is-Really-All-About” speech, and a majority of the subsequent questions revolved around the concept/complaint of having to go to the same people for contributions every time the club wanted/needed to raise money.
The “fear” I most often hear expressed by members of community service clubs is that those “same people” will start to avoid them.
There’s no question that these service club members believe in and feel strongly about the causes for which they raise money. It’s just that, after a while, because they’re doing the same thing — going to the same people to buy the same tickets, it’s hard (for the club members and the prospective ticket buyers) to maintain enthusiasm for the process.
As one of the attendees put it, “There’s lots of burnout out there.” And, what is left unsaid is that many of the club members are burnt out … tired of asking the same people to support another worthy program !!
What was obvious was the need to expand their pool of prospective donors/ticket buyers to avoid having to back to the same people every time. It was also obvious that the people buying the tickets (to the dinner, the golf tournament, the carnival or any other “fundraiser”) were too often doing so to please the club member selling the tickets and/or saw the event as entertainment.
Now, I’m not big on “fundraisers,” to say the least, but most community service clubs are not likely to change their cultures, their methods of fundraising. So, there needs to be a way for these clubs to raise money for all the causes they support, without burning out the members who do the fundraising or the people to whom they sell their tickets.
It crossed my mind that the service clubs could create a separate nonprofit with 501(c)(3) status, and recruit all the folks to whom they sell tickets to be “members” of that organization. That organization, then, instead of having a number of “small” events/fundraisers during the year, could have one major event (at an overall lower cost) to raise more money than the “ticket buyers” would “contribute” during the year.
The event would be a combination of education (about the causes they are supporting), recognition (of the people who are giving their dollars “to make it happen”) and cultivation of prospective donors.
So, before I go banging my head against the wall trying to get these community service clubs to restructure their fundraising … What do you think ??
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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Contact me atHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, I’ll be pleased to answer your questions.
Sandy Cormack, a personal and organizational consultant, continues with his installments of Unlocking Creative Potential. He uses a neuroscience-based approach to team building, leadership development, creativity and innovation, change management, and business strategy development.
You could say the human brain is really the last frontier. We use only a small part of it, but increasing our understanding of how it works to learn, to adapt, to flourish is important to everyone. As trainers we can’t do our jobs without understanding how people think and learn, and if we can unlock that creative potential, we make the most of the resource we have. Here’s Sandy Cormack with Part II.
Unlocking Creative Potential, Part II
by Sandy Cormack
In this installment we explore the neuroscience of individual creativity and learn a few ways to develop our “creative brains.” First, let’s review the model for whole brain creativity using the left brain-right brain metaphor:
The ideal creative person would have a creatively balanced brain like the one depicted above. In theory, this person could fully explore every problem they encountered, generate a wide range of ideas and have a good chance at selecting the best solutions.
In reality, not many people possess a brain like this. Most of us have a preference for only two or three of the four thinking styles.
To achieve this creative balance we must 1) continue to develop our strengths while 2) developing additional skills which overcome our weaknesses.
Let’s take a look at someone who is truly left brained: she has preferences in both analytical and structural thinking. This excerpt from a profile report belongs to someone who’s taken the left brain right brain test I use:
In this metaphor, preferences are defined as any attribute measuring 23 percent or greater. Jane’s thinking preferences are analytical (40%) and structural (38%). She also has a relatively substantial social (20%) attribute, but not too much conceptual (2%).
Relative to creativity and problem solving, Jane’s strengths are in problem definition, systemic solutions and implementation. Her weaknesses are in imagination, visioning and novel ideation. Using her left-brain strengths, she may rapidly assess the situation, draw upon past experience to select a solution, and immediately go about implementing it. But by not using a conceptual approach, she may fail to consider better, more out-of-the-box alternatives. And if she relies on analytical and structural too much, she may fail to use her social to discuss the problem with others to gain a broader perspective, or learn the current best practices from others.
In a brain training workshop, a person like Jane would learn to develop skills to overcome weaknesses like these. She’d learn a series of “creative thinking techniques” – systematic methods of generating ideas that appeal to all four brain quadrants.
