|
Achieving Peak Performance |
|
|
|
|
Written by Michael Allison
|
 Enjoying your journey to success  In less than six months, the Olympic Games will hit Beijing. From August 8 to 24, athletes from across the globe will compete in their respective sports on the ultimate stage. Many will be doing so for the first time, whilst others will enjoy their second, third, and even fourth outing in the sporting world's greatest event. However, whether they are fresh-faced first-timers or seasoned veterans, they all have one goal in mind - to perform at their peak come August. Athletes train for years in order to reach the levels of fitness and technique required to qualify for the Olympics. Their training in the months preceding the big event will focus on helping them deliver a ‘peak performance' when it really matters.
 We would all like to enjoy full, purposeful, and happy lives. To do this, we could do well to learn some important lessons from the world's top athletes and what they do in order to achieve ‘peak performances'. It does not matter whether we focus on career, family life, personal relationships, or financial well being. We all crave success and feelings of accomplishment in the same way that an athlete craves the chance to compete in the world's greatest contest. As a HR manager, it is your job to bring about this success and to generate feelings of accomplishment in your employees. At this point, we need to ask some important questions: What is success? How do you define it? And most crucially, what do we need to do in order to achieve it? I always associate success with feelings of satisfaction and happiness. It is much more than simply your position within an organisation, how much money you make, or any other form of material reward. For instance, there are many wealthy people who are neither living satisfying lives nor enjoying real happiness. China Daily recently featured a fantastic example of this by surveying millionaires in East and South China. Even though those questioned had an average fortune of 2.2 billion RMB, many of them were not fully satisfied with their lives. It concluded that the majority of these millionaires had a love/hate relationship with their money. Many of the respondents argued that alongside the incumbent power and status, their fortunes have brought them emotional troubles and personal insecurity.
Journey or Destination? The article on millionaires reminded me of the book, ‘Pulling Your Own Strings' by Dr Wayne W. Dyer. Dyer discussed a quote he read whilst working as a substitute teacher, "Success is a journey, not the destination." It struck me that our millionaires were perhaps focusing too much on the destination at which they had arrived, and not the journey they took to financial accumulation. Dyer places great weight in this prophetic quote. He believes it changed the way he looked at his own life- it was no longer a list of destinations, but a series of journeys to appreciate and enjoy along the way. He concludes that, "there is no way to happiness; happiness is the way." Back to our Olympians, for most of them success will not mean standing on the podium with an Olympic medal hanging from their neck. Instead, most of the athletes will draw their sense of accomplishment from simply making it to the games and by savoring the journey - training for years, representing their country, coming to China, and competing with the world's greatest in their sport. For most athletes - other than Liu Xiang, who defines success as nothing less than victory - their ‘peak performance' will be achieving their personal best. With this in mind, lets look at achieving ‘Peak Performances' within your organization and, more specifically the journey you need to take to get there.
Who are you? A key to achieving your best in life is to remember that what you are now is the raw material for what you want to be in the future. Therefore, you will only succeed in reaching your peak performance when you clearly understand who you are as an individual. To put it another way, you will only succeed when you know exactly where you are starting your journey from. This means that you must recognise your strengths and weaknesses. You must play to your strengths and work on your weaknesses. A great example of this is one of the toughest Olympic events, the heptathlon. This is a women's only event, taking place over two days and featuring seven different track and field disciplines: long jump, high jump, shot put, javelin, 200m, 800m, and 100m hurdles. A heptathlete competitor will invariably be stronger in some disciplines than in others. To succeed, she will need to identify the events in which she is weak and train hard to improve in those areas. However, it is vital that she does not view these disciplines negatively. Improving in the areas in which she struggles is part of the athlete's journey. If she makes the effort to improve, the end result is that she will become a well rounded competitor. Regardless of whether she wins Olympic gold, she should feel satisfied with the improvements she makes and will certainly feel successful.
