Hero's Code

Focus first to pay the rent

I just read a blog by Keith Ferrazzi which really resonates with me; maybe because he begins by saying, “My biggest issue has always been my lack of focus.”  He goes on to say that he has to “assure that I have the footing and grounding I need.” 

Such good advice.

I consider myself a creative person.  New projects and learning new things has always been a delight for me but all too often I have let my attention shift to the new stuff before squeezing all the juice out of my last project.  Its only taken me about forty years to be really honest with myself in this regard.

Of course I am always going to love new projects but I have learned to find a new type of joy and satisfaction out of being creative in ways to finish projects off.

Quoting Keith again, he reports

Richard Branson once told me that in order to sustain variety and growth, we need a solid foundation that will always be there. Actually, when I asked him how he can lead such an eclectic business when everyone else preaches focus focus focus, he said, "Variety is fine once you can pay the rent.

In the UK economy at this point in time there are many doom and gloom merchants who anticipate a difficult 2008 for many people – and lets face it when enough people think and feel something will happen, it certainly makes it more likely. 

Personally speaking I have always seen opportunity everywhere and now, because I want to thrive in these times, I have to step back and learn to focus on project completion. 

Middle means mediocrity

Many service companies have challenges knowing how to price their offerings.  They tend to set their rates by looking at the both the high and low figures for their marketplace and then making a decision influenced by how they see themselves on the quality spectrum.  If they are a new business they might just rationalise that by seeking the middle ground they will be on safe territory.

There is a trap here that many fall into.  Following this recipe will tell their customers exactly how good the company really thinks it is.

Think about it. If that's how you are setting your price what you are saying to prospects is probably that you are not that great.  The high price position is actually pretty good because it says to clients - we are really good! And now all you have to do is live up to that.

The low price position is probably pretty good too providing you really can make a profit at that level.

The problem with a middle ground price is that you are saying "We aren't the best - and neither is our price - but we aren't the worst either."  Not the most compelling business position to be in.

If you price at the top end you are occupying a niche position and compete with relatively few if any competitors.  If you price to be cheapest - well there can only be one cheapest supplier and who really wants to be down there.  If you price in the middle the sad fact is you compete with just about everyone.

Screwing Your Relationship Capital

I recently had an opportunity to work with a team of specialists inside a large software company. This group of professionals provide services to executives only within their company and they were worried that these execs see them as an "endagered" species. In fact, I had been asked to attend to facilitate some ideas on how they might develop better relationships with their clients.

The brief was a bit vague and so I was grateful to sit in on their meeting prior to my bit. I listened to the language they used to describe the various relationships with their clients. It went something like this..

He is an insidious force They are the three dark forces He would stab us in the back Wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley He is a real problem child He is potentially very scary We are an ant on his butt He could make or break us

..and more like this.

When it was my turn to lead the session, they were looking for a set of recipies, tips and hints that would help them transform the relationships with their clients. I suppose I could just stick with what they expected - after all, my client was willing to pay for that kind of stuff.

Maybe its my age but there are definitely times when the client doesn't know what's best. I don't think I will be asked back. From my viewpoint, why should I teach them language patterns and tricks of influence when all they would do is layer them on top of a bunch of insincere feelings.

Surely the right thing for them to do if they want other people to change the way they perceive them is to change themselves first. This group couldn't believe that the most authentic and often effective way of inducing change in others is to "go there first"

Strategy

A friend of mine who is relatively new to coaching asked if I could advise him on something that was troubling him.  He had a coaching client who in the course of their meeting had a revelation that simply blew away a problem he had been facing.  My friend was concerned that he felt as if he had done nothing – he had simply been there for his client and in his heart wasn’t sure that he had deserved his fee. 

I found this quite funny because my friend was in the mistaken belief that coaching is necessarily about a state of “doing” – my feeling is that often mastery in coaching or consulting is very much about a state of “being.”  And that is very much worth paying for.

When a coach is thinking too much about what she or he has to do then invariably their focus is in the wrong place.  I want my attention to be totally on the client, providing them with a safe space to step back perhaps and get a new perspective on their issues.  The last thing I should be thinking about is “first I will ask this question and maybe then I will ask that question.”  The most powerful interventions are those where the client’s problems simply go away and the coach gets the blame for it.

As a coach we allow clients to get a different perspective on their issues – they are the ones that should solve their problems.

My Maori friend Hirini Reedy clued me into a neat metaphor for problem solving based on the patterns of the fern frond.  The idea stems from the warrior arts of the Maori people.

