New Business Ideas 4 U

Posts Tagged ‘Mind’

Hi again. Here is a second idea from the book Performance Intelligence at Work by Dr Julie Bell, and Robin Pou ( McGraw-Hill, 2009). It made me think, and I am sure it will do the same for you.

How do you feel when you are termed ‘average’? Many people – including me – bristle a bit at the term, because we feel that we are above average – even outstanding! But the way Dr Julie – as she likes to be called – explains ‘average’ makes good sense. She defines average as ‘the place where you perform on a consistent basis today’.

If we are totally honest with ourselves we do not perform at an outstanding level all the time. We certainly don’t perform perfectly, since perfection is not standard practice among mortals. Dr Julie suggests that we shouldn’t even strive for perfection, because we are setting ourselves up for failure, and that doesn’t seem like a sensible thing for us to do. Rather we should assess our day-to-day performance as average, and rate ourselves on a scale similar to the one below.

There are several important implications from thinking this way:

According to the scale, there is considerable room for improvement. Now that’s a positive!

The average we are talking about is a personal average. It is your present level of performance.

The average is a moving target. The more you perform above your present average – the more you succeed, according to the diagram – the  higher your average becomes.

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I have recently read a book called Performance Intelligence at Work by Julie Bell and Robin Pou (McGraw Hill, 2009). It is a small book, both , literally – since it is published in A5 size rather than the ‘standard’ book size – and because it comprises only 167 pages. Yet it contains some very valuable ideas, which I would like to share with you in the next couple postings.

Dr Julie Bell – she likes to be called Dr Julie – is a sports psychologist and coach turned business coach. She is not the first such, nor will she be the last, I am sure. Her case is rather interesting since she entered the world of business sort of by accident. One of her athletes was appointed as CEO of a recently-taken over company and suggested that she should join him and became a coach to his management team.  Both he and she felt that there was a lot of carry over between the world of sport and the world of business.

The idea I want to share today is one of the key ideas that runs right through the book. It is the importance of mind. In both sport and business.

New Zealand recently won a spot in the Football World Cup in South Africa 2010. Yippee! (I’m a kiwi remember!). NZ came out for the second half carrying a one goal lead. Imagine the dismay, then, when their opponents, Bahrain, were awarded a penalty early in the second half. The apprehension turned to relief when the penalty kick was saved by the NZ goalkeeper. Frankly it was not a well-taken penalty. Read the rest of this entry »