Jane would probably have little difficulty coming up with ideas to improve (structural) or refine (analytical), although she could easily learn additional techniques for those. She’d probably benefit most, though, from learning as many right-brain related techniques as she could.
Here’s a simple right-brain technique which appeals to left-brain thinkers due to its linear nature. It’s called Challenging Assumptions.
Write down your best definition of the problem at hand.
Write down every assumption you can think of about the current situation.
Next to each assumption, write the opposite (either the negative or the reverse).
Consider if any of the opposites spur ideas for novel solutions.
Consider the example of Jane’s church, which is trying to raise its membership. She might write down these assumptions:
Services are conducted on Sunday mornings
People come to services at the church
Services feature traditional music
Parishioners receive a newsletter in the mail once a month
The pastor primarily focuses on internal church matters and the congregation
The congregation has several fundraising events at the church every year
Now she reverses each of them one by one:
Services aren’t conducted on Sunday mornings – Is there another day that might serve the community better? Another time of day?
The church comes to the people – Is there a place in the community closer to homes, like a community center or park, that would be more appealing?
Services don’t feature traditional music – What kinds are music should we consider? Folk? Rock? Something purely modern?
Parishioners don’t receive a newsletter – What about email? A Facebook page? Twitter? Some that connects them not only with the church but with one another on a weekly or daily basis?
The pastor focuses on external matters – What does the community need? What services can the church offer to help the community with its most pressing problems?
The fundraising events aren’t at the church – How about field trips? Where can we go? What kind of activities would generate interest? What would be fun?
See what we did here? We forced Jane’s left brain to slow down and consider a more divergent approach to the problem. We made her look at the problem from a wide range of perspectives and redefine it. Now Jane might consider that her church’s membership problems are problems of convenience, involvement, interaction, community focus, and social opportunities. And she came up with solutions which might transform the very culture of her church.
A great resource for learning a multitude of creative thinking techniques is the book “Thinkertoys” by Michael Michalko. It’s chock full of both left-brain and right-brain techniques.
To summarize: to develop your whole brain creativity you must:
Determine your thinking preferences via a left brain right brain test
Learn creative thinking techniques to overcome your weaknesses
My final installment will show how teams and organizations can leverage their collective creativity to solve virtually any problem they encounter.
Sandy Cormack’s report (available for download at http://leftbrainrightbraintest.com/) addresses the essential elements of a left brain-right brain test and provides a general introduction to left brain-right brain theory and applications. He can be reached at interzon@comcast.net.
This is the second of three articles by Sandy for this Training and Development blog. Any aspect of how we learn and think affects how we train individuals and groups, and how we work with others. This may not be an obvious in the approach to training and development, but it definitely has its place. You have Sandy’s information.
Now mine: I can be reached through my website, by commenting here on this blog or any of my others. You’ll find more of my writings on a variety of topics from the perspective I like to call the Cave Man perspective, which basically means we learn from wherever we are most likely to learn the best information to do the job. I don’t believe in one way of doing things; I hope you don’t either. I welcome those who have differing opinions or new ideas. I certainly don’t know everything. Please check out my new e-book available through all major distributors, A Cave Man Guide to Training and Development, my attempt at making clear what I do know to be true from my perspective. I believe it offers a refreshing look at training and development, while keeping the “cave” open to new ideas. Happy Training.
This is a precious time when the darkness comes early and candles glow. Quiet stillness falls in the darkness of winter. In the darkness just one candle flame sheds light for a room. One candle lights the way. Not surprising at all that Hanukkah and Christmas both share the symbols of light with the Winter Solstice.
How is your light guiding others?
What are you showing with your light?
You are an infinite luminous light. Did you know that? Take in that thought. Feel what it feels like to be an infinite luminous light. Infinite creative energy flows to you, through you, and out into your world. Breathe that thought in, hold it, and breathe it out.
Open your self to the luminous light
You are a luminous light. You show your light every day you come to work. Your inner light is seen by all- it flickers, it dances, it blazes, it fades- all depending on how you show up. The outer light that you radiate reflects of your inner world.