Know Your EQ If you are keen to succeed like a heptathlete, how do you identify the areas in which you are strongest and the areas in which you are weakest? The first way is to be honest with yourself. Taking time to candidly evaluate our personalities, how we interact with others, and how we perform at work and at home will help us to define these areas. While conducting an Effective Communication and Customer Service seminar for a major electronics company, my trainees and I did this together. We each took an EQ test, or Emotional Quotient self assessment. It was tremendously gratifying to see how open and honest the trainees were about their emotional responses in different situations. They were willing to discuss openly their weaknesses and the results were fascinating. Rather than viewing their weaknesses negatively and feeling discouraged, performing the self-assessment and discussing the results together motivated each of them to work towards improving themselves.
 Research has revealed that emotional intelligence is twice as important as intellect and expertise in business success. John Kotter of Harvard Business School stated, "Because of the furious pace of change in business today, difficult-to-manage relationships sabotage more business than anything else." Difficult-to manage situations also sabotage many personal relationships. Good relationships with others are so important in achieving our best in life, making it vital to manage our emotions successfully. By improving our emotional intelligence, we will be able to enjoy our journey and attain a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Once you have done an honest self-assessment and identified areas for improvement, how do you actually go about the task of changing? Think back to our heptathlete. In order to make improvements in her areas of weakness, she must implement training techniques that focus on the skills she needs to enhance. Likewise, we can all implement certain training techniques to move ourselves towards the goal of self-improvement. Companies also can - and should- provide training to help their employees along the path to self improvement, and thus assist them in attaining their ‘peak performances' and ‘attain their best in life'.
What Is Emotional Quotient? " EQ is the capacity for recognising our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships.''- Daniel Goldman, 1998 EQ describes abilities distinct from, but complementary to, academic intelligence or the purely cognitive capacities measured by IQ. EQ Test Rate yourself on the following items on a scale of 1 to5 (1 being lowest and 5 being highest). This exercise aims at fact-finding not fault-finding, and is intended to help you focus on areas for self improvement.
1. I stay relaxed and composed under pressure.
2. I can identify negative feelings without becoming distressed.
3. I stay focused (not lost in unimportant details) in getting a task done.
4. I freely admit to making mistakes.
5. I am sensitive to other people's emotions and moods.
6. I can receive feedback or criticism without becoming defensive.
7. I calm myself quickly when I get angry or upset.
8. I communicate my needs and feelings honestly.
9. I can pull myself together quickly after a setback.
10. I am aware of how my behavior impacts others.
11. I pay attention and listen, without jumping to conclusions.
12. I take regular time out (once a month or a quarter) to reflect on my core purpose and vision for how I want to live my life.
Total score (out of 60):__________________________________ |
Legal
Recruitment Transparency
 In the last issue of Network HR, Allan Nee of Baode Law in Tianjin wrote a detailed and insightful article about the ways in which your organisation needs to adapt to China's new Labour Laws. Allan offered a myriad of fantastic advice. However, there was one factor he mentioned that really captured my attention - transparency.Read More
Benefits
The Power of Acknowledgement
 he seeds of this article were sewn as I put together the last edition of Network HR. First, as I edited the Training & Development section, I read the following prophetic words from Jennifer Peterson, "If you want your customers to feel cared for, you must care for the employees that serve them." This started me musing about the way organisations across China treat employees.Read More
Training
Synchronicity for Success
 A single droplet of sweat trickled down my neck as the glowing amber sun beat down on us. I glanced out of the corner of my eye and saw our competitors lined up alongside us. It was the moment we had been preparing for over the last 5 years. Our goal was crystal clear and I had visualised this very occasion countless times.Read More
Recuitment
War, what is it good for?
 I believe I can bring the War for Talent to a peaceful end. I came to this realisation two
months ago after I was invited to present at the ‘Corporate Travel and Technology
World' conference in Shanghai. The topic, "Selecting Potential Leaders and Turning a Company from Good to Great", was
provided some months earlier, giving me time to source opinions from
around China. Read More
|
|
