What Business Can Learn From Sport Psychology: Ten Lessons for Peak Professional Performance

What Business Can Learn From Sport Psychology: Ten Lessons for Peak Professional Performance

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by Dr Martin Turner & Dr Jamie Barker

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[Smashwords Edition]

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Published in 2014 by Bennion Kearny Limited.

Copyright © Bennion Kearny Ltd 2014

ISBN: 978-1-909125-91-9

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that it which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Bennion Kearny has endeavoured to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Bennion Kearny cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Published by Bennion Kearny Limited, 6 Woodside, Churnet View Road, Oakamoor, Staffordshire, ST10 3AE

www.BennionKearny.com

Table of Contents

Title Page

Important Message for eBook buyers - The Downloadable Workbook

Other Books from Bennion Kearny

Dedication

Foreword

About the Authors

Acknowledgements

Preface: Discovering The MAPP (Map to Achieving Peak Performance)

What is Sport Psychology?

What Can Business Learn From Sport Psychology?

What Is This Book About?

What Are The 10 chapters About?

How Can I Use This Book?

Book Structure

A Winning State of Body and Mind

Chapter 1: Know Thyself

What Happens to the Mind Under Pressure?

Task 1

Task 2

Take a Look in the Mirror

What Happens to the Body Under Pressure?

Challenge State

Threat State

Brief Summary

Most Important Point

The Next Chapter is Vital

Chapter 2: Be Challenged

Explaining The MAPP

The MAPP for Success

Barack Obama and the First Presidential Debate in 2012

First, the Demands (these were the same for both candidates)

Now, the Resources

Explaining The MAPP cont...

Challenge MAP(eak)P

Threat MAP(oor)P

Learning to be Challenged

Brief Summary

Most Important Point

Chapter 3: Think Smart

Woman Troubles

Thought Experiment

ABC

Problem Philosophies and Beliefs

Destructive Thinking

1. Recognize

2. Evidence

3. Logic

4. Pragmatism

5. Replace

Smart Thinking

Destructive vs. Smart

The Badness Barometer

6. Commit

Smart Summary

Most Important Point

Chapter 4: Tip The Balance

Resources

Does Tipping the Balance Work?

Tim the Golfer

Dave the Rugby Player

The Climb

Brief Summary

Most Important Point

Chapter 5: Be Confident

Kobe’s 81

I Prescribe Self-Confidence

Is Your Confidence Robust?

Self-Confidence vs. Arrogance

A Place to Start

Knowledge is Power

Remember the Time…

See It, Feel It, Do It

My Visualization Ammunition

Two things that went well today…

One thing I want to improve, and how it will be addressed…

1. Highlight Reel

2. Real-time Best Performance

3. Smart Imagery

Practice Makes Permanent

It’s Not All About You

Body language

An Ode to Self-Doubt

Brief Summary

Most Important Point

Chapter 6: Be In Control

Your Performance Environment…

Control is In Hand

1. Psychological State

Self-Talk

Empty Your Head

Triggers

2. Preparation

Your Pre-Performance Routine

Bill Walsh, NFL Coach of the Year 1981 and 1984

3. Effort

4. Communication

Delivering the Right Messages

Receiving the Right Messages

5. If-Then

Your If-Then Plans

Why it Works

Brief Summary

Most Important Point

Chapter 7: Focus On Success

Approaching Performance

Think The Right Way: Overthinking

Think Simple

Don’t Say Don’t

What White Bear?

Empty Your Head

Be Ironic to Fight Irony

Create and Take Opportunities

The Big First Three

The Challenge Strategy

My Challenge Strategies

Some Challenge Strategy Examples

Brief Summary

Most Important Point

Chapter 8: Self-Regulate

An Aside About Biofeedback

Heart Rate

A. Relax

1. Muscle Relaxation

2. Focused Breathing

3. Centering / (Centre-ing)

4. Hypnosis and Self-Hypnosis

B. Activate

1. Activation and Coping Imagery

2. Music

3. Psyching up

Do it

C. Re-interpret

Brief Summary

Most Important Point

Chapter 9: Adapt

Public Speaking

Evading the Sabre Toothed Tiger

Choose Pressure

1. Seek Pressure

Desensitization

My Pressure Hierarchy

2. Create Pressure

3. Stay In There

4. Phone a Friend

For Leaders

1. Personal-Disclosure Mutual-Sharing

2. Pressure Testing

3. Improvement Comparisons

Brief Summary

Most Important Point

Chapter 10: Look Forward

Spot Check

Performance Situation

Philosophy

Demands

Resources

Mind and Body Reactions

Consequences

Brief Summary

Appendix 1

Assessing My Response to Pressure

Now for the harder maths...