‘Open your self to the luminous light, the infinite light of the universe’ is a chant I do with my group of Dancers of Universal Peace. Saying these words and taking them deep in to my core feels rich and renewing. I interpret this chant to mean that as an infinite light of the universe, we all share that spark of Divine creation and love. We all have that light within. We radiate out that light to the degree that we allow it to shine through us, as us.
Some people have filters from life experiences that diffuse the light. Some have layers that mute the light. It’s up to you to take off the layers that prevent the full beauty and power of your light to shine.
Sharing your light with others
We shine as brightly as we are open to sharing our light- of peace, of joy, of compassion, of love. Mary Ann Williamson has a marvelous poem about being a light and standing fully in the truth and power of that, not just for yourself but for everyone. ‘As you let your light shine, you unconsciously give others permission to do the same’. As you show patience, tolerance, gratitude, understanding, you model that way for others at work. You serve as a beacon and guide for how to be with one another.
Pay attention this week to what you are showing others about yourself, your inner light. Set your intention to share the light of peace, calm, quiet during an otherwise hectic and possibly stressful week.
Enjoy the quite, the peacefulness of the dark winter nights. There is beauty in the darkness with the flicker of just one candle.
Linda has a new Fan Page – https://www.facebook.com/LindaJFerguson “like” this page if you want to get notices of these blog posts and other updates of Linda’s work.
In my last article I talked about performance from the viewpoints of Performance Psychologists. This time we’ll take a look at what neuroscience has to tell us by understanding more about left brain-right brain science.
I have asked Sandy Cormack, a personal and organizational consultant to guest blog on the subject. He uses a neuroscience-based approach to team building, leadership development, creativity and innovation, change management, and business strategy development.
Unlocking Creative Potential
by Sandy Cormack
In his recent article Battling for Creative Solutions, Jack Shaw introduces the concept of left-right brain creativity. Creativity might be the least understood cognitive function. The terminology isn’t that exact – even the Wikipedia definition Jack quoted is sorely inadequate for the true range of creativity our minds are capable of. But understanding the neuroscience behind how our brains function provides a much-needed key for unlocking our creative potential. There’s enough material to make a major series of articles, but I hope to cover the subject adequately for out purposes here in three.
The first part is a general introduction to the issue. The second installment focuses on individual and group creativity the third installment addresses the group aspect.
Before we get too deep into creativity, first consider this visual metaphor for the brain:
Our left brain thinks logically, systematically and in language. Our right brain thinks intuitively, strategically and in pictures. The two hemisphere function as two individual brains, but they’re connected by a fibrous network called the corpus collosum, allowing them to communicate and exchange information.
But there is an abstract and concrete component to each hemisphere that lets us move from hemisphere model to a quartile model – analytical, structural, social and conceptual. And although we use all these attributes in our thinking, we tend to prefer two or three of them. In fact, the majority of people aren’t purely ‘left brained’ or ‘right brained’ at all – they prefer aspects of both (a detailed description of the four thinking attributes can be downloaded for free at my Left Brain Right Brain Test website).
Using this model, we can talk about creativity this way:
Our Analytical brain likes to take something and refine it. It assesses the problem by gathering enough facts and data to achieve a clear picture of the current situation. It selects solutions based on rigorous analysis of cost and benefits, and it seeks ways of measuring results.
OurStructuralbrain likes to take something and improve it. It tends to focus on process and procedure as likely problem areas, and relies on past experience for solutions (i.e., there’s no need to reinvent the wheel). It seeks closure so it doesn’t like to dwell on the problem for too long.
Our Social brain keeps an eye on the external world to generate raw material for ideas. It defines the problem in consultation with the people most affected by it. It looks for the best available practices to implement as solutions, but only after considering how they will affect people. It’s also associated with ‘trusting the gut.’
Our Conceptual brain is the seat of our imagination and seeks novelty. It gathers as much information as it can and lets its intuition hatch innovative ideas (the ‘a-ha’ moment). It is energized by problem definition and ideation – it loses steam when it comes time for action.
