Coaching moments

Many of us find ourselves in a position to coach without it being our profession or indeed without having had much training in how to coach.

Whether you are a manager being expected to coach your direct reports or a parent coaching the soccer team the prospect of coaching can feel a bit overwhelming. What do I say? When do I say it? How will I know if I am doing it right?

A good place to start is by looking for coaching moments. These are opportunities to ask a question which enables the recipient to deepen their understanding of the situation and hence create the possibility for learning and growth. You don't need to be an expert, just observant and willing to ask a powerful question.

Lets look at an example, Feeling stuck. The recipient is stuck, they can’t make progress on the business project/fitness plan. Rather than telling them what to do the coach can ask a powerful question such as: “What is the first step?”

Think about that question for a moment in relation to something that you are stuck with. It enables the recipient to generate perspective and commit to something manageable which frequently unblocks the whole situation.

Making it your own

There is a scene in Cool Runnings where Jamaican driver Derice is studying the top ranked Swiss team to learn what they do that makes them so good.

He latches on to how they start with a chant of ‘Eins, zwei, drei’ and gets the Jamaican team starting with the same mantra. Unfortunately for the Jamaican’s this routine doesn’t really work for them and herein lies the challenge when we observe excellence in action with the intention of improving our own performance.

In Cool Runnings the excellence learning is actually that the Swiss have a consistency of routine before the start and they do it in a way that is meaningful for them. The impact that this routine has is that it primes then both psychologically and physically for a top performance.

Jamaica get creative and come up with their own chant: "Feel the Rhythm! Feel the Rhyme! Get on up, it's bobsled time! Cool Runnings!". Its only a small change in the grand scheme of things but their starting improves (in the movie) and the rest is history.

Whether you are a business looking at how the best do their demand forecasting or if you are a runner watching an Olympian warming up for a race you need to be able to take the time to make sense of what you have observed and work out how make it applicable in your context.

Culture is catching

I was taking an intensive German class last month and half the class consistently turned up late while the other half were on time. We were struggling to establish an ‘on-time’ norm despite the best efforts of many.

One Friday I was out at my coffee break and doing a few things when I realised I was going to have to finish up quickly and get back. In a flash my mind said to me: ‘don’t rush, its ok to be late. Why bust a gut when you know others aren’t?’. So I came back a few minutes late. And I wasn’t the last one back either. I can’t say I was proud of myself but that is the point.

Culture is catching, whether it is good or bad. Going against the grain is hard work and over time it becomes all to easy to give in. Culture needs constant attention from leaders to create and maintain the environment that they want.

100 days to the London Marathon – Help!

For some people 100 days until the London Marthon means time to hit the panic button while for others it still feels light years away.

Whichever camp you are in there are a few simple principles that you can keep in mind to help you arrive at the start line as well prepared as possible.

1.    Start where you are: Your fitness levels right now are what thay are. Accept it. Design your training plan based on what you can do right now, not what you hoped you could do or feel that you ought to be able to do. If your longest run right now is an hour then make the next one an hour and a quarter (not 2 hours because that’s what the plan says).

2.    Increase progressively: give your body time to adapt. It is easy to increase training loads too quickly, especially if you are focused on reaching a certain mileage/long run distance in March. Too often people force it and then get sick or injured and then you miss training time and it makes the situation worse. The consequence of this is that you may not get as much training done as you would like before the tapers starts (No 4.). You need to accept that 80 days gradual progression and a good taper beats forcing it and getting hurt. Trust yourself that on race day the adrenalin and effects of a good taper will see you through.

3.    Recover well: to make sure that your body does absorb the training commit yourself to sleeping more and better while eating good quality food. Until 15th Jan you can access my Recovery course on Teachable for FREE.

4.    Taper like a champion: with three weeks to go ‘the hay is in the barn’ as the American’s like to say. What this means is that by the beginning of April your focus shifts from hard training to being fully recovered for race day. The temptation to squeeze in an extra long run can be overwhelming. Fight it. It takes 20 days for the microscopic muscle damage to repair after a long run. Go long 2 weeks before race day and you will start the race with damaged legs.