Appendix 2

PDMS Instructions for Group Confidence

PDMS Instructions for Pressure

Appendix 3

Increased Pressure Instructions

Important Message for eBook buyers - The Downloadable Workbook

This book provides various resources which the reader should ‘fill in’ to help develop their mental skills. However, you are reading an electronic version of the book, so actually filling in these exercises is rather challenging!

Therefore, please feel free to download and print the accompanying (fuller size) workbook that contains these resources.

You can download the PDF Workbook file from the Publisher’s website:

www.BennionKearny.com/psych.pdf

Other Books from Bennion Kearny

Coaching For The Zone: A Practitioner’s Guide to Coaching for Business and Sport by Ted Garratt

Many people think The Zone is a matter of luck; it either happens or it doesn’t. Because of this they don’t plan for the Zone and when it happens don’t know how to repeat it. In Coaching For The Zone leading coach practitioner and trainer Ted Garratt guides the reader through the process of training clients to enter The Zone. He demonstrates how to coach for The Zone to equip individuals with the skills and confidence to break through barriers and transform their abilities.

Coaches will also gain valuable insights into their own practice. Helping others get into The Zone is a fantastic way for a Coach to learn more about themselves and to dramatically improve their skills.

The book is split into two sections. The first section follows an 8-part coaching programme with a coachee in a business environment, but also includes examples and case histories from sport. The second section contains Key Skills and Exercises that the practitioner can use when coaching clients for The Zone.

Awful Presentations: Why We Have Them and How to Put Them Right by Barry Brophy

How many awful presentations have you attended? How many have you given?

Awful presentations are too often the norm, with swathes of text on the screen, presenters speaking over everyone’s heads, little interaction, no stories, poor images and a bored audience. Why?

In this book, presentation specialist Barry Brophy explains why competent people give hapless presentations. And it’s not because of nerves. Most of what you thought you knew about presentations is wrong; successful presentations are not about speaking but listening. They are not about your knowledge but the audience’s needs. They are not about ditching PowerPoint but using it properly. They are not about overcoming fear when speaking but overcoming caution when preparing.

The truth is you already have the skills to present – your conversational skills – and anyone can craft a spellbinding presentation. Conversations work whereas presentations invariably fail, and this book explains the hidden mental habits which can lead you to misuse your already-perfected speaking skills when presenting.

The 7 Master Moves of Success by Jag Shoker

One of the most common clichés about success - that it is a journey, not a destination - has concealed one of its most defining qualities. Success really is a dynamic and ever-moving process. It is about making the right moves at the right time.

In this absorbing and uplifting book, Jag Shoker – a leading performance coach to business leaders, sports professionals and creative performers – brings the science and inspiration behind success to life. He reveals the 7 Master Moves that combine to create the high performance state that he calls Inspired Movement: the ability to perform an optimal series of moves to create the success you desire most.

Drawing widely on scientific research, his extensive consultancy experiences, and insights into the successes of top performers in business, sport, and entertainment, 7 Master Moves is a synthesis of the leading-edge thinking, and paradigms, that underpin personal performance and potential.

The Hidden Motor: The Psychology of Cycling by Martijn Veltkamp

Cycling is one of the world’s great sports. From The Tour de France to the Paris-Roubaix to velodromes across the globe, it encompasses many disciplines: from climbing mountains to massed sprints to the loneliness of the time trial.

But what separates race winners from the nearly men? Top cyclists are physically similar, train the right way, eat the right things, and yet there is something that separates them. It’s their hidden engine – not a secret mechanical aid – but what’s between their ears that makes the difference.