Now consider the four general phases of the creative problem solving process:
Problem definition – examination of the problem from many perspectives which seeks to find the root causes to address
Ideation – proliferation of ideas which improve, refine, copy, and innovate
Solution selection – enhancing the best ideas into practical solutions
Implementation – determining what it will take to make the solutions happen and then doing it.
Clearly there’s an important role for each of the four thinking attributes in this process. So everyone is creative – just not in the same way. You can think of this as creative ‘style.’ When you discover your thinking preferences, you gain clear insight into your creativity.
But this creates a huge spinoff problem at the organizational level. We’re different people with different brains. Most organizations can’t get past the ‘mental dissonance’ caused by these differences – they never learn how to harness the creativity of the individuals into a powerful collective creativity.
My follow-on articles will show how to address this problem once and for all, and help you develop a highly creative, highly collaborative organization in the process.
Sandy Cormack’s report (available for download at http://leftbrainrightbraintest.com/) addresses the essential elements of a left brain-right brain test and provides a general introduction to left brain-right brain theory and applications. He can be reached at interzon@comcast.net.
This is the first of three articles by Sandy for this Training and Development blog. Any aspect of how we learn and think affects how we train individuals and groups, and how we work with others. This may not be an obvious in the approach to training and development, but it definitely has its place. You have Sandy’s information.
Now mine: I can be reached through my website, by commenting here on this blog or any of my others. You’ll find more of my writings on a variety of topics from the perspective I like to call the Cave Man perspective, which basically means we learn from wherever we are most likely to learn the best information to do the job. I don’t believe in one way of doing things; I hope you don’t either. I welcome those who have differing opinions or new ideas. I certainly don’t know everything. Please check out my new e-book available through all major distributors, A Cave Man Guide to Training and Development, my attempt at making clear what I do know to be true from my perspective. I believe it offers a refreshing look at training and development, while keeping the “cave” open to new ideas. Happy Training.
Here is a familiar scenario for some of us who perform projects for customers: a request for some work comes in. We have (or know where to get) the capability, the skills the personnel. Having performed similar work before, we even have references. The catch? Geography. Either the customer, or key performer(s), or the project manager is in a different geographical location. And unfortunately, some stakeholder becomes entrenched in the position that everyone must be co-located. So the (questionable) travel/commuting commences in earnest.
Too many projects suffer from this excessive travel or commuting, when they could be leveraging Virtual Teaming tools and techniques. Too many checkpoint meetings; testing sessions; status meetings take place where the obsession that everyone must be present prevails. I find incredibly worrisome when some of these project resources, very often managers, brag about having back-to-back trips in which they take overnight, red-eye flights in order to make it to their next meeting. One would think that, rather than brag, the person would be embarrassed that poor planning, or automatically agreeing to this excessive travel, has left them in this position. So instead of automatically agreeing to all this costly, unproductive travel, next time suggest a concerted effort to incorporate more Virtual Team behaviors into your project:
1. Leverage Internet, IM virtual teaming tools
Where to begin, honestly! There are so many Instant Messenger, Videoconferencing, Web seminar tools available today. There are even free collaborative tools such as, for example, Google Docs, where multiple team members can be updating the same document at once and you don’t even have to fight the frustrating document ‘check-in/check-out’ of certain other document repositories.
2. Share information profusely with the project team
The more information team members have, the less they have to request it from others. Hopefully this will also lead them to decreased unproductive travel.
3. Promote project team as a ‘Select Club’
Give the project a name. Have a logo. Schedule invitation-only web seminars. All these things increase the pride of the project team in belonging to this ‘select club’. Rapport and trust among team members increases and they tend to watch out more for one another, again, decreasing needless travel and commuting.
4. Don’t let them disappear
During conference calls, present the achievements of all, even if they are not attending. Especially achievements of team members in other countries. This reinforces continuity and cohesion among the project team, so communication becomes more natural and not a big deal.
