The Sweet Spot of Performance
23 November 2011
By Simon Starr
How many of you are interested in success?
For how many of you does that success involve working with a team?
Everyone in life is working toward a grand plan, and the teams that we are in or involved with are all vehicles to a particular goal. Everyone has a Master Plan, that big vision that they are working toward. Typically it revolves around a particular lifestyle, which by its definition implies a level of time and money.
So how do we get our teams to perform? Where is that sweet spot where performance comes together and the results are outstanding?
There are three factors critical to good performance:
- Health
- Intent
- Action
Health
Whether you are looking at a business, your personal life or the performance of a sports team, the health of the business, individual or team is critical. When I was involved in fitness and conditioning of elite sports teams and sports people, one of our main objectives was to give the coach the biggest list possible of fit and healthy players to choose from at finals time.
It is important to understand also what we mean by health. Physical health is very important because this underpins the third critical element of performance, that being action. You can't take action if you're injured or off work laid up in bed through ill health. But physical health is undoubtedly linked to mental health (and vice versa) and spiritual health. So a person's mental well-being or a team's attitude or a business's culture is really important too for great performance.
Intent
This is where the second element of success kicks in. There needs to be a genuine purpose behind what you are doing. Too often people or teams just plough through life without really understanding the key driver(s) behind their actions. A simple question to ask (and often difficult question to answer!) is why are we doing this? And why should anyone care? So intent is really important to finding the sweet spot, and when coupled with good health it really increases our capacity to achieve because we think bigger and are the right sort of shape to tackle the road ahead.
Action
However all of this is worthless if we do nothing. If six frogs are sitting on a lily pad and one decides to jump off, how many are left on the lily pad? The answer is six. It's all very well to make a decision but without action the result will still be the same. How many times have you had the best of intentions around a great idea or a new innovation at work or your new fitness regime only to ultimately do nothing about it? You're not the Lone Ranger if you answered "alot!" to that one.
When you look at great teams and successful individuals you will notice that all three of these boxes are ticked. They are in great shape physically, mentally & spiritually. They're clear on where they're heading and why they're doing it. I love intent because it creates desire and desire is an expansive emotion that can really wrap its arms around people and welcome them into that space. And finally these teams or people are great action-takers. They really work their time and energy impressively. When these three attributes all come together you get the sweet spot of great performance, otherwise known as success.
Posted under: Performance, Teams, Leadership
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