In this superbly-researched and accessible book for fans of cycling, psychologist and cycling author Martijn Veltkamp gets to the heart of the supremely demanding and challenging sport of professional cycling, and the mental side of performance that drives success. He addresses fundamental questions in an easy-to-read way, including: what motivates riders and how does motivation affect performance? Where does a rider’s fear of descending originate from, and how do you get rid of it? Why do some cyclists succumb under pressure, whilst others do not? Why is cycling on your own mentally more challenging than when in a group?

Written for connoisseurs of cycling, but equally rewarding for general readers, the book examines cycling from the viewpoint of classic psychological studies, and stage and race histories, as well as interviews with former professional riders. The Hidden Motor is a must-read book for anyone who wants to know all about this most exceptional of sports.

This book is the English language translation of De Verborgen Motor, originally published in The Netherlands in 2015.

Dedication

For Jayne, always and forever.

Martin

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For Emma, Lucy, Molly and the rest of my family, for all your love and support

Jamie

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For Professor Marc Jones, whose thoughts and ideas have inspired both of us and much of this book.

Both

Foreword

Business people love sport, not only for the marketing and sponsorship opportunities it brings but also because it allows business people to live vicariously through the exploits of others. With most major sports sponsorships - if you look deeply enough - you will find a detailed business case conveniently supporting the idea of sponsoring the Managing Director’s favourite sport or team. The London Olympics showed how business people and sports people can not only work together to produce an amazing games but also how they can both learn from each other as well as recognise how much they have in common. This works both ways as the concepts of Kaizen (The Japanese approach to continuous improvement pioneered in the 1960s and 1970s) and GE’s Six Sigma approach are very similar to British Cycling’s concept of looking for hundreds of minor improvements to lead to competitive advantage.

Technological changes over the past 5-10 years have made a significant difference to the pressures faced by individuals in their working lives. This has meant that there is a lot less certainty and job security as jobs are more easily moved to the cheapest location or replaced by technology completely. People are also finding it more difficult to switch off as they can now access their emails at any time of the day or night in any part of the world. These two factors, together with many more, have led to increased levels of reported stress and even depression amongst the workforce as people struggle to cope with the perceived demands.

Sport and the lessons of high performance in sport offer great opportunities to engage and motivate employees to both manage the stresses of working as well as improve their own performance. In both sport and business there is a tendency to prioritise technical or physical training over the mental aspects of the game or business approach. The majority of ‘Leadership Programmes’, especially those run by large business schools, are watered down MBAs with little focus on real leadership. In sport there is a lot of talk about how ‘it is all in the mind’ at this level but little evidence of structured and planned training plans for improving the mind’s ability to cope. The feelings and physical reactions an individual experiences in the lead up to an important interview for a job they really want, or a game they feel they must win, are the same. In this way the football managers who used to criticise players who admitted to feeling stressed by saying ‘They should see what it’s like to face redundancy’ are wrong. To the body and mind it’s the same.

Martin and Jamie’s book is a valuable contribution to helping business understand how we can support our employees to achieve their potential and manage difficult situations. Most leaders in business will have faced situations where there is a star sales person, software engineer, or trader, who is disruptive to the team and faced the dilemma of how to manage this. Leaders will all have had people in their teams who have great potential but don’t seem to deliver when it matters due to nerves or a lack of confidence. Leaders will have people in their teams who have great vision and talent but lack the ability to turn this into actions and deliverables. Martin and Jamie have provided some great tools and approaches that will allow these leaders and individuals to address these issues in accessible and practical ways. I strongly believe that there is enormous untapped potential amongst our workforce and that our current leadership approaches are getting in the way of unleashing this potential. This book is a great contribution to the journey towards creating an environment for people to thrive - whatever the circumstances.

Roy White, Senior Vice President, Sony Mobile Communications

About the Authors

Dr Martin Turner is a Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology in the School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise at Staffordshire University. Martin is an active researcher and a Chartered practitioner psychologist. He consults with professional athletes, teams, and coaches, and works extensively with business professionals and management in multinational organizations.

Dr Jamie Barker is Associate Professor of Applied Performance Psychology at Staffordshire University, and a Chartered psychologist. Jamie is an active researcher and contributor to the Centre for Sport, Health, and Exercise Research (CSHER), works with business leaders and professionals across many disciplines, and is the co-author of the acclaimed Bennion Kearny title: The Psychology of Cricket: Developing Mental Toughness, amongst others.

