Taking Performance to the Next Level

Is your team stuck in a rut?

Are your people taking personal responsibility for achieving their work goals?

Are you looking to reinvigorate your culture?

Every organisation faces times when performance plateaus, when the work force is firmly within their comfort zone. At these times what is needed is a bit of a circuit breaker, something to knock the problems and challenges back into perspective, something to get people excited about how much more there is to achieve.

This presentation confronts unspoken doubts head-on, and provides tips, tools and realistic strategies to help refocus team members on what they can control. It helps them build resilience, create momentum and achieve success.

Win? Or Just take part?

When I was preparing to row across the Atlantic I had an incident that illustrates the difference between simply turning up and taking part, and true high performance.

I went in to see my coach one day to get an update on my training plan. He looked up from his desk when I came into the office and said ‘Kevin are you planning to win this race, or just take part? It doesn’t matter which it is but I need to know.’

I said, ‘Well I hadn’t really thought about it, I guess I’ll just try my best and see what happens.’ Which makes sense right? After all, all you can do is your best. But his response was ‘No, no, no! If you want to win this race you have to decide now, because everything about your preparation will change if you decide to win.’

So I thought for a moment and then said, ‘Okay, I’ll win’.

He was right. Everything did change. From the amount of money that I spent to shave a few grams of weight off the boat, to the quantity and quality of my training, to the effort that went to seek out experts and develop innovations for the boat, everything changed. I know that if I hadn’t been committed to winning there would have been hundreds of decisions where I would have chosen more ‘sensible’ options and with the best of intentions it would have resulted in a completely different boat being wheeled down the ramp at the start-line.

Unleashing Potential

Increasing performance is not just about increasing effort. If that was all that was required to succeed or win at the Olympics, then there would be some nutcases training 26 hours a day. It’s about getting the right mindset and then developing a strategy that focuses on those areas where your effort is going to result in the greatest payoff.

In Antarctica the extreme conditions and poor progress put the team under a lot of pressure. It was necessary to focus on and build on what was going right, rather than what was going wrong and carefully monitoring morale. The experience provided incredibly useful insights about how to keep performing, and keep a team functioning when the going gets really tough.

Yet the key to getting through tough times is not being ‘hard’ it’s about being careful with what you are focused on. I share insights about perseverance and resilience from leading psychologist Martin Seligman.

Your staff or delegates will leave this presentation with fresh tools and a new approach for taking on their challenges and lifting their game.

• Why performance requires a goal, what the real point of a goal is
• How to uncover and deal with the doubts that limit performance
• The winning attitude – how to get it, why it’s important, how it can backfire
• How to get the best out of your team mates
• How to improve your ability to persevere through adversity
• How to navigate through the mid-challenge ‘slump’

Feedback

“Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! Kevin, you made us laugh and you made us think! Your presentation at our staff meeting was inspirational and downright entertaining. You tailored your presentation to us so well in such a short timeframe and made it easy for us to take it to heart! Several people are already applying the 3 bastards rule – one is going to recommend it to their manager. The HR team got plenty of ideas to use in coaching managers and staff to focus on the goal and not drain energy. “Yeah/Nah” was completely relatable for everyone. I will be reminding several people in my own team from time to time and inviting them to keep me on my toes too. Just brilliant.” – Mary Sinclair Jones – Manager People and Capability, Civil Aviation Authority

“We cannot thank Kevin enough for speaking at not one, but two of our national conferences this year. It’s not easy to captivate, entertain, inspire and engage the attention of conference weary delegates but this wasn’t a problem for Kevin. They visibly straightened up, found some energy and reacted to his fascinating story telling. We wanted to end our conferences on a high, with a positive inspiring message for our people to leave to use in their day to day lives. We think Kevin is Oarsome and with complete confidence would recommend him to anyone to add that something special to your meetings.” – Bronnie Macpherson, Professionals