Lessons from a Grandmaster

You're here because you have already achieved some outer success and reached your current executive leadership position. But growth doesn't have to stop here. There is a thrill and satisfaction in challenging yourself, stretching and seeing how much you can achieve. Have an impact and make a contribution.

The talents, skills and tools that have got you to this point will not necessarily take you further. Or the approaches you've used to achieve this success may have been expensive in terms of time, energy, stress and effect on your relationships. You need new or upgraded power tools to make sure you can sustain or advance your position more easily.

The High-Performance Executive Newsletter introduces these tools, so that you can level up, as video-gamers would say. It draws on many areas of solid research into high-performance in business, including neuroscience, psychology, physiology, trauma therapy and flow-state study.

The three essential areas for high performance are neuro-regulation (to get and stay calm), clear the negative self-talk and the beliefs that create them (including imposter syndrome), and create new success habits.

This week we're looking at developing mastery.

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Irene is a Grandmaster bridge player (yes it’s an official title). She has represented the country 5 times at International competitions and she is a World Bridge Olympiad.

The card game of bridge is absolutely her passion.

Irene is also my mother. Which means that I’m lucky enough to have an insider’s view of how she got to that level and what kept her there. Understanding peak performance, psychology and neuroscience is my passion, so exploring her mastery is a delicious treat for me!

I’ll look at what she knows about how to become a Bridge Grandmaster and then look at what she doesn’t know about her own mastery of bridge.

I invite you to look for the parallels between her bridge mastery and your high-performance skills and lifestyle.

Consistency

It took my mother 30 years from to become a Grandmaster.

Throughout that time, she played 3-4 evenings a week and played in weekend bridge competitions at least twice a month. The time and effort spent developed her skill as you would expect.

In the business world, consistent time, effort and dedication lead to developing experience and skill. These are not just your technical skills but also the skills of self-awareness and self-management.

Skill

Bridge has graced my mother a prodigious memory.

After each event (10-15 games) she can recall which of the 52 cards dealt were held by each of the four players, who bid what (to set the contract for the game), who played what card and the order in which they were played.

She insists that this is the secret to mastery in bridge; going through every game played and evaluating the bidding and the playing. Checking every move and decision to try and improve.

In personal mastery, this review and improvement step is important to continually develop and grow. Although self-development does not require such dissection of every move and decision that bridge does.

The System

The goal of analysing every bridge hand is to develop and refine playing skills and also the contract bidding system.

Bridge is played by two pairs who communicate information about the cards they hold using a bidding system.

A bid tells your partner the strength of your hand, the distribution of card suits, and can even ask a question. It will be spoken out loud as ‘two hearts,’ for example.

The agreed meaning of each bid is written out for your opposition to read. Each pair have their own system, and my mother’s system fills two sides of A4 paper.

Every analysis of a hand tests and refines a partnership’s system; that not-at-all secret formula they use to beat the opposition.

On an individual level, we make decisions and act according to our own belief system. This is our private model of the world, some parts of which are unknown even to us (they are unconscious beliefs), and these beliefs can be changed with the right methods.

While you don't need to review your beliefs continually, at least one thorough look at aligning your beliefs to support your success is essential if you want to operate at high levels of performance.

The Why

Of course, my mother spent all this time and energy all for the love of the game. Bridge has been endlessly fascinating to her.

She has always had a bridge book near, and she still reads them every day. It’s clearly not a chore for her!

My mother’s passion for bridge has seen her playing it, teaching it and giving back by organising bridge weekend competitions.

A passion for what you're doing is a huge driver for success.

I’m sure you’ve seen similar principles for excellence many times before. Here are a couple I spotted that my mother wouldn’t have thought to mention.

The Wildcard

When playing at the International?level, every player is very skilled. Apart from the odd human error, the competing pairs follow their own bidding systems predictably.

Beginners have less skill, may forget the bidding system, may not count cards properly and are very unpredictable. Usually they lose to experienced players, but very occasionally they win. The cards fall just right that their mistake happens to get the best results, against all expectations.

When I asked my mother how she felt about this wildcard luck, she just shrugged. “Sometimes it happens, and you just let it go.”

Her secret is to let go and accept these anomalies and carry on developing her system. To know when to switch off her fierce competitiveness and let the oddities slide.

… unless it taught her something new about her?system that would be useful when everyone was playing as expected.

How you deal with wildcard situations has a huge impact on your performance;

If you are plagued by the memory of when things went wrong, then you will be distracted and stressed by the past. Constantly. It will sap your energy and confidence.

But if you can quickly accept it and let go, then your time and energy will be focused on making the present great. Long-term peak performance requires the abililty to let go.

The Beginning

Two years ago I found my mother reading a bridge book for beginners.

I smiled to myself, thinking that she was searching for a possible tiny gold nugget - a standard high-performer's move.

Then I had second thoughts. She’d been playing bridge for 40 years by then, reading bridge books continuously the whole time. Surely there were no new nuggets in a beginners book?

Intrigued, I asked her why she was reading it.

‘Oh,’ she replied, ‘I wanted to remember how beginners think.’

She wanted to step out of her so-well-established way of thinking and look at her favourite game from another point of view. Not attached to being right, but interested to explore the beginning again.

The business world is changing so rapidly these days, that being flexible and willing to change and adapt has become a fundamental skill for high-performance.

I’ve been delighted to take these lessons in bridge mastery and apply them to my business and to my clients.

Thanks Mum!

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What I’ve loved this week:

New Scientist (weekly magazine)

The New Scientist has been my favourite magazine for decades.

It is exceptionally well-written and presents the latest advances in science and technology that a lay person can understand.

It keeps me up to date with advances in neuroscience, psychology and physiology so that I can continually test and improve my Inner Success programme.

It also satisfies my curiosity and interest in new discoveries in every area of science. A great read!

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An action step you can do today…

Developing Your Passions

My mother never connected her passion for bridge with her career. But you can cultivate passions relevant to your work to give you a huge internal advantage.

Write down twenty-five things you are curious about. By curious I mean if you had a spare weekend, you'd be interested in reading a few books on the topic, going to lectures on it and talking to some experts.

Make these topics specific, not general. For example, not neuroscience but specifically the interaction between memory and dopamine. The more detailed and specific the topic the better.

Look at your list for common themes, connections or intersections. When you find these combined curiosities, you have an area you can cultivate as a passion. Spend a little time each day reading books on the subject, listening to podcasts or watching talks on it.

As you learn more, new facets emerge that you get curious about. This brings your brain's dopamine reward system online as you get answers to more questions. It builds a natural drive for the subject without feeling like it's effort.

Just like my mother reading books on bridge for over 40 years, a fascinating and pleasurable way to continually grow and improve.

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We'll cover more on mastery in future issues.

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I’m Dr Tara Halliday, Imposter Syndrome Specialist.

I’ve been a holistic therapist and high-performance coach for over 21 years.

I'm the creator of the Inner Success for Execs programme - the fastest and best solution to imposter syndrome.

My book, Unmasking: The Coach’s Guide to Imposter Syndrome was an Amazon #1 bestseller in 2018.

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Check out the Inner Success for Execs programme for fast 'up levelling' of your internal leadership tools.

https://www.completesuccess.co.uk

Think you may have imposter syndrome? Take this free quiz to find out:

https://bit.ly/ImpostorQuiz

Want to fast-track and have a chat about your inner success, book a quick 15-minute call here:

https://bit.ly/callTara

Have an excellent, refreshing and recharging weekend!

Tara

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