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Have you been forwarded the DARE High Performance newsletter? You can sign up here to receive your own copy in the future.

This week’s DARE at a glance:

Partnership with The AI Report. Learn AI in 5 minutes a day. 

Your Decision, Action and Result: Thinking under pressure: Part 1. 

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

Evaluation: Jonathan works in a senior role in an industry that provides high pressure public infrastructure. He wrote a fantastic and moving response to last week’s newsletter on designing your future which will inspire you.

Book of the Week: Chasing Excellence by Ben Bergeron.

My week: From Manchester to Malta via Mary Poppins: on Concorde.

 If you want to design your future you’ll reach a point where you’re limited by your ability to think effectively under pressure.

This is not a genetic limit. It is a matter of skills and courage.

Your Result

This was a big week for my eleven-year-old daughter. A part in her school play ‘Mary Poppins’ and a piano exam. A couple of years ago she would not open her mouth to sing if others were near her. This week she sang solos on a stage.

Why she fell silent, and how she found her voice again, is an inspiring story; but it is not mine to share with you.

Watching her prepare for her week, and watching her perform bravely and wonderfully, under pressure: and grow several inches in one night, is the inspiration for today’s newsletter.

How many inches can we help you grow this week/year? How can we help you excel when you step up and there is no second chance: when it’s your time to perform?

This week I’ll give you two ways to master effective thinking under pressure. Next week there will be two more.

Your Result this week, if you are willing to take on the challenge, is to take one step up on the ladder of thinking effectively under pressure.

AND you can use these tools to support your family, friends, children or team mates to deliver under pressure.

In my new ‘DARE: to speak’ High Performance Presenting Course, you will find a downloadable meditation to help you think under pressure before you approach a big moment. It launches on 28 April and you can win your seat in today’s competition.

Your Decision

Pressure is unavoidable if you seek High Performance.

If you’re going boldly to design and build your future, your ability to think clearly under stress will part-define your success rate.

As I have designed and built my life, I’ve decided to taste pressure in some extreme environments. While each situation is unique, the underlying strategies I perform when the pressure is on remain consistent.

That consistency holds true as I reflect on my work coaching High Performers in sport and business, and in coaching their coaches.

So here are the first two of four lessons I’ve learned about thinking effectively under pressure and that I will share in two parts, this week and next.

1. Managing Mental Overload – Lessons from the Cockpit

One of my hardest challenges has been to gain my helicopter pilot’s licence.

Nothing prepared me for the requirement to manage the mental overload that flying a helicopter delivers.

At first, your brain simply cannot keep up with all the tasks requiring simultaneous attention: airspeed, vertical speed, engine state and performance, navigation, communication with Air Traffic Control, not exceeding power limits. Managing all this at the same time is overwhelming.

Cognitive science tells us that the brain can only handle four to seven pieces of information at any one time before it becomes overloaded. After that, you can find yourself flying across the approach to an active runway whilst focussing on the radio and your air speed: a lethal error.

Instructors understand this. They introduce elements gradually, allowing you to master one before layering in the next.

They make you rehearse engine failures under stress, repeatedly, until your basic tasks become automatic and you can add more tasks on top with ease.  Much as you can control your car non-consciously whilst concentrating on the traffic as you navigate a busy junction.

You too will face overwhelm if you try to process more than you are able to when looking to operate in a high-pressure situation. So what can you do to excel when that happens?

1          ACCEPT REALITY: You are a human and therefore you have a mental capacity equal to your experience. Don’t put yourself ‘underwater’ by creating too much pressure too early or by overcomplicating the ‘performance’ you’re planning.

2          TRIAGE: When facing a pressure situation, choose what to focus on and what you can and will let go of if pressure builds.

Pilots are taught a ‘triage’ system to simplify thinking in moments of overload by literally ‘binning’ other elements: Aviate, then Navigate, then Communicate.

What is the simplifying rule of thumb for you and your team in moments of overwhelm?

3          REHEARSE: If you want to add more pressure quickly, you must train and rehearse. As a pilot you can increase your manageable mental load very quickly – but not if you only fly once a month. Situations of high pressure require rehearsal.

2. The Power of Presence - A Jockey’s Focus on the Task

Here’s some good news: You can also use your cognitive restraints to your advantage!

When racing as a jockey, it is easy for the pressure to distract your thinking: what will the trainer or newspapers will say about you and your abilities in 2 minutes time when it is all over? What if, what if…

I experienced this as a low-level novice jockey. But I have also coached elite professional jockeys who experienced the same problem. It distracted them from being ‘in the zone’ in the biggest races in the world.

