No matter what stage you perform on or what your proficiency, there’s always room to improve your game—and take your performance to new heights. This is especially the case in “hot-seat” professions, where human performance is paramount and outcomes are plain for all to see.
Performance isn’t built on talent and training alone, because you can’t separate your performance from the rest of your life. Who you are as a person, how you’re showing up and your underlying mental and emotional states impact your performance immensely. Your performance is a snapshot of the state of your life. And when you’re under fire, vice comes to the fore along with virtue.
Critical Factors in Integrative Performance Coaching
Though many factors influence your performance in high-pressure professional situations, five top the list and form the nucleus of integrative performance coaching (IPC).
Mind State
Your capacity to remain focused, calm, aware and relaxed under pressure is critical to performance. These mental states do not happen by chance, but are the product of training, particularly in mindfulness and meditation practices such as:
- Body Awareness
- Bracketing
- Breathwork
- Concentration
- Effortlessness
- Relaxation
- Sensory acuity
- Visualization
Emotional Wisdom
Most people can markedly improve their outer game by strengthening their inner game. This involves changing habitual self-talk, impulsivity and emotional sabotaging. Learning how to constructively reframe perceptions and situations while coaching yourself positively from within will dramatically boost your performance.
Progressive Training
Some 90% of all training regimens are maintenance plans, geared to keep your performance right where it’s at. This is as true of people in gyms as it is of those in boardrooms. It takes a seismic shift in thinking to structure training with continuous performance improvement (CPI) in mind. IPC applies advanced planning tools, targeted metrics and purposeful training strategies using a kaizen approach.
Human Performance Factors
Every performance undertaking ultimately consists of converting defined inputs into valued outputs within certain time, cost, quality and resource constraints. But you’d be amazed at how many professionals don’t know what these parameters are for their roles. The further up the chain of command you go, the truer this is. It’s mind-blowing to see how much better people perform when they can zoom in on their actual measures of success.
Wellbeing
I have never known anyone whose performance didn’t leap commensurate with improvements in their wellbeing and life balance. Your relationships, home environment, fitness level—even how much fun and recreation you have in your life—all figure into how well you perform. A happier, healthier person will inevitably be a higher-performing person. But wellbeing is no accident. A top priority of IPC is to help you consciously cultivate it.
Tapping the Power of Motivation
Through my prior background as a sports and athletic performance coach, I learned a lot about critical performance factors. One lesson was indelible: to recognize progress you must first know your starting point, otherwise known as benchmarking. But just measuring things because they’re easy to measure doesn’t help. The performance measures you choose matter profoundly and have to be relevant to your real-world performance tasks.
Valid metrics also are key to motivation and goal setting; however, different goal-setting strategies work for different people. Some people do better with a close-up perspective, focusing on short-term, concrete, measurable goals—a “climbing the ladder” performance orientation. Others do better with a big-picture perspective, a kind of peak performance vision that’s more holistic. Still others thrive when there’s a spirit of competition. And some people don’t respond well to goals at all, preferring to pursue a general direction in the faith that sincere efforts will bear fruit.
What this means is that your coach has to really understand you and your motivational language. This is one of the most important aspects of IPC.
Great Candidates for IPC
Integrative performance coaching can help anyone improve their on-the-job performance. But it is especially well suited to those in “hot-seat” roles, whether you’re under the spotlight daily or facing a stressful coming event. This includes:
- Commercial artists, composers and writers
- Department heads
- Facilitators and workshop leaders
- High-ticket salespeople and account execs
- Media producers and directors
- Non-profit organization leaders and execs
- People in high-skill, high-stress or high-risk positions (pilots, lawyers, stockbrokers)
- Public and private sector leaders
- Public speakers, presenters and MCs
The Inner Journey of IPC
Not everyone will admit they have room for growth, or that they could use some help closing the gap. That’s why IPC is ultimately an inner journey that takes courage, honesty and humility. In my experience, humble people, and not the proud, are the ones who improve their performance the most.
IPC is effective because it’s tailored to your personality, mindset, individual needs, career stage and motivational style. I cannot emphasize this point enough. Any coach must be willing to get to know you well and meet you where you’re at. If they come in believing they already know what you need because you’re like everyone else—a cookie-cutter approach—run the other way.
Shoot for the Stars—and Become One!
IPC informs most of the professional coaching I do, because whether I’m coaching executives, producers, nonprofit leaders or sales reps, their performance is always center stage.
You can surely boost your performance, as it ultimately results from conscious, creative design and steadfast effort. You can take it to heights you might not imagine because, quite possibly, some key drivers of your current performance are hidden to you. My purpose is to help you discover and appreciate who you really are, where you’re strong, what you’re truly capable of and how to be the master of your performance—inside and out—while enacting a perpetual improvement strategy that not only aims for the stars, but takes you there.
If you’d like to discuss how to take your performance to new heights, please call or email me to set up a complimentary 30-minute phone or web conference. You’ll come away seeing your performance in a whole new light.