The Surprising Secret to Being at Your Best When It Matters Most
Part one of a two-part exploration of performance
For over thirty years, I’ve been coaching performers, teams, executives, and leaders on how to get the most out of themselves and others, particularly when the stakes seem highest and the results seem to matter most. Over that time my approach has evolved from primarily tactical (tricks, hacks and techniques) to strategic (design and practice) to what I now think of as an “deep understanding” based approach.
A deep understanding doesn’t necessarily mean you can explain something to someone or that you would pass a written exam on it; it means you get a feel for how something works in your bones — and that feel allows you to perform at higher and higher levels over time.
When it comes to enhancing our level of performance and being at our best more of the time, I’ve found this one piece of surprising advice has helped more people up their game than any other:
If you want to bring your “A” game to the table more of the time, work on your “B” game.
Our “A” game is us performing at our best. People describe their “A” game as “being in the zone”, “playing out of their skin”, and surprising themselves with what comes out of and through them. We see it when the quarterback throws an impossible pass with the game on the line, a musician plays a solo that takes the audience and their fellow musicians to an almost transcendent level of experience, or when a team of surgical professionals are able to work in perfect sync to save a life when the odds are seemingly stacked against them.
Coaches from Little League up to the highest levels of professional sports have been exhorting their charges to “bring their ‘A’ game” every single time they play and practice for as long as sports have been played. That mentality has found its way into other performance arenas as well, with actors, musicians, and dancers trying to bring their “A” game to every audition, rehearsal and performance and work teams being told they’ll need to bring their “A” game to each super-important project the company puts in front of them.
But the problem with trying to bring your “A” game to everything you do is that we’re not in direct control of our levels of energy and inspiration. Some days we just have more in the tank than others, and something that looked easy on a Tuesday can look near impossible on a Friday (and vice-versa).
What we can do, every single time, is bring our “B” game. Your “B” game is a measure of your current level of practiced skill minus the inspiration that often shows up and takes our work to another level when we truly engage in the moment.
One of the classic examples of developing your “B” game to the point where your floor is better than most people’s ceiling is NBA icon Larry Bird. When asked to deliberately miss a free throw while filming a car commercial, Bird reportedly had to do over two dozen takes before actually being able to miss the net.
In other words, your “B” game is what can you show up and deliver on every single time no matter how crappy and uninspired you may be feeling. It’s what we can count on out of ourselves every single time, even when you’re at your lowest ebb. It is our floor, not our ceiling, and as such it is the most important element of being able to consistently perform and produce at a high level over time. Because if you want to be truly successful at anything, you’ll need to get your “B” game to the level where at least 9 times out of 10, you being “good enough” is good enough to get the job done.
Which if you’re looking to be at your best when it matters most raises a couple of interesting questions, the first one being:
How do I work on my “B” game?
While the culturally popular notion of 10,000 hours of practice being the minimum required time necessary to foster excellence is still very much up for debate, there’s little to no evidence to suggest that putting in the hours isn’t a critical element in getting better at pretty much anything you do.
When a client comes to me wondering why they’re not better at something, whether that something is hitting a golf ball, making a sale, writing a novel, or building a business, a simple time audit usually resolves the issue.
How much time are you actually spending on doing the thing you want to get better at?
This does not include time spent reading about it, watching other people do it, or thinking about it. The only time that counts (for the purposes of this exercise) is time spent doing the thing itself. For an author, it’s time spent with the book. For a salesperson, it’s time spent in conversation with potential customers. For a doctor, it’s time spent with patients; for a musician, it’s time spent playing your instrument.
While it is certainly true that not all time spent doing what you do is of equal value to your learning curve, it is even more true that no time spent NOT doing what you do will make much of a difference to your ability, other than allowing yourself recovery time and the time it takes for certain skills to get “baked in” to your performance DNA.
In part two of this article, we’ll take a look at what you can do to increase the odds of your “A” game showing up more of the time. But for today, ask yourself these three questions that will help you to be at your best more of the time:
- What’s my current “B” game in the performance arena where I’d like to up my game? What can I deliver on every single time, no matter what?
2. What are the core activities that make up my performance arena?
a. Playing golf:
-driving, iron play, chipping, putting, etc.
b. Selling:
-deep listening, getting to know people, recognizing their needs and desires, connecting the dots between my product or service and their needs and desires, etc.
c. Developing software
-identifying needs, coding, creating user-friendly interface, etc.
3. How can I spend more time actually doing each of those things on a regular basis?
Michael Neill is an international thought leader, challenging the cultural mythology that stress and struggle are a prerequisite to creativity and success. As the founder and CEO of Genius Catalyst Inc., Michael’s mission is to unleash the human potential with intelligence, humor, and heart.
To learn more about Michael and his work, visit www.michaelneill.org or join the nearly two million people who have enjoyed his TEDx talks Why Aren’t We Awesomer? and Can a TEDx Talk Really Change the World?