So there you have it:

1.    Start where you are

2.    Increase progressively

3.    Recover well

4.    Taper like a champion

Even Elites need to respect these principles although with some modifications if you have years of experience running 100 miles per week.

Thinking Fast and Slow

There are two 'Up' escalators on a recent journey. One is moving and full with people and the other is empty and stationary. As people arrive at the bottom of the escalators they gravitate to the right hand moving escalator, even though that is further away.

These people’s minds have made a shortcut. Empty, stationary escalator = not in use. But what if we slow down and think a bit more critically.

We are in Zürich airport and this is the main route to departures. How likely is it that the escalator is broken? Not very. And if it was, what would we expect to see? Engineers working to repair it or at the very least an ‘out of order’ notice.

A glance to the left and the bottom of the 'Down' escalator shows a little red light to signal don’t get on. Both 'Up' escalators have a little green light.

I step on to the stationary/empty up escalator. Life is breathed into it and it quickly and quietly accelerates. It turns out that the shortcut thinking was wrong.

It’s a classic case of System 1 and System 2 thinking as set out by Daniel Kahneman in his seminal work ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’.

I tell this story because I’ve just finished reading Michael Lewis’ excellent book ‘The Undoing Project’ about Kahneman’s collaboration with Amos Tversky and System 1 and 2 is at the front of my mind right now (if I hadn’t read it recently I would have fallen into the same trap as everybody else!). It’s a cracking good read and I can recommend both books to kick start the year.

Starting a fitness routine - adaptation is a marathon not a sprint

This week I’ve seen lots of people braving the weather to put on sports kit and run. No doubt many are driven by a New Year’s desire to get fit/raise money for charity/experience nature.

Sadly, in 4-8 weeks' history tells us that many of them will be hurt or sick, they will take a break from running (or whatever their chosen activity was) and possibly not get going again for a long time, or until next January.

What we need to remember is that training is a process of breaking down the body at a micro level and then allowing it rebuild itself stronger. Each run tears muscle fibres, depletes glycogen and smashes blood cells.

Unfortunately the re-building part can’t be rushed and our enthusiasm often leads us to do too much of the ‘breaking down’ before we have rebuilt and adapted.

The mantra is to do less than you think you can/should but to do it consistently for 3-4 weeks. When it is feeling easy then you know that you are adapting and you can increase the load. This is as true for a novice runner as for an elite marathon runner.

If you live in the Zürich I will be leading some beginners running courses this spring that will guide you around the overtraining pitfalls. The first course starts in Rapperswil-Jona on 3rd February and places are limited.

All in a word

In football (soccer) the international matches which aren’t part of the World Cup or European Championships are called ‘Friendlies’.

In Rugby Union the international matches which aren’t part of the World Cup or Six Nations are called ‘Test Matches’.

Last autumn (fall) the England football team had ‘Friendlies’ against Brazil and Germany. What should be two of the biggest tests of a footballer’s career were marred by no-shows due to a multitude of minor injuries. The coach was reduced to picking his 3rd, 4th or even 5th choice players in some positions.

The England rugby team had 'Test Matches' against Samoa and Argentina, hardly the All Blacks or Springboks, but the only no-shows were for concussion or broken bones.

Deciding what is important starts with how we label it.

When obvious turns out to be wrong

Skating and Classic loipe

There are two styles of cross country skiing. ‘Freestyle’, which looks like ice skating on long narrow skis and ‘classic’ which looks more like running and the skis move in a straight line. Both share the same track or ‘loipe’ but the classic technique makes use of two parallel grooves, also known as the ‘spoor’, cut into the snow on the side of the loipe. (see photo)

When it comes to going downhill on cross country skis then it is obvious that you make full use of the spoor to guide you down. It acts like rails and helps keeps you on track. At least that is what I thought until this week.