One of the most powerful tools for thinking clearly under pressure is to focus intensely on doing the task you are there to perform. To use up all your mental capacity with performance enhancing focus.

You can focus on your position on the horse, on perfect balance, on the pressure through the reins in your hands.

You can focus on the horse’s breathing, being in rhythm with her movement, on dancing very precisely with her as she gallops, on anticipating the timing of any move you will make in the race.

Now you are absorbed in the present: so you will eliminate the noise. After all, cognitive science tells us that the brain can only handle about four to seven pieces of information at any one time!

Your New Action: The Challenge Of The Week

Your challenge of the week is to practice being really, 100% present in the detail of the task you’re doing, in order to occupy your mental capacity and block out the noise.

OR

Think of a ‘triage’ system for your pressure moments. What can you, literally, decide to forget about in the moment if it all becomes too much.

Don’t forget to hit reply and tell me how it goes. Each story that we publish in the newsletter wins its author a place on my ‘DARE: to speak’ High Performance Presentation Skills Course.

Book Of The Week

This week’s book has helped me immensely with handling pressure.

It has also helped me clarify my thinking when coaching athletes, or indeed their coaches, on high performance.

So I highly recommend Crossfit coach Ben Bergeron’s Chasing Excellence to you. This was gifted to me by one of my very favourite humans in 2022 and I have gifted over 15 copies since and always have spares on my bookshelf to give away!

I’ll give you two (of many) reasons why:

First, Ben’s continued emphasis on only focussing on executing what you have done in training excellently, under the pressure of competition. What else can you possibly do? Yet we all chase the ‘win’, multiplying the pressure, instead of presenting our very best selves (which is our very best chance of winning).

Second, the humility and vulnerability he encourages in his athletes in pursuit of greatness is inspirational and the stories of breakthroughs and massive, rapid improvement as a result.

This is a book about high performance and cultivating a high performance mindset, written by a thoughtful and highly experienced and successful coach.

Evaluation

Each week in the Evaluation section I’ll publish one of our readers’ tale of applying DARE and what has come of that for them. If you’re published, you receive a free place on my ‘DARE: to speak’ High Performing Presentations course.

Jonathan works in a senior role in an industry that provides high pressure public infrastructure. He wrote a fantastic and moving response to last week’s newsletter on designing your future which will inspire you:

“When you came to speak to the Group's senior leaders at XX back in 2023, it came at the perfect time in my career. I had been promoted to become a member of my division's senior leadership team but imposter syndrome got the better of me. I started questioning if I only got the role on SLT because my equivalent at one of the group’s other divisions had been promoted, and I thought he was a more effective leader. 

What happened was that I focused all of my efforts on SLT, neglecting how the org change had impacted my immediate team. While we were landing great projects, I probably didn’t provide the guidance that people needed or wanted from me. I would sit in SLT sessions thinking I’m the only person who isn’t a director, my department isn’t a priority and I didn’t understand half of what was being discussed. Instead of asking questions, I’d shut down and only speak when spoken to.

However, you came and spoke to the Group's leaders and what really resonated with me was my right to be in the room. It really reframed for me that these leaders who I massively looked up to wouldn’t have promoted me if I wasn’t the right person. I then was able to focus more and become my own leader instead of trying to emulate others. 

When my role was restructured out of the business, I worked on defining my own story so that I could leave positively on my own terms. I defined how it was communicated and told people what I wanted to. That’s left me in a good position with people I really admire.

I’m now in a role with a different organisation and enjoy the challenge of helping people build their confidence through articulating some of the lessons you gave me.“  

My Week

Well the highlight of my week, of course, was Mary Poppins! All of the children were utterly inspirational. Courageous, full of energy and their reaction to the energy the audience reflected back to them was totally joyful.

It was a wonderful week of meeting new DARErs at live events. I spoke at the Concorde Convention Centre in Manchester underneath one of my childhood icons! The day was S A Partners #changemakers event. The speakers had all led major change and we all shared learnings and scars.

To London on Thursday to work with the mighty (and high octane!) Superdrug and Savers HR teams on designing your future using DARE - before heading out to Malta to close the Business Leaders Malta annual event. 

However, my triathlon training took a terrible hit through the writing, travel and family commitments this week– you can see just how bad if you follow me on STRAVA. I’ll follow you back and we can deal the kudos to support each other next week!

Write your story 🖋️

Jim

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