Unlock your full potential by improving your inner game
How the power of coaching makes us better. Also, how the military is adopting principles from sports psychology to support stressed pilot trainees.
Dear reader,
This week I offer a couple of examples of how mentorship and coaching works in practice and how it can be valuable in increasing personal satisfaction, productivity and growth. I hope you have an opportunity to develop this kind of relationship. It’s empowering.
I also invite you in this newsletter to share anything about your personal development that others might find useful. Let’s make it a conversation. Just add a comment by clicking on the bubble icon
Cheers,
-Renato.
Leaders who embrace coaching help others grow
As a manager for many years, I saw some good leaders and some not so good ones. I tried to learn from the good ones.
Strong leaders often exhibit a management style that is not autocratic; rather one of collaboration, respect and genuine curiosity. This style often describes the coaching approach, where colleagues have productive conversations with each other in a psychologically-safe space, focusing on self-direction and accountability.
It’s a technique that unlocks a person’s potential to fully maximize performance. And because it’s self-directed, the process represents a highly effective way of learning.
Here’s how Sir John Whitmore, the author of Coaching for Performance, explains it:
A coaching style of leadership requires that you connect at the human level, beyond the task - being before doing - and stop thinking that the leader is "the expert" who has to tell everyone else the best way to do things. Coaching is based on trust, belief, and non-judgment; it's a culture where "best practice" is not as you know it, where enjoyment is essential to learning and "upsets" are reframed as "set-up" or opportunities. It is a place where all things are possible and collaboration is the ultimate enabler.
I hope you’ve experienced this type of relationship with a manager at work. If not, then seek out a mentor or a professional coach to help you. Timothy Gallwey, the author of many best sellers promoting mental techniques to improve performance, beginning with The Inner Game of Tennis (1974), believes deeply in the power of our own potential. He has unique way of defining performance. He developed a simple equation: P=p-i.
It means this: Performance equals potential minus interference.
Reducing mental interference and working in clarity with natural flow is a proven technique with professional athletes and high performers in other areas. If you feel stuck, frustrated at work or unhappy with your job, this type of support can be incredibly useful.
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Air force program adopts mental performance coaching
The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) is using performance coaches to help student pilots better handle the rigours of training and improve their chances of success.
Over the last three years, the RCAF has been employing two dedicated professionals, one specializing in performance psychology, and another specializing in sport and exercise psychology to assist elite pilot candidates manage the challenges of flight training. The workload on trainees is heavy.
Skies magazine, an aviation industry publication, recently posted a story explaining the support program. One of its objectives is to prevent what an officer described as "helmet fires." The metaphor explains what happens when the demands on a student’s cognitive abilities become overwhelming and shatter confidence. Some students can’t cope, ground themselves and refuse to fly.
We know from applied science and the research – and this is shown in sports psychology – that 40 to 90 per cent of a person’s elite level performance comes down to what’s between the ears. - Jamie Bunka, RCAF mental performance consultant.
The program also employs business-coaching philosophy: it's specific to the individual and is confidential. Zoran Stojkovic, another performance coach hired by the Canadian Air Force, explains that, unlike in the sports world, where coaching is highly visible and often in public, in this military application confidentially is embraced:
Here, they know it’s fully confidential, what they say stays with us, and it’s not going to affect flying time, they’re not going to be constrained by talking to us.”
If focusing on mental performance can help fighter pilot candidates from “washing out,” we can assume people in many other occupations and circumstances could also benefit for this type of support.
If you’d like to read the full article in Skies, it’s here.
“The north wind made the Vikings”
I like this inspiration from Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Power to See it Through, as it appeared in a recent Farnam Street newsletter:
There is a Scandinavian saying which some of us might well take as a rallying cry for our lives: The north wind made the Vikings! Wherever did we get the idea that secure and pleasant living, the absence of difficulty, and the comfort of ease, ever of themselves made people either good or happy? Upon the contrary, people who pity themselves go on pitying themselves even when they are laid softly on a cushion, but always in history character and happiness have come to people in all sorts of circumstances, good, bad, and indifferent, when they shouldered their personal responsibility. So, repeatedly the north wind has made the Vikings.
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Thanks for reading Zanepost. My sketch this week is of a cat at a window.
If you know anyone who might be interested in this weekly letter, kindly share it. Previous posts are found on the main web page, linked here.
Have a good week,
-Renato.