5. Develop a culture of keeping commitments
Agree with your team the ground rule that, if we make a commitment, we keep that commitment. This is the best way of fostering trust. When individuals and organizations trust each other, transactions are automatic and cheap. It is when there is no trust that we start needing all the cumbersome documents, caveats, contracts and, oh yes… the excessive travel.
The following guest article, by crisis consultant Tony Jacques, puts some hard figures behind the constant warnings us crisis managers give to plan for and protect against reputation damage.
When Share Price Puts a Value on Brand Reputation
Share price might not be everything – but for many organizations there is nothing but daylight way back to whatever is coming second.
Yet new research shows decision makers at many companies don’t seem to be focused on branding issues and threats, and the impact those threats can have on reputation and share value.
Polling conducted with more than 1,100 executives around the USA by Deloitte revealed that a scant 24% of the companies formally measure and report on brand value. Moreover, fewer than 22% thought it was likely that negative information about their brand would show up on social media such as Twitter, Facebook or YouTube in the coming year. (Some hope!)
At the same time, a fresh study has reinforced the impact of a crisis on share price and reputation. Statistical analysis of ten corporate crises in South Africa* found that the greater the speed and number of positive steps taken in the two weeks after a crisis, the less the company share price fell. It also found that the more the company share price increased six months after the crisis, the greater the perception of its corporate reputation and brand strength.
Cause and effect is sometimes hard to assess when it comes to the share market, but the cost of mismanagement can be brutal. For example, Google has long been one of the world’s most valuable brands (ranked fourth in the latest Interbrand rankings), and earlier this year new CEO Larry Page was expected to explain to an analyst’s conference why quarterly revenue was well under forecast. Instead the CEO spoke less than 400 words of general optimism, then signed off. Wall Street hammered the stock, wiping $US15 billion off the value of Google in a single day.
Plenty of other high profile company brands have also suffered the awful impact of real world events on the slightly unreal world of stock market value.
After an adverse review of iPhone 4, Apple shares lost $US5.08 bn in one day
Following failure to cap its Gulf of Mexico oil well, BP shares lost £12 bn in one day
When Goldman Sachs was accused of fraud, its shares lost $US12.4 bn in just one afternoon and $US20 bn in a week
After Toyota announced a major vehicle recall, the carmaker’s shares on Tokyo Exchange fell $US30 bn over four weeks
UBS disclosed a $2.3 billion rogue trading scandal in September and their shares fell about $4 bn in one day and the Chairman resigned a week later
As the Deloitte report concluded, very few companies proactively manage the link between reputation risk and company strategy, and it’s a role which should be led by senior executive management, not delegated to public relations or marketing. Share price might not be everything, but raw numbers such as shown here are a stark reminder that proactive risk management for crisis prevention and reputation protection isn’t a cost – it’s an investment in the future.
FOOTNOTE: Late in 2010, Business Insider graphed the share impact of 12 PR crises, some contemporary, some classic. The results are very sobering.
*Source: Coldwell and Joosub, African Journal of Business Management. 5(24), 14 October, 2011
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Tony Jacques is Director of Issue Outcomes, a full-service crisis management firm.
Yahweh is another name for God. According to the article The Names of God a study by J. Hampton Keathley, III “Yahweh (YHWH): Comes from a verb which means “to exist, be.” This, plus its usage, shows that this name stresses God as the independent and self-existent God of revelation and redemption (Gen. 4:3; Ex. 6:3 (cf. 3:14); 3:12).
Here is a sampling of some attributes, quotes and reflections on God.
Attributes
Almighty
Benevolent
Counselor
everlasting life
Glorious
Hope
Holy
Love
Light
Just
Majesty
Rock
Shield
Strength
Quotes
I want to know God’s thoughts…the rest are details. – Albert Einstein
Faith can move mountains, but don’t be surprised if God hands you a shovel. ~ Unknown Author
Your job is to clarify what your passions are. God’s job is to organize how they will be realized.” – from The Passion Test
God is in the details. – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
God has created us to love and to be loved, and this is the beginning of prayer, to know that He loves me and that I have been created for greater things. – Mother Theresa
Reflections
Yogananda said that the only thing we can possibly give God is our love. Imagine our actually having something to give that God cares about! “The only thing lacking to Him is our love. That is what God wants from us: our love; our trust in Him; our joy in His infinite joy.” (from Essence of Self Realization)
Mother Theresa delivered a similar message. She relayed that Jesus appeared to her and helped her understand that when he said “I thirst,” He was telling us that God wants us to love Him in the same way He loves us. God yearns for our love!