Nature has always taught humankind. The Maori are no different. The animals, the trees, the weather patterns, the waters and nature herself were all teachers of the warrior.  In the wananga (school) of life, the sky is the roof, the earth is the floor and all life forms are teachers.

The Zulu peoples used the horns of a buffalo as a strategic pattern to defeat the British army in the 19th Century.  The Maori used the fern frond as a tactical pattern to encircle, envelop and crush their enemies.  It could be used as a tactical maneuver or a weaponry sequence. Look at the fern frond. Watch how it grows and spirals. Examine the fractal, self-similar patterns of the small shoots.  Notice the same patterns emerging.

Apply the fern frond metaphor to a problem you may have.  Encircle it from different directions. Look at it through different eyes. Approach it from different angles. Upside - down. Back to front. Inside-out. Watch a solution sprout from within your consciousness.  If you can do this maybe you won’t need to pay a coach.

Sugar pill coaching

Once upon a time I was involved in designing clinical trials to estimate the benefit or efficacy of various types of medical interventions.  One of the strategies we deployed, as well as one of the trickiest issues to deal with, was that of the placebo and the placebo effect. 

At the back of my mind I have started to reflect on the placebo (expectancy) aspects of business coaching.

When many people hear of placebo they recall tales of sugar pills, deception and "playing tricks with the mind."  This stigma is really misplaced and you will see that this well-researched effect, along with the Hawthorne and other expectancy effects, has surprising relevance to many human interactions.

Based on the Latin for "I shall please," placebo in medicine takes many forms and has indeed been offered as a sugar pill, a saline injection and distilled water.  We have also seen placebo surgery where patients are anesthetised, cut open and stitched up again to appear as if they have had surgical interventions - even when they haven't - and all with beneficial effect. How many times have you heard sceptics dismiss responses to complementary and alternative therapies as "merely" placebo effects?  They need to think again.  There are deeper forces at work.

However, whether in the past you have considered the effect a curiosity, a scientific annoyance or a miracle, its power is becoming much harder to deny.  Now you have certainly heard of this idea and you may well have thought that it only works because the person receiving it doesn't know it's really a placebo - but it actually works because of belief.

Science is showing that the placebo effect is not just all in the mind.  In fact both the mind and the physical body are affected. When you really think about it, patients affected by pain and debility, beyond seeking a lotion or potion, look to doctors and allied health professionals for the words, gestures and deeds that reinforce their belief in medicine's power and generate an expectation that we will benefit from an intervention.  In other words they generate and transfer belief.  See any subtle relevance to coaching yet?

Belief, attitude and expectation - perhaps we could label these as "hope" - can be firmly embedded and shaped by the encounter between a patient and the universe of care they receive.  A change in the mind-set or attitude of a patient alters their brain chemistry, which in turn has a catalytic effect on many other body systems.  Hope is the leverage that can start a cascade of physical effects making improvement much more likely.  Hope produces an effect that can, for example, block pain by releasing endorphins and enkephalins that in turn influence fundamental processes such as respiration, circulation, elimination and motor function. 

Research in treating depression suggests that the placebo effect might account for up to one third of the clinical benefit of modern antidepressants.  Some authors claim an even stronger improvement.  If you are a coach are you starting to wonder if one third of your effectiveness comes via a similar channel?  Do you see the effect you have on your client's state?

In clinical science we are posing a question these days:-

"If now we accept that placebo is real - how can we harness this power and really direct it in clinical situations to support our other strategies?"

As a business coach I pose you this question to reflect on:-

"If now we accept that placebo is real - how can we harness this power and really direct it in coaching situations to support our other strategies?"

Another way of asking this question is how do we generate powerful belief in a coaching relationship? The issues to deal with before getting down to work are face credibility and contractual expectations.  Get these right in order to stack expectations in your favour and then all(?) you have to do is deliver.

Face credibility
There is no doubt that the coachee will consciously interpret the background and experience of the coach. Who the coach has worked with before will count for something because it builds or destroys belief.  Testimonials build belief and are the basic currency of coach credibility.  You might say that what really counts is when you are face to face.  However, the contractual issues and clarity of expectations need to be right or life is going to be difficult from the moment you sit down together.

Contractual expectations
One of main distinctions often made in business coaching is between remedial coaching and performance coaching.  In either case, it is vital to make sure that a coaching assignment will really be at the coachee's behest.  Have you ever tried to change the behaviour of an adult, successful or not, that didn't want to change?  How successful were you?  Probably not very!

