More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The opposite they call ‘Blue Head.’ This is the ability to maintain clarity, situational awareness, accurate analysis and good decision-making under pressure. It’s a resourceful state in which we are able to trust ourselves to deliver, to be flexible, adaptable and on top of our game. We can see the big picture as well as the important details and our attention is where it should be. To have a Blue Head means to remain on task, rather than diverted, and Gazing’s parlance allows us to ACT: A. Alternatives: to look at our options, adapt, adjust and overcome C. Consequences: to understand the
...more
Performance under pressure is knowing how to ACT. In Brosnahan’s words, ‘allowing yourself to win by following the process rather than being caught up in outcomes’.
An everyday example might be in preparation for a speech: first we read through the text, maybe practise in front of the mirror until we’ve got the words and the flow right; then we might invite a few people to watch us rehearse – upping the intensity – and then finally, we might introduce real, emotional pressure; a video camera perhaps, a hostile heckler in the room, a bet on the number of times we hesitate, an unrealistic time limit . . . In this way our brains acclimatize to the pressure. We develop clarity, more accurate, automatic execution and situational awareness. The idea, however,
...more
The first stage of learning is silence, the second stage is listening.
‘Pressure is expectation, scrutiny and consequence,’ says Gilbert Enoka. ‘Under pressure, your attention is either diverted or on track. If you’re diverted, you have a negative emotional response and unhelpful behaviour. That means you’re stuck. That means you’re overwhelmed.’ On the other hand, if your attention is on track you have situational awareness and you execute accurately. You are clear, you adapt and you overcome.
Clearly, in any game played with the body, it’s the head that counts.
Bad decisions are not made through a lack of skill or innate judgement: they are made because of an inability to handle pressure at the pivotal moment.
‘Instead of just doing it, using the subconscious part of the brain, which is a very efficient deliverer of a complex task, [people who choke] exert conscious control, and it disrupts the smooth working of the subconscious.’
RED HEAD Tight, inhibited, results-oriented, anxious, aggressive, over-compensating, desperate. BLUE HEAD Loose, expressive, in the moment, calm, clear, accurate, on task.
Nick Bollettieri calls the ‘centipede effect’. If a centipede had to think about moving all its legs in the right order, it would freeze, the task too complex and daunting. The same is true of humans.
‘the Dark’. It is that fixated negative content loop of self-judgement, rigidity, aggression, shut down and panic. Blue is what he called ‘the Light’ – a deep calmness in which you are on task, in the zone, on your game, in control and in flow.
‘Having skills to go from red to blue, or maintain the blue, was pretty important in the scheme of things,’ he says. ‘I think,’ says Gilbert Enoka, ‘that anyone in our arena who looks at performance and looks at improvement . . . it’s all about a state shift . . . and ensuring that you can get your head into a good place.’
‘The brain essentially has three parts – instinct, thinking and emotion,’
‘If you become disconnected then you can focus on outcome and not task and the ability to make good decisions is compromised.’
Essentially, it works like this. First, we put ourself in a resourceful state: calm, positive, clear. Then we ‘anchor’ that state through a specific, replicable physical action – something out of the ordinary, like scrunching up our toes, stamping our foot, staring into the distance, throwing water over our face. Repeat, and repeat, and repeat – until it’s automatic. Then, when we recognize the symptoms of pressure – when our focus closes down, our vision narrows, our heart rate lifts, our anxiety increases, our self-consciousness rises – we can use the anchor to reboot. And return to our
...more
Mantras are the way in which we can tell our story to ourselves; they are tools for effective thinking, a mental roadmap in times of pressure.
The thing many mantras share is the Rule of Three; that is, they are three words or phrases that work together in a stepwise process to bring about change. The Rule of Three is the way humans tell stories; with a beginning, a middle and an end. You’ll see it in drama with the three-act play, in jokes with ‘an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman’, and in an orator’s rhetoric: Adolf Hitler’s ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer’, for instance, or the desire for ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’, or the Māori proverb, Titiro, whakarongo, kōrero (Look, listen, then speak). By harnessing
...more
Keep a Blue Head Pressure is ‘expectation, scrutiny and consequence’. It is the curtain coming down, the shutters closing, the red mist rising. It leads to tightening, panic, over-aggression, choking – and poor decision-making under pressure. Wise leaders seek to understand how the brain reacts to stress and practise simple, almost meditative techniques to stay calm, clear and connected. They use maps, mantras and anchors to navigate their way through highly pressurized situations, both personal and professional, and to bring themselves back to the moment. In this way they and their teams stay
...more
From listening comes knowledge; From knowledge comes understanding; From understanding comes wisdom; From wisdom comes well-being.
Enoka uses the analogy of a bridge that is secure because it is made of several different planks: personal skills, friends, family, being an All Black. ‘If the only plank you’ve got is the rugby one, then you’ll always come unstuck.’
the essence of a great leader is about ‘being genuine, real and true to who you are’.
‘Most leaders who fail,’ Bill George says in an interview with Pamela Hawley, ‘really suffer from a lack of a strong identity, belief in themselves and, to be frank, respect for themselves. When leaders are disrespecting others, it really starts with themselves.’
‘What is my job on the planet? What is it that needs doing, that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?’ ‘I believe that leadership begins and ends with authenticity,’ says George. ‘It’s being yourself, being the person you were created to be.’