St. Augustine said “Deus sitit sitiri.” That is “God thirsts to be thirsted for.”
God is standing by waiting for us to love Her. Through this, we can enter into Divine Bliss. – Excerpt from the December 2011 The Expanding Light, Ananda’s Spiritual Retreat for Meditation Yoga and Health
Janae Bower is an inspirational speaker, award-winning author and training consultant. She founded Finding IT, a company that specializes in personal and professional development getting to the heart of what matters most. She started Project GratOtude, a movement to increase gratitude in people’s lives.
Every company has a organizational chart – a ladder of power, but how this structure functions during a crisis must be clarified with all the stakeholders in the company; particularly the communications department. A crisis can hit at any time, and the company needs to determine secondary command structures in case key decision-makers are unavailable at the time.
Not only is it important for those to know who need to spring to action (and how those people are contacted) – it is equally important that everyone else in the organization knows they can not speak on behalf of the company or to the press.
Not cementing the items discussed in this quote, from the NetResults PR blog, is the prime reason why many crisis management campaigns experience a dangerously sluggish start. With the lightning fast news cycle we now experience, there just isn’t time to review the facts, gather your leadership, and create a plan. In the case of a serious crisis, the conversation will likely have spiraled far out of your control, and even in minor situations you’ll have the peanut gallery gladly filling in the gaps with rumor and innuendo.
With the amateur E-Reporter firmly cemented as a legitimate information source, it’s doubly important to remember the second part of the quote – people need to know who can talk and who can’t, and those who can, MUST know exactly what to say and how to say it.
You can’t “wing it” against a trained reporter any more than you’d “wing it” in a bullfight. In both cases you’ll come out beaten, bloodied, and full of holes.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Performance psychology looks at three basic areas: sports, business, and performing arts and entertainment.
I am a working actor and a working trainer. For both professions, you could say I am a performance critic. In my other life as a psychologist, I see a wide range of similarities.
Instead of comparing business and theatre definitions of performance, I thought a good way to present this issue is to highlight aspects of Performance Psychology, which is related to all three.
To get us started, we don’t need a deep, reflective definition. A simple definition from Wikipedia will suffice:
“Performance psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses upon the factors that allows individuals, teams, and groups to flourish and to achieve their aim of being the best. It engages the performer on how to be successful by developing the power of the mind and to practice mental skills training in their daily lives.”
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that many of these factors are the same, similar or overlap. Performance psychology looks at three basic areas: sports, business, and performing arts and entertainment. The evolution is different, but as we look at training techniques and basic mental skills involved we see striking similarities. The same goes for goal setting, which is explored as a part of each separate area of interest.
Sport psychology is rather new in the field, going back only to the late 1800s and early 20th century, when Norman Triplett conducted experiments involving cyclists. He and others in the area realized that focusing on the mental as well as the physical is important to performance. And, I’m sure we would agree that is true in our business or professional lives as well as personal that our mental take on things affects our physical prowess, our energy, our motivation, and, of course, our results.
The difference between a great performance and a good performance or between winning and losing is often related to mental rather than physical abilities.
“When you learn to respond positively to challenges that you are presented with, yourperformance in training and in competitions will be affected by your emotional reactions to those challenges. Therefore if you can master your emotions, you will have the power to use those emotions as a tool to facilitate individual and team performance. Physical skills, physical fitness and mental skills are the building blocks of the complete athlete that produces outstanding sports performance. The difference between a great performance and a good performance or between winning and losing is often related to mental rather than physical abilities.”