Some might argue that the techniques a coach might use are probably the same, so why bother to make the distinction between remedial and performance coaching? 

Whoever is paying the bill, it is absolutely vital that the coachee desires to work with a coach.  It's a question of belief and expectation and you already know that these things have real power.  If the frame of reference provided for coaching is "I need to be fixed" or "I am being punished and I can only see this as a kick before the eventual push out the door" the outcomes from the process are not likely to be measured using the descriptors of exceptional performance.  If the mindset of the coachee is firmly fixed on "I have a problem" probably the expectations for the coaching process are going to be limited.  It's the reason that placebo works well with conditions like pain or fatigue that are often non-specific. It's easier for an individual to build belief in these circumstances than with a broken limb or cancer.

To me, a lot of the power of successful coaching is not at all in the surface detail.  The magic is not about whether a coach asks the "right" question, listens intently or follows some particular process; although of course these things do have value.

With a coaching master, there is an awful lot of power in things that don't smack of technique and probably wouldn't even be grasped by a casual observer.  The coach always works with his or her own state, gets his or her ego out of the way and will aim to simply "be fully present", to fan the flames of brilliance in the coachee.   

In learning this attitude from Michael Breen I saw a parallel with the martial arts where mastery is in a space beyond conscious technique.

I do like to work with people who are already high performers and my intention and state will be "how I can have the biggest impact right now?" Whether we sit together for five minutes or fifty I must trust myself to really make a difference.  If I am the placebo the attitude and belief start with me.  Without that attitude the spark of real transformation is missing.  I suspect that more than a third of the benefit of coaching can come from the attitude and mindset of the coach.

Success one step at a time

Most of our strong emotions arise from assuming the reality of something that is unreal - The Dalai Lama

Whenever you set out to achieve something that really matters to you, have you ever noticed that obstacles always seem to pop up to hold you back?  If you have noticed this effect then you can celebrate - because you are entirely normal.

Unfortunately some of us have maybe found that moving toward our goals was a bit like stepping on a garden rake in a Charlie Chaplin film.  You know - that one step forward that led to the rake handle sweeping up and hitting the hero in the face.

Is it any wonder that after a few forward steps like that, our subconscious wants to protect us from the experience?  Fundamentally, at least simplistically and at an unconscious level, life comes down to moving away from "pain" and toward "pleasure" - and  how we make up our deepest associations between events and these feelings.  In life it seems at times that we don't even need to step on the metaphorical rake to be punished - tell others our plans and they will do the job just as well.

But just think about this for a moment. 
Before you thought of something you wanted, did you have an obstacle to face?  The answer is no.  So where did the obstacle actually come from?  Well, it came from inside you because we actually identify our own obstacles.  The key to success is therefore what you choose do next.

Obstacles to achieving our goals are something we should welcome.  Rather than telling us that “you can’t have this!” obstacles are really telling us how we need to grow to get what we want.

Once we have the awareness that in every situation there is an opportunity as well as a obstacle we are free to use our creative potential.  This, when we call upon it and trust, can always gives us the power to find an answer to each challenge.  What many people lack here is belief - simple yet powerful.

The bigger the goal you have, the bigger the obstacles you will face.  So if you don’t want to have obstacles in your life then don’t try to achieve anything.  Hmm.. but you know that's not what you want because every cell in your body screams out that you have a purpose and - it is to create and excell in something.  So we do dream, we stretch, we aspire, we set goals.

A frequent difficulty for people is they know they need to set goals, they may even know how to set goals, but they can’t get themselves to actually do what’s necessary on a consistent basis.  They can’t seem to get the energy and the drive to move themselves forward. It's no wonder if every step is associated with "pain" and difficulty. 

They start off with great intentions but quickly fall back into their old ways.  Isn't it funny how the pain right now seems much more powerful a driver than the prospect of pleasure in the future.  So we procrastinate; we tell ourselves that things will be better tomorrow - so we wait and wait - and wait.

I frequently meet people who have ready every book on goal setting since the Bible and they still seem to have difficulties.  The trip for everyone is to look at the associations they have made for what is pleasure and pain - and what unconscious strategies are they using to motivate themselves or overcome hesitation.  These things really can be changed.

