Performance Breakthrough

Performance Breakthrough: 25th August 2022 - Biweekly newsletter

Skillful Coping

Some years ago I spent a fascinating afternoon with Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus at UC Berkley.?They are the originators of the research behind Novice to Expert. Hubert wrote a book called Skillful Coping he sent me afterward.?I refer to this often in my system work focused on sustained performance.

Skillful coping is what we learn through experience in high performance.?It is the gift that we are given through working in teams, losing in public, preparing for the next event, and continually showing up no matter what.?High performance is deeply meaningful.?It is more than a medal and more than a sport.?We know that.?It is the Holy Grail to find the flow and ‘sweet spot’ of high performance in ourselves and the people we work with and compete with.??

I continue to research the differences between medallists and non-medallists (in and out of sport) and the system they are in.?I have concentrated mostly on the learned skills.?What had they learned by the end that we could benefit from knowing at the beginning.??

One aspect that has stood out is the relationship of meaning with stress.?Meaningful events come with stress.?Research proves that. And in high performance, we know that!?A Gallup study in 2006 polled 125000 people in 121 countries and found the happiest people were not without stress but had coped through stress.??

A meaningful life has stress according to the research, and you probably know this from your own experience.?Researchers at Stanford later asked the question of whether people found their life meaningful.?Those who reported lives that were meaningful had also experienced the most stressful events.?Meaning and stress are linked.?But importantly coping with stress was the key to living a meaningful life.?When we see people struggle with coping we see the meaning of their lives become covered, confused, and concealed.?Well-being and coping are linked.??

And for those of us in high performance, we know this.?The art of getting better with stress (anti-fragility) is a key attribute of sustained performers.?They, like all people who have found meaning in their world, are not free of stress but have learned to cope and get better as a result.?Not only individually but more importantly systemically the organisation and team have collectively learned how to cope and get better.?As one Performance Director said to me ‘our wellbeing now meets you at the door, we know what to do’.?

Sustained performance is anti-fragile.?Anti-fragility is like a bone; it gets stronger with stress.?And meaning and growth get stronger with the learned skill of coping.??

And our responsibility in high performance is to help our people leave high performance knowing they are ‘more’ and not ‘less’.?That the majority of stressful events can be coped with and we can get better.?And if we can’t cope, we accept this and get help.?Skillful coping.??

Onwards,?

Richard

For more….

To find your breakthrough to sustained performance :

- 2022 Masterclass Series (Reply to find out more)

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