There is tricky downhill section on my local course which includes a turn and nasty camber. I regularly take at least one tumble navigating this section using the spoor (i'm a classic skier). So just for the hell of it I decided to go down the hill on the smooth part of the loipe – no guide rails here. Strangely I got to the bottom without falling over. The next lap I repeated the trick and started doing the same on other hills with similar results.

It turns out that the safety net of the spoor was actually reducing my ability to adapt and correct for any bumps/ice/overbalancing etc. Any mistake in the groove immediately threw me onto my face. On the smooth loipe, which should have been harder, I actually more freedom to adjust.

Its got me thinking, what other obvious solutions might also be wrong?

Sabotaging our own performance

Two nights of poor sleep, both largely self inflicted, and I can feel the negative impact on my performance. Focusing is a bit harder, I’m making more mistakes as I type, the creative juices aren’t really flowing.

Draining interactions with other people (on Twitter, Facebook and in person), light pollution from electronic devices, alcohol, sugary food. These are all dead certs to sabotage our ability to perform at our best.

Recognising the signs and taking some small steps to minimise the sabotage pays big dividends and top performers are masters at minimising self sabotage.

Got a sniffle – to train or not?

It’s the time of year when every other person I meet seems to be coughing or sneezing and having a sensible strategy up your sleeve when the inevitable happens could save you a lot of problems.

Many doctor’s advise the ‘neck check’. Anything below the neck including a sore throat, cough, aches and pains, elevated pulse then you shouldn’t train. If you just have a runny nose or sneezing with no other symptoms, then light exercise should be OK though you should not train long/hard or race because that will supress your immune system further and leave you wide open to more serious illness.

Once your symptoms have passed then make sure to spend a few days gradually increasing your training load before attempting anything hard.

I’ve found with years of experience that a few days off beats trying to muddle though and getting properly sick, which can mess up your training for weeks. Re-frame those few days off as an opportunity to let your body super-compensate from previous training.

Falling down (and getting up again)

Last weekend I was back on the snow with my cross country skis for the first time since April. That's 8 months since last performing a complex set of skills.

What is interesting is that each year the first outing is a little bit better than the previous year as the skills have been burned a bit deeper into my mind with a winter of practice. It doesn't stop me being sore as hell the next day but at least i'm no longer Bambi on ice.

When I learnt to cross country ski a few years ago I wrote a piece for Connectwell on the learning process and some of the take-outs for business. You can read the full article here.

Skillset or Mindset?

Which do you prefer to work with?

Which would you rather have yourself?

Which do you hire for? 

Shaking it up

Your typical 10,000m track race gets watched by a handful a folks and a dog – on a good day. No surprise there. Its 25 laps of the track with not a lot of action (to the unitiated eye), topped off with a mad dash for the line if you are lucky.

A few years ago Ben Pochee and the folks at Highgate Harriers decided to tear up the manual. They staged multiple races on one night. With the athlete’s favourite music and lights. The spectators are allowed on the track and can get close enough to be splashed with sweat. The atmposhere rocks, athletes are scrambling to enter, performances are improving.

The Night of the 10,000m PBs has captured the imagination and continued to grow. In 2018 the event will include the European Cup.

Time to spread the revolution…

When competitors become partners for growth

In the world af athletics it is common to see some of the biggest rivals training together as they seek to learn from each other and reach for higher levels of performance.

Colin Jackson and Mark McCoy were the world’s two best sprint hurdlers in the early 1990’s and they worked together under Malcolm Arnold. Mo Farah and Galen Rupp trained together before taking Gold and Silver in London and when I trained in Kenya two of the best Tanzanian’s were welcomed into the world class group in Nyahururu.

Its starting to happen in business too. Groups of professionals from different organisations getting togeter to share their challenges and learn together. I’m involved with the new ‘Think Tank Thursday’ in Zürich – a group of Talent and Learning professionals coming together to get better at what we do.