It can help to think of our passage through life as a “path” that stretches way back into our past and forward into our future.  As I close my eyes and think of the passage of my life I can visualise a line that moves from this moment in time – which I feel is straight in front of me – to the left which takes me into the past.  As I mentally move along that line I can relive again the major events of my life and reactivate the feelings that go with them.  But the line also stretches in my imagination to the right and into the future.  As I move along the line in my imagination I can visualise – and more – even create - my future history.  My feeling is always that what I put out there in the future is very much my path.

The line that links “Now” with the “Goal” is what we might call a direction.  It is straight as an arrow.  Unfortunately our path to achieve a goal is never actually quite like that straight line.  There is always deviation as we move in the direction of the goal.  Life just seems to be that way doesn’t it? 

For example, if we were travelling from London to New York by plane we would not fly in an exact straight line.  The pilot would have critical waypoints to reach along the way but from moment to moment the plane would not be exactly on a direct course.  Navigational systems and pilot intervention allow a planes course to be constantly corrected.

A bit like the watch that is stopped, the plane might be exactly on course just a couple of times that day but the direction is nevertheless good and with corrections along the route the destination is eventually reached safely.

If we think of reaching our goals, the simple example above is a good model to keep in mind.  What we learn from this model is as follows:-

• Make it a useful destination - for goodness sake why choose one that doesn't feel good?
• We need to acknowledge where we are right now.  This is the importance of self-awareness.  Every journey has a beginning and an end so lets not delude ourselves but be clear not just about the goal but about where we begin this journey.
• We need a goal in mind otherwise any direction and any result will have to do.
• Don’t expect to follow a straight line – we will need to navigate around some obstacles
• We need to be aware enough to notice when we are deviating too much from the correct direction.  We need some essential navigation equipment to keep us on track.
• We need to keep going for long enough to reach our destination; the quality of persistence is our fuel to keep us going on this journey.

In his book, "A passion for success," Kazuo Inamori reminds us that

"without effort, a great vision will remain just an unfulfilled dream. No worthwhile goal has ever been attained without strenuous meaningful labor"

When you find meaningful goals and simply learn to enjoy the journey and all its detours then all the pain of the effort falls away and its replaced with the pleasure of being on purpose. 

Empowerment matters

Everyone seems to be for it, few openly oppose it and yet I have seen lots of companies struggle with empowerment in action.  There is apparent nobility in the idea of some abstract person or other having more power to act.  Yet when it comes to their direct reports, many managers feel less than comfortable to allow true empowerment to flourish.

So what is empowerment anyway?  How often do we fool ourselves into thinking that we really “understand” what other people mean?  The devil is in the detail and you know that words have power.

I was reading an article in the journal “Patient Education and Counseling” which reported the results of research that examined doctors’ use of euphemisms and their impact on patients’ beliefs about their health.  One of the current trends in primary care is to respect patient autonomy and move toward shared decision making when it comes to treatment. However, there is a bit of problem here.

Research shows that patients do better when doctors use the phrase ‘there is fluid on your lungs because your heart is not pumping hard enough’ rather than the more direct, medically correct – and blunt term – ‘heart failure.’  The emotive power of words can damage our health.  They can also damage our personal and organisational wealth.

If you want to explore this idea for yourself pop into your nearest organisation facing the “change or slow death” dilemma.  Interview a sample of senior managers and ask them what they mean – specifically - by empowerment. We might expect there would be a reasonable consensus when it comes to this meaning, but like me you might be surprised.

In his book “Deep Change”, Robert Quinn found that views of empowerment split into two main camps that we could call “mechanistic” or “organic.”

The first group believe that empowerment is about delegation and accountability – a top-down process in which senior management produce a vision and they then communicate specific plans and assignments to the rest of the team.  In this approach, decisions are delegated to the lowest appropriate level.

The second group believe that empowerment is about risk taking, growth and change.  In this viewpoint empowerment was about trusting people and tolerating their imperfections.  When it came to rules, these managers understood that existing structures might just act as a barrier to excellence.  Rather than asking permission, managers in this group expected their subordinates to seek forgiveness when necessary.  In a real way, organisational members were expected to act as entrepreneurs and risk takers.

The trick here is not go to get fooled into thinking that this model or any other is the truth.  Like all models, this one might be a useful lie. Good enough until a better one comes along.
The point is, if you are in an organisation undergoing change that talks about empowering its people yet without too much to show for all the talk, you might just check what managers really believe when they talk about empowerment.

Who will die for our vision?

Isn't language wonderful?  The way we communicate person to person can bring us to tears or take us to war.  We can change the path of our lives based on hearing a few words. 

