Performance = Potential - Interference
In her book Naked at Work: A Leader's Guide to Fearless Authenticity, Danessa Knaupp tells the story of Tim Gallwey, who authored The Inner Game of Tennis in the 1970s. Gallwey claimed he could teach anyone to play competitive tennis in less than an hour, and managed to prove his point on live television. Within 17 minutes, he had his subject, a nervous, middle-aged, overweight housewife who had never picked up a racket in her life, playing tennis and playing it well.
He did this by implementing his Inner Game method - the formula at the top of this post.
Performance = Potential - Interference
Danessa Knaupp writes that Gallwey, who is a sought-after speaker and trainer today - "suggests that it is our inner process-our self-talk, fears, doubts, lapses in focus, or limiting beliefs-that gets in the way of achieving our goals. His method, outlined in his first and later books, moves attention away from the negative swirl inside our heads and to the task at hand."
His method is about getting out of your head and into the game, a concept we hear all the time and take for granted now, 50 years later. But Gallwey was the first to theorize it and prove it. "Your performance at any given task-playing tennis, developing strategy, or mobilizing a team-is simply a matter of your potential to perform that task (what you know) minus what's in your way (your interference)."
Gallwey says of his teaching breakthrough: "When I replaced the traditional control mechanism of should and shouldn't with invitations to try heightened awareness and relaxed concentration, the student learned naturally by using what felt good and what worked. This is how we all learned as children to crawl, walk, and run. In the use of simple awareness, three things reliably increased: rate of learning, enjoyment of play, and the student's confidence that they could learn from experience."
Potential (what you know and what you can do) is seldom the problem in performance, mostly because what you don't know or haven't mastered yet is more visible. It's how managers rate their workforce in performance reviews. You can learn skills and get advice from other professionals to increase your potential.
But your interference is seldom visible because it takes place inside your head. Your negative self-talk is part of it. "I can't believe I said that." "I'm not ready for this." "What if they don't like what I'm proposing?"
But even the best of teachers/mentors/managers can contribute to this inner interference. Knauss writes about Dr. Martin Levy, who is a professor of orthopedic surgery at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. He specifically designed his surgeon training program to eliminate interference. Dr. Levy realized that during surgical training sessions, "both praise and criticism drew students' attention away from the procedure to what their teacher thought of them."
Dr. Levy eventually adopted a handheld clicker like the ones used to train dogs for feedback. If the surgical trainee performed something correctly, the trainer would click. No click meant the trainee would try a different method next time. Over time, the surgeons that experienced clicker reinforcement repeated correct behaviors faster and more often than surgeons receiving verbal praise.
It's a revolutionary idea - that trainers and well-meaning managers might be adding to the distracting self-talk inside workers' heads.
The key to upping your inner game is identifying your interference. Once you determine what messages are getting in the way of your game, you're much more likely to be able to improve your performance.
And if part of the interference is a well-meaning coach, mentor, manager, or partner, try one of these scripts.
- "Your coaching has been so helpful. I'd like to try it on my own now, to see if I can get an intuitive feel for what's right and what's not working."
- "I'm thinking that your feedback has me more focused on you in a meeting than on the client. Can I try it solo for a couple of meetings to see if staying focused on the client's feedback helps me perform better?"
- "Let's stop counting steps and just try dancing with each other during the next song."
Skeptical? Here's a video clip from 1970 with Gallwey's tennis demonstration.
Candace's background includes Human Resources, recruiting, training and assessment. She spent several years with a national staffing company, serving employers on both coasts. Her writing on business, career and employment issues has appeared in the Florida Times Union, the Jacksonville Business Journal, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and 904 Magazine, as well as several national publications and websites. Candace is often quoted in the media on local labor market and employment issues. View all posts by candacemoody