Yet in team sports its still a rarity. Real Madrid and Manchester United doing a joint pre-seaon training camp? No chance. 49ers and the Packers swopping play books, ha ha. So it was refreshing to see the Wales and England rugby teams announcing a get together for a few days of intensive training designed to learn from each other’s strengths in the scrum and lineout. I’m sure they will both get a huge amount from it.

Where are the hidden learning opportunities in your business?

Stress - a new perspective

November 1st is Stress Awareness Day.

In recent years we have been conditioned to believe that stress is bad. We need to remove stress, banish it from our lives for ever.

The truth is more nuanced than that and we are now understanding much more about how the body responds to stress. As humans we are actually well adapted to deal with stress – in small doses.

Life always contained stressors: finding food; avoiding becoming food; producing offspring, meeting the neighbouring clan. Our fight or flight response helps us manage acute stress and over time we adapt to stress. Training is a great example of this. Training is a stress. Too much and we get hurt or ill but with appropriate recovery we adapt and get stronger.

Where stress becomes a problem is when it is constant, always on stress, that gives our body no chance to recover. Unfortunately the modern world has ‘stressors’ everywhere. From blue light emitting electronics to always on email, relentless social pressures to fit in, long working hours, insufficient sleep, lack of deep contact with other human beings and more.

The good news is that there are simple strategies to help us better manage ourselves and optimise our stress levels to support better performance.  Athletes are often (but not always) good at striking this balance. With double Olympian Mara Yamauchi I am offering a series of masterclasses desiged to help you ‘Perform at your Best’.

Take a look and see how we can help you and your business this winter. 

Fitness - banking life quality deposits for the future

Jack Daniels measuring the fitness of Jim Ryun

A recently published study (Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 16th August 2017) looked at the change in fitness for a group of highly trained athletes over a period of more than 40 years. The group were originally tested by Jack Daniels in the run up to the 1968 Olympics (1500m silver medalist Jim Ryun, left) and were retested most recently in 2013.

The athletes in question carry out quite different exercise levels today, with some exercising a lot and some almost not at all. On the weight front, some had gained more weight than others. Not surprisingly the athletes were among the very fittest of people of their age to be tested despite it being many years since they trained seriously with markers such as resting heart rate remaining very low.

It seems that being very fit as a young adult gives you a buffer for later in life even when you stop training. Think of it as making fitness deposits in the bank of personal wellbeing. You can draw on this later on to ensure a higher quality of life than your peer group who were less active in their youth.

The surprising comeback of a 6 time Olympic Champion

Surprising, because very few people knew that 6 time Olympic Gold medalist Jason Kenny had even hung up his bike in the first place. Kenny is the self-styled quiet man of the track. An elite athlete so comfortable out of the limelight that you hardly know he is there - until he blasts past you in the final stages of the Sprint or Keirin.

For the last 12 months Kenny has been on sabbatical, changing nappies and doing other stuff. He admitted that the break had left him feeling 'like an 18 year old again' and has caused to reverse his decision to retire. Kenny is not the only one to take long sabbaticals. Designer Stefan Sagmeister famously shuts his studio for 12 months every seven years. I took a long break from business in 2003 and recharged my batteries by living in East Africa and running like a lunatic with some of the best in the world.

You don't have to go to those extremes to get a break though. Many of the Kenyan runners I trained with would think nothing of taking a couple of months off at the end of the season, heading back to the shamba to spend time with family and tend the livestock before coming back to their 'work' of running fully renewed. Winston Churchill used to disappear for a few weeks painting, even while leading the war effort and Bill Gates had his week in his log cabin to let his mind run free of day to day Microsoft stuff and get some fresh perspective.

The key for all of these people is that when they take a break from their regular work they spend time doing something different. It may still be intense but in a different way to business as usual. It is popular refrain that we are too busy to take proper time off but the payback from doing so for even a short time is enormous, both in increased productivity and creativity.