Even realising this now, brings enormous power.  We no longer should hallucinate that we "know what people mean" just because of what we heard them say.  We can start to spot more and more the lack of detail in what people tell us.  One of the gifts that NLP brought me is greater awareness of how we can all use language to greater effect.  If we are going to be involved in crafting vision statements we need all the help we can get.

Recently I was asked by an acquaintance to "take a look at" their vision and mission statement.  The senior managers of this company had given themselves three months to come up with a vision statement.  I imagine it is no surprise to you to learn that they had spent a couple of months, produced dozens of drafts and they still felt no closer to something they could really live with.

Now not too long ago, securing a position in a company like this one would have meant a job for life.  Things have changed.  Members of this organisation, like many others, are facing an uncertain future and the notion of a generating a meaningful vision was a sound one.  After all, a vision could allow alignment of the hearts and minds of everyone for the greater good. 

However, in so many organisations there are problems with this.  First of all, the visioning effort rarely seems to come up with something that is persuasive, exciting or passionate.  Those involved produce a vision without life.  Worst of all, is the tendency, even when the senior team do manage to generate a vision they can live with - they don't live with it!  The CEO or top team behave in ways that are not consistent with their communicated vision.

Behaviour which is incongruent with the words and spirit of a vision is an important issue.  A friend of mine  once asked a similar group of leaders, "Who is willing to die for this vision?"  No one spoke up from the uncomfortable silence.  A bit extreme perhaps - but there is an important point here.

In most, if not all teams, there are political undertones.  When engaged in a visioning exercise they will tend to forge a bunch of abstract generalities into a statement to which no one will object.  Along the way, the words get fuzzy and the passion in the details gets lost - all in the name of avoiding pain.

I just wonder though, whether a worthwhile vision ever came from an individual or group engaged in painless compromise.

Compromise statements are empty words that are not inspiring because they are not visionary at all.  Statements that are not motivating don't produce the desired change of behaviour and everyone all too clearly sees that the talk is meaningless.

Developing a vision is extremely difficult because it involves confronting any lack of integrity that exists in the system.  Few people seem to be up to this exercise.  When people in an organisation express a need for clarity and a useful vision, it might just irritate the senior team who may feel inadequate about their ability to provide just that.

Careful wishes

Last week was interesting because it allowed me to see into a world that I don't often get to play in these days.  I held a research methodology course for a group of new post-graduate research students at my local university. 

Now I don't know about you, but many people who aren't involved in research tend to think that it is difficult.  After all, the idea is that these folks are working at the edge of the "state of the art" in a field of activity.  It's a case of the StarTrek mentality - they have to "boldly go!" and the emotion that this invokes is sometimes more fear and uncertainty than useful curiosity. 

The students I worked with came along to day one with an expectation that "This  is going to be a difficult week!"  If I achieved anything at all last week, it was to install a better belief about their personal ability to develop an excellent research project and enjoy the process.  The curious think for all of us is that we often don't notice now the beliefs that don't serve any purpose but to hold us back.

I generally tell people these days that I will refuse to work with them if they are miserable and that our work together should be fun - or I don't want to play.  Now - sometimes I get blank looks - but more and more as the week goes on we will all find greater energy, greater progress and better ideas are just on tap. 

Although I might not get into explaining why fun can seem to work so well -after all, it is much better to get the realisation by doing certain things and seeing the results for themselves - the simple answer is that our state determines the behaviours that are possible for us all.  And - our behaviours lead directly to our results. 

Now what I mean by fun needs to be appropriate to the situation. The point is, to choose a state that is resourceful.

I don't know about you, but I meet people all the time who want help with goal setting or something like that.  They have a problem and they wan't that to go away, but they haven't realised that it's best to always think through what they really do want.  People make the big mistake of thinking of what they haven't got or what they can't do.  They have a little voice that pops up and talks to them. Their self-talk stops them from sleeping and keeps drawing their attention on this miserable gritty, grimy problem stuff.

They need to understand, to dream of what is possible instead.  Now they know they don't like this internal dialogue and want to shut it off.  Yes you can shut it off, but you can also tune to a different voice.  In his book "Time for a Change" Richard Bandler points out.

They could talk inside themselves like Mozart. They'd have an opera motivating them. Then they'd want to keep all their voices. They'd have a great laugh like Mozart. Their world would resonate with music and excitement instead of nasty voices whining and screeching.

When people focus just on what they want and need in their lives that is exactly what they receive - more want and more need.

