What if “performance”is just a portal?

Maybe I’m the only one sick of hearing Coaches and Consultants banging on about performance - but I don’t think I am.

As a Chartered Work and Coaching Psychologist, I can help you, your team, your organisation achieve peak performance. I’ve helped hundreds of clients over decades to do this, but increasingly I don’t believe in performance as the target. Or certainly not the only target to aim for!

I want to take you through what can happen when an over-focus on performance causes our systems to be out of balance. What can happen as a result, exists along a continuum, with one end markedly better than the other. I think you’ll be surprised to hear which end I prefer!

When we focus exclusively on performance, we focus everything we have on reaching whatever goal we have set. And we might reach it. Or we might burnout. Or something in between. Whatever the outcome, it’s never enough. If we reach the goal, we will go again, pushing more extreme versions of the goal, never happy, never actually satisfied with what we’ve achieved. Always thinking “next”. And if we burn out, well there are many pieces of our health and life that need addressing. Hopefully the goal fades into insignifance. Either way, this over focus is an out of balance system, and honestly, zero fun.

Some of the problems with this approach - and I’m sure you can add your own too to this list, are:

• A head-down focus has only a blinkered view, missing out on all in our periphery vision

• This approach is less open to pivots mid-stream

• This approach negates or minimises our own inner wisdom

• This approach is often less fun and whole

• This approach places far too much emphasis on outer determinants of success

• This approach seeks to compare only, and often does not allow for collaboration or co-creation with others

• This approach focuses only on linear thinking which minimises the potential for rounded, better outcomes

• This approach is less likely to be “in conversation” with the realities of our outer environment and the systems in which we operate, meaning that our thinking is constantly out of date

• This approach can be lonely, high pressured and high stress

• This approach doesn’t work long term

I said you might be surprised, in the example above, about which end of the continuum I think is healthiest to reach. And what I believe is that the person who actually wins here, is the one who has burned out. Because, hopefully they have an ending, and an opportunity to re-set in a much more healthy way. The other folks are still locked on the impossible treadmill. The other group see through the performance- at-all- costs culture. And I don’t say this lightly or glibly. Anyone who knows me and knows my own health journey and how I had to learn to walk again, will know that. But the people who burn out, or come close, often come through the portal. And once on the other side, they see, as I see, the fallacy of over-focusing on performance. And there is massive freedom here.

They see that we’ve all been sold a pup. We don’t in fact need to work crazy hours, punish our bodies in an attempt to look like trained athletes. We don’t need to eat fast food or be dressed in fast fashion and we don’t need to compare ourselves to others, only to constantly feel that we fall short. Many of my clients tell me that they can’t experience joy or happiness, and when they do they feel guilty. Many organisations are window dressing their green and wellbeing initiatives because those at the top themselves don’t understand enough. Their focus is on comparison, on outer determinants of success. They are missing the point, with disastrous consequences.

So many people and organisations are comparing themselves to others, and trying to keep up, simply because they don’t have the skills to set up their own, balanced version of success. The version that balances inner and outer worlds. The version that works in the long term, with healthy employees, engaged and committed to a joint, balanced vision of wholeness. The organisations who will have long term profitability. The organisations who do no harm.

Worryingly, I see and hear so much from Coaches and Consultants who mean well but who don’t in my view understand enough, in that they keep on pushing their clients to perform. They themselves haven’t seen through the fallacy of performance- only yet, and they coach and consult according to their own level of understanding. They themselves don’t understand enough, or their thinking is siloed, however well-meaning.

So, what is the alternative?

Yes, it is wonderful to be ambitious and to have lofty commercial and financial goals as organisations, but these things are not mutually exclusive from having well balanced, healthy individuals at the helm, and throughout the organisation or community group. Not mutually exclusive from an organisation/community having a mantra of doing no harm. Deliberately developmental organisations are consistently the forerunner in their fields, in both profitability and employee wellbeing, and they can’t have one without the other. Again, it is a fallacy to think that these two considerations are mutually exclusive.

I am passionate about working with organisations who want to work this way. Who have thrown up their hands, and feel like they’ve been bashing their heads against a brick wall, trying to, but unable to get the balance right.

And I work with individuals who know there is more to life than this too.

I teach my clients how to LIVE and how to LEAD from the Inside Out. When we start from here, we can’t but come into balance. We can’t but thrive. That’s Individuals, Organisations and Communities. When we start from our inner world, we can solve all of the problems that face humanity today. We remember our true human nature, our interconnectedness and we can come together to co-create whole solutions for change.

If you are fed up with this outdated thinking and want to level up with your own intuitive wisdom and cutting edge science, then I’d love to hear from you.

I can help you move from mediocre results and from a feeling of relentless pressure and outside comparisons. Together we can cultivate lifelong wellbeing and thinking for you and all those in your organisation/community group. You can feel happy, you can thrive. You won’t need to work endless hours and feel ill, missing family, feeling constantly under pressure. You will no longer need to listen to outside barometers of success, rather you will set the tone. You will work in partnership with the wider system you are in, and you will never look back. Plus, although the process of change will be work, you will enjoy it. You will be central to it’s design and you will know intuitively and from whatever metrics you choose to measure your success by, that this new approach works! Get back in the driving seat of the life you want to lead, and let me help you in whatver way you need.