Acknowledgements

Martin Turner: This book, and indeed my career to date, would not exist without the occurrence of some highly significant events, and without the influence of some highly significant people. I thank Professor Marc Jones, whose influence on my career is immeasurable. Many of our conversations about the psychology of performance (and some of our research!) made it into this book in some way or another. I also thank my co-author, colleague, and friend, Associate Professor Jamie Barker, who saw something in me when I was an undergraduate that I didn’t know was there; a passion for psychology. In some ways this book has existed in my head for some time, but my gratitude goes out to our editor and publisher James for bringing those thoughts and ideas to life. I thank all of the athletes, coaches, and business professionals I have worked with, and continue to work with, to date. I gain a huge amount from the work we have done, and continue to do together. In addition, I thank all of the colleagues that have supported me in my research and consultancy to date, you know who you are.

Jayne, when I met you I was directionless and inert. You gave me purpose and energy. Thank you for being there and for being you. As with all that I do, this book is for you.

Jamie Barker: This book is the culmination of many years of research and applied practice and would not exist without the influence of a number of key individuals. I would like to express my sincere thanks to my friend, colleague and co-author, Dr Martin Turner. Martin is an excellent academic with a very bright future. I thank him for continuing to support and challenge my thinking along with keeping my beliefs rational. I also thank Professor Marc Jones who continues to provide excellent mentorship in helping me to shape my ideas and goals. I would also like to thank all of my colleagues who have supported my research and applied work - it is a pleasure working with such talented and creative individuals.

I am indebted to my parents, Linda and Roger, for giving me the confidence to have ‘no regrets’ and for their continued love and support in everything I do. I owe everything to the endless patience, support and love of my wife Emma - you are a truly remarkable wife and mother. Finally, to my daughters, Lucy and Molly - you are my world and all I am I give to you - just not the season ticket!

Preface: Discovering The MAPP (Map to Achieving Peak Performance)

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.

Bruce Lee, Martial Artist and Actor

Surely, there is no better way to begin a book about peak performance than with the thoughts of one of the most influential martial artists and cinema performers of all time. The two quotes from Bruce Lee capture, and help explain, what the book you have in your hands is about.

The first quote is at the core of what you will learn by reading this book. Achieving peak performance in any field, whether it is martial arts, business, or sport, is not about breezing through easy and undemanding situations. Peak performance occurs because of the demanding nature of the situation, not in spite of it.

In this book you will learn to develop the resources, and the strength, to excel in tough and pressured situations; the events that matter most to you in your life and work. So, rather than approaching tough environments with a don’t worry it’s not that important attitude, this book will teach you how to thrive without having to downplay the significance of tough situations. In fact, this book will encourage you to face pressure in your work, instead of finding ways to avoid pressure. Over the years working with professionals across sport and business, we have found that it is those that recognize how tough a situation will be that excel, so long as they simultaneously recognize their capacity to cope and thrive in those situations.

The second quote embodies two crucial philosophies that will make your journey through the 10 chapters of this book a productive and life-changing experience:

1. Throughout this book you will learn mental skills, and just like any other skill, practice makes permanent. Therefore your progress is really down to you and whether you can have that laser-like focus on learning to thrive. Anyone (the average man or woman) can learn the strategies we present in this book; having a winning mind is not magic, it’s about hard work. While reading this book, remember that you are not a passenger or a passive participant in this endeavor. Only you can drive the changes you make in pursuit of excellence, and this book expects you to exert effort in participating in the activities we introduce in the chapters.

2. In this book we will talk a lot about focusing on what you need to do to succeed, rather than what you need not do to avoid failure. To be clear, elite performers in any field are able to, especially under pressure, focus on getting the job done. This, much like all the other mental skills you will gain by reading this book, can be developed by applying some very simple but powerful practical strategies.

What is Sport Psychology?

Sport psychology is a rapidly growing discipline in which scientific and well-documented psychological principles are applied to sport. In other words, it is based on evidence from scientific research and is used to help athletes, coaches, and anybody else involved in sport, to be the best that they can be.

Sport is an ideal place to apply and study psychology, as it reflects a natural laboratory where