Learning from sport - fear of failure

The world of sport is a very rich source of inspiration for business people if they choose to tap into it.  Many business people I know deserve to be considered as business athletes but many have much to learn about managing their personal energy levels for peak performance.

You know, we all tend to get so close to our own problems and issues that it can be useful to glance across at how a champion athlete performs under intense pressure.  These individuals know all about commitment, persistence and preparation and certainly know how to deal with the prospect of failure without fear. 

I was watching the World Athletic Championship over the weekend and it really changed my perspective on my own current challenges and issues.  It's a fantastic reminder of the importance of our state and its effect on performance.

Imagine the scenario. Thousands are watching you in the stadium and millions around the world are focusing on how you perform. As you are in the public eye, any hesitation or slip will be echoed in the newspapers and used to punish you time and time again - so you had better be good.  Why is that the human species will punish us again and again for every single mistake.

Let's say your event is the pole vault.  You have practiced for thousands of hours and the technical aspects of your performance are honed to a razor's edge.  You are physically fit and your opening attempt is sure to be well within your capabilities. And yet, as you stand on the runway you are vaguely aware of the signs of fear overtaking you.

Fear of failure produces tension; and tension constricts the blood flow and slows the reflexes.  You notice your breathing is much too shallow and this is resulting in  contraction of opposing muscle groups and a reduction in coordination.  As fear surfaces your clarity of focus becomes fuzzy.  You monkey mind lets random thoughts intrude and disturb the wellspring of your energy.

Your state - that package of what you feel and imagine, combined with that little voice of self-talk - is not as resourceful as it might be. Yet you know that you need to be in a 100% resourceful state to succeed with your vault.

With visualisation and mental rehersal you manhandle your state as close to 100% as you can manage and set off down the runway.  Soaring gracefully over the bar, everything looks great but sadly your trailing leg grazes the bar and in the last instant it is knocked down.

Here you lie - the bar is down and so are you. Your state is at 0% and in two minutes you have to go again.  And when you go again, because you are a high performer, you will get your state back to 100%.

This is the essence of peak performance. The ability to rapidly and effortlessly get to a 100% resourceful state at will.  As you are a champion in the making you use your two minutes wisely. You are in tune with your body and your mind. Change one - and you influence the other.  You know your stuff after all. All you need do is trust yourself. And yet trusting yourself just now is not so easy as it was on the practice ground.

You make peace with failure in this moment and break the cycle of tension and failure.  It is never enough to merely tolerate failure and it doesn't help to be angry with yourself. By recalling that life is all about learning from failure, and you have failed many times in training you recognise that this is no big deal. You adjust your breath. You love yourself as you recognise that flow state returning. You adjust your posture now and breathe calmly as the tension melts away.

Athletes at the highest level learn to make peace with failure. They treat it like an old friend playing a practical joke.

Just think about this for a second. The greatest inventors, artists, athletes - and business people have all failed many times.  The key is never to gamble with failure but to recognise and manage risk.

On my bookshelf are a number of books on the theme of "body-mind mastery" and one of my favourites in by Dan Millman.   Dan is a former world trampoline champion, martial arts  instructor and best-selling writer and has some interesting comments on the issue of fear of failure.

Dan notes that in his career as an athlete he would fail at least fifty times a day. Failure was simply recognised as an essential part of the learning process and a useful signpost to find out what was working and what wasn't working.  In the world of business it is unusual to find quite the same attitude to failure.

As young children, most of us of my age were taught to fear failure - especially public failure.  But isn't the devil in the detail?  Today our school system seems determined to avoid labelling students as failures - the lastest UK trend is to describe - after Herbert Kaufman - "failure is only postponed success.."

Do yourself a favour this week. Just choose to manhandle your state to maximum resourcefulness a few times. Before that important meeting, telephone call or presentation consciously apply the lessons of sport. Calm your breathing, relax your shoulders, change your posture to reflect the task. Your unconscious knows what to do. Use your own mind for a change.

Many successful business people I have met use a personal fear of failure to drive their success but this is not a strategy I recommend. 

An extremely successful client used his very real fear of "letting other people down" to drive his behaviour as a CEO.  The adrenalin produced by this behaviour felt good to him and his business results were special.  Unlike the physical athlete, this man had no way to burn off the habitual hormones of his behaviour.  We reflected together on how this way of influencing his state could lead to premature ageing, illhealth and even death.  We all have the means within us to be resourceful, successful and free of fear as we perform at our best.