We all know the importance of goal setting in all three areas, not just with sports. Setting long term vision and short-term goals motivate us. By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you’ll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. Communication, commitment, collaboration (buy-in and negotiation) is required for effective goal setting.
What’s the best way to look at goal setting. In 1990, Lock and Latham published their book called “A Theory of Goal-Setting and Task Performance” outlining five principles of goal-setting.
We all know the importance of goal setting in all three areas, not just with sports.
It’s called Be-SMART. You’ve probably heard of it.
S – Specific (or Significant).
M – Measurable (or Meaningful).
A – Attainable (or Action-Oriented).
R – Relevant (or Rewarding).
T – Time-bound (or Trackable).
To have the principles of goal-setting is important, but to motivate these goals must have:
Clarity
Challenge
Commitment
Feedback
Task Complexity
Now, we are beginning to see the Business/Professional Psychology side as corporations and business professionals need to empower people, including themselves in they are a one-man shop, to seek high levels of mental capacity to deal with the stressors of a changing environment. It’s more on the radars of corporations but smaller companies need to recognize it, too. A corporate executive in order to deal with the stressors must constantly seek to revitalize his or her motivation, strive toward self-mastery, and reinvent him or herself to adapt the company to change. In essence, the corporate or business professional athlete should be constantly renewing and reinventing.
As long as there have been artists there have been people and institutions trying to find ways to enhance artistic performance...
As trainers we need to develop training programs designed to allow individuals to respond creatively and with a renewed sense of enthusiasm to the pressures and demands of work and life. Self-awareness, we know is the foundation of change; renewal will help us regenerate and refocus our energy on new stressors, and quite simply strategy and tactics will give us the tools to deal with those new stressors.
Ironically, Performing Arts Psychology has been around longer than the two above. As long as there have been artists there have been people and institutions trying to find ways to enhance artistic performance, but the ideas and goals are the same. This specialty deals with the psychological factors associated with participation and performance in areas such as dance, music, acting, radio, and public-speaking and stresses direct, real-world application of psychological research findings to strengthen, compliment, and improve the artist/performer.
While not using the same words, we are still talking about enhancing performance, be it on stage, in the factory or on the playing field. Theatre, in particular, has always delved into the mental aspects of performance. I’m sure the other performing arts have done the same, but I am closer to “acting” so I will focus on what I know best. There is something to be said about how most of the acting approaches focus on the mental aspects of the craft, but Stanislavsky with his method and the Meisner with his more improvisational method come immediately to mind. Both are deeply internal in approach. Each seek a mind over the body or physical approach to the art. What the mind sees, the body will do. So, mastery of the conscious mind is very important, and all methods strive to keep renewing and reinvent (sometimes in an obvious way) the individual performers.
“Fundamental peak performance proficiencies” cut across the three primary areas. Attitude, motivation, concentration, preparation, coach-ability, being a team player, leadership, or the ability to relax under pressure, are all attributes the peak performer possesses under any conditions. Peak performers have the ability to be self awareness, to self program, to visualize, to think critically and creatively, and to control effort.
Mental training is key to making all this work.
Mental training is key to making all this work. The five main aspects of mental training are:
Relaxation
Mental Rehearsal
Focusing
Positive affirmation
Visualization
With all of these commonalities we can do little wrong. There must be something right for these diverse areas to come up with the same elements to do the job.
Performance psychology involves assessment and intervention strategies that enhance an individual’s performance and personal growth. It is said that Performance Psychologists are the chameleons of the practitioner world and I agree. Coming from all three worlds, I see the intersections and application clearly. I guess that makes me a chameleon of sorts myself, but I must say in the area of performance, it certainly doesn’t hurt.
That’s it for me. Check out my website for more writings on various topics, including theatre performance and basic communication. My new book, deemed by some to be an item for every trainer’s toolkit is available at most e-book retailers for a very low price. My gift to you for the holidays, The Cave Man Guide to Training and Development takes a look at the way we have complicated the learning process, and how much of we need to know in many cases is to remember how we got those complicated ideas in the first place. Happy training.
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“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – American inventor, Thomas Edison