The key to strong peer-to-peer interaction is a high level of trust. This is trust in the sense of safe vulnerability. The leaders need to create an environment where individuals get to know each other as people and gather insight into their personal story and working style. This needs to be supported by the leader’s role-modelling behaviour around admission of mistakes and weaknesses and fears . . . This is essential for safe conflict and safe confrontation, where the most important interaction often occurs.
High-performing teams promote a culture of honesty, authenticity and safe conflict.
Integrity comes from the Latin integritas or integer. It means being whole and undivided. It is the ethical ‘accuracy of our actions’. Integrity means that our thoughts and words and deeds are ‘as one’, a chiropractic alignment in which our core values, purpose, beliefs and behaviours all flow in the same direction.
Ontological Law of Integrity: —— To the degree that integrity is diminished, the opportunity for performance is diminished. That is, the more slippage there is, the less gets done; and the less slippage, the more traction.
‘Authenticity,’ according to leadership writer Lance Secretan, ‘is the alignment of head, mouth, heart and feet – thinking, saying and doing the same thing consistently. This builds trust, and followers love leaders they can trust.’
1. Every morning write a list of the things that need to be done that day. 2. Do them.
By being aware of integrity slippage, we can cultivate discipline, intention and action, both personally and within our teams. If we speak with integrity our word becomes our world; a commitment, a declaration of intent, a generative force. It allows us to speak with optimism and possibility, resilience and determination, decisiveness and authority. It helps us survive any setback. And it helps us begin the long climb back upwards again. With an authentic voice, we have authority. We can author our own story.
Honesty allows us access to our truest vision of ourselves and, when setbacks occur, gives us strong foundations. Integrity gets the job done. If our values, thoughts, words and actions are aligned, then our word is our world. With accuracy of action, less slippage occurs between thought and deed. In knowing ourselves, we live our vision. By being our word, we make it happen.
Find something you would die for and give your life to it
Champions do extra.’ First to arrive at the gym, and the last to leave, Thorn’s motto means he always adds something extra to the end of every routine – an extra rep, an extra ten minutes, an extra set, an extra circuit. ‘Five minutes to go in the Test match,’ he asks, ‘who wants it more?’
‘There are no crowds lining the extra mile.’ On the extra mile, we are on our own: just us and the road, just us and the blank sheet of paper, just us and the challenge we’ve set ourself.
writer Hunter S. Thompson copied out the entire texts of Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms, twice. As his friend Johnny Depp told the Guardian, ‘He wanted to know what it felt like to write a masterpiece.’
A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it.’
As the Italian proverb says, ‘At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box’.
‘Wisdom consists of appreciating the preciousness and finiteness of our own existence, and therefore not squandering it.’
Think of Buckminster Fuller: ‘What is my job on the planet? What is it that needs doing, that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?’ What is the extra that will make us extraordinary?
The truth never gets in the way of a good story. Leaders are storytellers. All great organizations are born from a compelling story. This central organizing thought helps people understand what they stand for and why.
‘the striving to find meaning is the primary motivational force in man’ – and stories are the way we construct and find meaning in our lives. We should not, he says, ‘be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill’. ‘One should not search for an abstract meaning of life,’ he says. ‘Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out, a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment.’
United States Marine Corps: —— Honour Integrity, Responsibility, Accountability. —— Courage Do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reason. —— Commitment Devotion to the Corps and my fellow Marines.
Companies that maintain their core values are those that stand alone, stand apart and stand for something.
The idea of humility as a central value grounds the team, creates respect, encourages curiosity and generates bonds that sustain them in the heat of battle.
Florida Effect – the way that priming works and the effect that the language around us unconsciously affects our experience of the world.
spirit of Apple is captured in the language around the Cupertino campus in California: ° Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. ° Why Join the Navy when you can be a Pirate? ° Insanely Great ° Think Different ° ‘Click. Boom. Amazing!’
Similarly, the spirit of the Marines is captured in their mottos and mantras: ° Once a Marine Always a Marine ° Ductus Exemplo – Lead by Example ° Doing the Right Thing ° Held to a Higher Standard ° First to Fight ° Whatever the Nation Asks ° Semper Fidelis – Always Faithful
Metaphors The word metaphor comes from the Greek metaphora. Meta means ‘over or across’ and Pherein means to carry. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is overlaid on to something to which it is not literally applicable – in which an idea carries over and transforms meaning.
Metaphors are where we recognize ourselves in stories – a way we attach personal meaning to a more public narrative. They create a visceral response, and force us to rethink meaning. We, literally, re-cognize. This metaphorical nature of mind is essential to understand what drives human action. ‘It is precisely through metaphor that our perspectives, or analogical extensions, are made,’
The key criteria for creating a change story is fourfold. ° The story must be credible and relevant – in Aristotelian poetics, it must have ethos (an authority and understanding of the subject) and logos (it must make rational sense). ° It must be Visual and Visceral – appealing to the auditory, visual and kinaesthetic receivers in our brains. It must seize our hearts as well as impress our heads. In terms of Aristotelian poetics, it must have pathos (it must be felt). ° It must be flexible and scaleable – as easily told around a campfire as across the boardroom table. This implies the use
...more
