As a performance coach within both business and sport, and fervent sports watcher, I have now officially gone into 'Olympic withdrawal' following the inspiring performances of Rio. However, I thought I would take the opportunity to explain my take on the similarities of Performance Coaching within business AND elite sport.

 

Over the years many people have told me they thought it a strange mix for me to successfully performance coach people in business and also elite athletes. For me it is quite a natural pairing – regardless of the fact that I had worked in the public sector for 30 years and often having little or no knowledge or experience in the sport in which I performance ‘mind’ coaching.

 

For me it is simply about people, how they think, their habits and their behaviours, how they develop, how they learn, what motivates them, and what they perceive and believe about themselves and the world in which they live.

 

My 5 Key matches of what I believe are the parallel ingredients of success within both areas.

 

1. GOALS and TARGETS – We all perform better if we have something to aim for, be it in a single task or assignment or some challenging aspirational goal. Great goal setting is something that can be learned and mastered. Every boss in business and athlete or team in Rio had some sort of goal, however expressed.

 

2. FEEDBACK – We need to know how we are doing – whether it is from our boss, peers or coach. If we don’t get any feedback – we should ask for it! It is then up to the skill of the mentor or coach to give the feedback in the most honest and constructive way.

 

3. BELIEF – If we genuinely don’t believe we can achieve something, the chances are it won’t happen. Our self-belief is founded in what we think of ourselves and often based on the habitual way in which we process information from the outside world. This drives how are conditioned by others and ultimately how we condition ourselves. Having the confidence to make decisions, take bold action and not be afraid to fail is founded in self-belief.

 

4. TAKING PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR ACTIONS – A common ingredient of success for people in business and competitive sport is when everyone takes responsibility for their own behaviours and actions. So often business and sports clients can ‘point the finger’ and blame others such as -        

o   The Government and the economy / lack of funding 

o   Their boss and co-workers / their coach and teammates,

o   Their customers and clients / their support staff and supporters

 

The real skill is to concentrate and act upon what facts each of us can actually control in our lives. If adverse facts are truly beyond your control – concentrate your energies into what you can control to make things better.

 

5.  TAKING PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR OWN DEVELOPMENT – This relates to the point above but continuous learning is crucial to high performance in a changing world. Training courses and technical sports coaching sessions will always be needed, but so much of our learning occurs in an informal way. I.e. what others of influence say to us, how our role models behave and perform, what we read, what we attempt and afterwards what we learn from our successes and failures. The last one is a particularly rich vein of information when I coach both business and sports clients!

 

I hope I have gone some way to explain how good coaching skills can transcend both work and sports performance coaching. They say, “It’s all in the mind.” Well, it works for me anyway!