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This week’s DARE at a glance:

Every week, you get to DARE with me: take a Decision, try a new Action, share your Result and Evaluate the impact.

Partnership with 1440: Provides unbiased news so you can form your own conclusions.

Your Decision, Action and Result: Thinking effectively under pressure: Part 2. 

Competition: Win a seat on my ‘DARE: to speak’ high performing presentations course launching 28 April. 

Evaluation: It’s my turn for some evaluation and I would love some feedback!

Book of the Week: Perform Under Pressure by Dr Ceri Evans.

My week: Course writing, unicorns and back on track with fitness. 

 When it all goes quiet and it’s your turn to perform, your Result is not defined by your personality type or your mood.

It is defined by your Decisions and Actions.

A New Result

How would things change for you if you knew precisely HOW to perform under pressure? If you had the skills to think effectively and to prevent the ‘fog’ descending or the panic rising?

Last week I introduced the first two skills that I have taught to global leaders and elite sports people; and that I use every week myself.

Today I bring you the second two.

I am releasing the Early Bird offer for ‘DARE: to speak’ High Performance Presenting, today.

You can sign up for £199 instead of the full price of £250 for a strictly limited period. Explore the curriculum and sign up above!

A New Decision

Skill 3:  Know the start: Backstage in Vegas.

I’m standing backstage at the Bellagio as the CEO introduces me. There will be a sting in around 15 seconds and I walk on to face 3000 people.

The anticipated self doubt begins: “What if I forget my words?” “What if they don’t engage?” “What if they flew me all the way to Vegas and I bomb and ruin their event?”

Decision: Use my skills to stop low-level fear spiralling to panic, or go on with my head in a cloud of stage fright?

Facing an hour being ‘judged’ by a large, smart, often cynical crowd, my backstage ritual is to focus ONLY on precisely what the opening moves are.

My first line, the position I will travel to onstage when they say my name, the firmness of the handshake and the smile I’ll give the CEO as we swap places.

Same in the starting stalls. Same at the start of a freedive. Same entering a tense sales discussion. Same at the top of a scary ski run. Focus on the first thing you have to do – and execute.

Once you’ve done that, you’re underway - concentrating on doing your basic tasks brilliantly (Skill 1).

Skill 4:  Red / Blue Thinking: Learning from the All Blacks.

After their defeat in the 2007 World Cup, the All Blacks recognised that they needed to change the Result by changing their Decisions.

They needed to find a way to think effectively under pressure.

The then Captain, Richie McCaw explains this painful Evaluation, in the introduction to this week’s Book of the Week. The work they did led directly to the All Black’s victory in the next World Cup.

Working with Ceri Evans, they learned the vocabulary of Red and Blue thinking. The neuroscience behind the thinking has moved on. But that does not invalidate the vocabulary and the reality that we experience.

Red thinking – emotional, survival based, ‘red mist’, heroic: you allow biochemical survival processes take control.

Blue thinking – intelligent, strategic, ‘suppress’ emotions to think effectively: you require your intelligence to take control.

The beauty of this model is the VOCABULARY! Like giving the Tiger a name, you can now work with a real concept.

If you have words for what is happening, and a choice of states, you can identify and choose to change your thinking ‘area’. When the ‘Red’ begins as you enter the arena, you recognise it, deny it, and go Blue.

How? By using the other three skills in this series.

So let’s summarise the four skills to think effectively under pressure:

1. Accept Overwhelm as normal, expect it and be ready to Triage to make things manageable

2. Focus on the detail of your task, be present not worrying about the future

3. Know the opening and focus on that as you wait to start

4. When you feel RED fear-driven thinking (I can’t ‘what if’), recognise it, reject it and consciously shift to BLUE intellectual thinking

A New Action: The Challenge Of The Week

Let’s Act differently this week!

A difficult conversation at home, a first visit to a gym or a presentation – I guess you have a pressure situation out there somewhere this week?

Your Challenge and New Action, this week is to use your new skills to calm yourself beforehand and to consciously use the skills to crush it.

I’ll send YOU a complimentary seat on my ‘DARE to speak’ High Performance Presenting Course if you send me your story of DAREing and we publish it next week.

Evaluation

This week you get to Evaluate me.

Many of you asked me to cut the newsletter length back. I have done that this week.

What do you think? What other changes do you want to see? What content would help you? Would it be helpful to expand on these ideas with a YouTube video each week?

Please give me your ideas below - or hit reply and write directly.

Book Of The Week

I’ve mentioned it before but since we’ve gone back to Red / Blue thinking this week, I’ll mention it again. This week’s book is from the creator of Red / Blue thinking: Dr Ceri Evans – Perform Under Pressure.

My Week

I am deeply enjoying writing the new ‘DARE: to speak’ High Performance Presentations course.

This week I recorded the meditation to use to amplify your powers and calm your nerves before going out onstage.

So if you’ve enjoyed these skills, and you’d like to use the meditation to prepare for pressure moments – sign up for the course and you’ll have this tool to support you.

I went to Munich to meet with the Executive and the People Team of one of Europe’s Software unicorns.  We are partnering to deliver a High Performing Culture ready for another period of massive growth and transformation.

I work with a small number of organisations and sports teams each year to build High Performance and it is another huge pleasure – and a very demanding challenge.

And I finally I slowly began to get my training back on track after the longest period of ‘overwhelm’ at work preventing me from getting my sports kit on.  Follow me on STRAVA to help me along and I’ll follow you back and do the same.

Write your story 🖋️

Jim

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