Performance Breakthrough

Performance Breakthrough: 8th September 2022 - Biweekly newsletter

High Performing Diversity

The masterclasses I run are cohorts of 12.?They are all experts in diverse areas of sport including CEOs, Performance Directors, Analysts, Managers, Doctors, Athlete advisors, and Head coaches.?We explore and create a system for sustained performance that works in their world (home and work).??

Each group is a diverse ecosystem of high-performance sports in the same place at the same time.?The power of the masterclasses is that everyone who attends is not representing their role or their sport but their own lived experience and diverse approach to thinking, seeing, and problem-solving.?They are all masters and their title is not relevant for the period we are together.

Masterclasses are Classes of Masters for a reason.?Lived experience in high performance is everything.?We learn by doing.?One of my favourite stories about the importance of experience over theory was about someone who tried to learn to swim from Youtube.?After a long period of watching all the videos, studying the science, and learning the hydrodynamics of each stroke he was like a fully qualified biomechanist by the end.?Until he jumped in and almost drowned.?He tried everything he knew all at once and sank.?

Look at your team and uncover the deeper diversity.?Everyone has a unique orientation to life that is important to what we experience, but more important is the meaning those experiences give us.?As Aldous Huxley said; ‘our experience is not what happens to us but what we do with what happens to us’.?Diversity of action and meaning.?Transformational teams go deeper.

High performers are clear on definitions and the meaning behind jargon.?They do not assume their people understand the jargon.?Words like diversity.?Diversity for sustained performance is cognitive diversity that comes from our unique lived experiences.?What have people done, what meaning have they given to what they have done, and what perspective do they bring to our group as a result??Diversity.

High-performing teams have moved from transactional (diversity of labels) to transformative (diversity of thinking).?Labels are transactional.?Thinking is transformative.

If diversity is only seen as labels we miss the real opportunity in our people.?We don’t see the depth of their full colour palette.?When they have permission to be authentic and express the meaning they have discovered in their lived experience they contribute to our collective diversity of thinking.?This is key to making blind spots visible and uncovering opportunities.???

Transformative high performing teams have reframed diversity.?They make better decisions more often because of the power of the team.?Like sticks on fire.?Communication is different in high-performing teams.?They have moved past protecting their patch, representing their patch, or speaking up ‘on behalf of’.?There is more freedom, energy, and curiosity in the room. It is Gold for high-performing teams.

And when a team has permission to bring their whole self to the game, the game changes completely.?The flow happens. The diversity of opinion is freely shared.?The energy is alive.?The posturing is parked.?The roles and titles are parked.?And collective thinking identifies the real problems to solve, the right decisions to make, and the right action to take.

Transformational teams are in a different game!?Is this the game you are in?

Onwards,?

Richard

For more….

To find your breakthrough to sustained performance :

- 2022 Masterclass Series (Reply to find out more)

- Intro webinar each month.?https://bit.ly/35I5Fqk

- Free summary papers on?www.simplify2perform.com