With Olympic 6th placer and London Marathon runner up Mara Yamauchi, I have created a 'Recovery for Performance' Masterclass designed to help people in the workplace to be optimally recovered to perform at their best. Spoiler alert - it doesn't involve spending a year in the jungle!

You can get more information on this and our other Masterclasses here

To hack or not to hack

Everywhere you look somebody is offering a sports hack, marketing hack or other life hack. Anything to take a short cut, avoid the hard work, get an instant result.

The thing is, they don't usually work. Or if they do then the consequences cause more trouble than the thing you were trying to hack your way around.

That sports hack may boost your fitness but it gets you injured (or busted for cheating). The marketing hack boosts short term sales but long term damages your brand. Your life hack denies you experiences and learning.

If we want to get better at our thing, we need to be prepared to put in the hard work and do the miles.

Effective learning in the digital age

There was the old way of adult learning. We sat in a classroom for a day, or a week, or if you did an MBA then for a year - listening to a teacher and taking notes. If we were lucky it was called a 'workshop' and we also got to do some funky exercises which have long since faded from the memory. Perhaps we read a book or many books and scribbled in the margins. In the new millenium we started taking online courses - watching the videos while clearing our emails and hoping that we might remember something.

Then some time would pass while we did other stuff until the time came when we needed to put into practice what we had 'learned'. Cue frantic rummaging through A4 binders of notes, thumbing through books again (if we still have them) or hunting around for the video URL. The flaw is obvious. Without practice, actually doing stuff, there is no learning. Nothing actually changes. The information just goes in one ear, pauses for a few hours or days if you are really lucky, and then goes out of the other ear.

There is a better way though. Having a go. Rolling up our sleeves up and actually investing time and effort in speaking spanish/running/making sushi or in my case, building this website.

Even better is when having a go is combined with some expert input to show you how to do the tricky bits and give you some inspiration. The internet makes accessing this sort of expert support easy and affordable and increasingly it is well designed and fit for purpose.

Even better still is when having a go is combined with some expert input and a small community of like minded people taking on a similar challenge who can encourage, support, critique and share in your journey towards proficiency. There are some interesting new approaches out there. Seth Godin has shown a new way for executive education with his altMBA and I tried a different approach when building this website.

For my website project I took the Squarespace 101 course and became an active member of the course facebook group where I could share my weekly site development goals and get some helpful feedback. The accountability helped me get the first version built quickly (more on getting stuff out there in another post). I did the course bit by bit as I was actually creating my site. It is what an effective adult learning experience should look like. If you want to build a website I can highly recommend the experience, there is a special offer on until the end of October.

Medicating to survive - a failure of leadership

Ex-Liverpool and Denmark defender Daniel Agger has admitted that taking copious quantities of painkillers and anti-inflammatories to get him through matches significantly shortened his playing career. The only surprise in this is that it wasn't a surprise. In sport, education and business medicating your way to survive has become increasingly prevalent.

At the 2010 Bonn marathon over 60% of amateur runners who were surveyed admitting to using pain killing or anti inflammatory pills to help them race.

Some researchers suggest that up to 30% of college students take stimulants such as Adderall to help them cram and get through exams.

A 2012 survey for Drinkaware found that 44% of adults said they were more likely to drink after a stressful day at a work. A large class of something cold when you get home seems to be a pretty common remedy for stressful work environments.

The common feature in all three situations are cultures that not only permit, but encourage, this sort of self medication as a coping mechanism. That is a catastrophic failure of leadership because leaders shape the culture in which we operate. It is a failure by football club managers, directors, agents and senior players. It is a failure by college principals and professors. It is a failure by business owners and managers.

Change the culture. The remedy is an appropriate (manageable but challenging) workload balanced with sufficient, high quality, recovery. The upside? More engaged and productive people, less human train wrecks.

It isn't complicated but it does require bravery, effort and persistence.