Speaker 1: Welcome to Idemics Performance and Wellness, where world leading coaches
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Speaker 3: Welcome to Coaches to Know, a podcast short designed to
Speaker 3: help demystify coaching and help you our audience understand what
Speaker 3: coaching is and how it can help you. I'm your host, Jamie.
Speaker 3: I am super delighted to be here with Coach Alex
Speaker 3: to discuss a very favorite topic of mine, performance coaching.
Speaker 3: Coach Alex has been coaching for about ten years, and
Speaker 3: in addition to having worked with athletes in the NBA
Speaker 3: and the NFL, he's a performance psychologist who holds a
Speaker 3: PhD and counseling psychology and an MBA. These clients are
Speaker 3: only athletes, but professionals who are at the top of
Speaker 3: their game but are still striving to go further. This
Speaker 3: includes executives, CEOs, finance professionals, and art and even artist.
Speaker 3: Welcome Coach Alex, and thank you for being here with
Speaker 3: me today.
Speaker 2: Jamie. Thank you so much for having me. I am
Speaker 2: excited to be here with you and I love talking
Speaker 2: about this, so I'm hoping we get to have a
Speaker 2: fun conversation here.
Speaker 3: Great. So one of the things that excites me about
Speaker 3: talking about performance coaching in general is that I think
Speaker 3: historically people tend to when they think about coaching. They
Speaker 3: think of it as a remedial tool. And I think
Speaker 3: that when we talk about performance coaching and we think
Speaker 3: about performance coaching, we're framing it from being a remedial
Speaker 3: intervention to an accelerant. So I would like to start
Speaker 3: by sort of laying the groundwork today and talk about
Speaker 3: what do we mean by performance psychology and performance coaching.
Speaker 2: It's a great question, and I'm glad you started with
Speaker 2: the accelerant versus remedial topic. So I guess broad strokes,
Speaker 2: performance psychology is really about helping people be their best
Speaker 2: when it matters most. That's the core principle at play
Speaker 2: in the work that we're doing now. Sometimes that means
Speaker 2: working to solve particular challenges. Maybe it's things like performance anxiety,
Speaker 2: or difficulty with public speaking, or even difficulty with leadership.
Speaker 2: And at other times we're working on optimizing how someone
Speaker 2: shows up to work the way that they do their
Speaker 2: leadership things are largely good, but they're interested in getting
Speaker 2: a promotion or becoming a top performer in their team,
Speaker 2: or just figuring out how they take themselves to their
Speaker 2: full potential. So performance psychology is really built around evidence
Speaker 2: based principles of behavior change to help people address those
Speaker 2: gaps or issues or optimize their performance to be the
Speaker 2: best that they can be. And performance coaching is just
Speaker 2: kind of an extension of performance psychology. Really, it's about
Speaker 2: leveraging those tools and helping people learn the skills that
Speaker 2: they need to be as effective as they can possibly be,
Speaker 2: typically under pressure or in high stakes, high risk situations,
Speaker 2: and in some cases as a performance psychologist, those risks
Speaker 2: are like with elite military units, where I've done some work,
Speaker 2: for example, helping army rangers figure out how to diffuse bombs.
Speaker 2: And in other situations, high risk is you know, we're
Speaker 2: scaling a company up, or we have to go through
Speaker 2: a big layoff, or we're acquiring a new company and
Speaker 2: we've got to integrate culture and we're not sure how
Speaker 2: that's going to work. So of course the risks are
Speaker 2: on different skills and different consequences, but in both cases
Speaker 2: they feel really important. And performance psychology is about helping
Speaker 2: you learn the skills that you need to manage those
Speaker 2: things effectively, perform well through them, and then again kind
Speaker 2: of thrive right, feel good, perform well, and be the
Speaker 2: best that you can be.
Speaker 3: That's super interesting. I would you know, I don't know
Speaker 3: how you coach people through when human lives are extincing.
Speaker 3: That sounds quite intense. Just as a follow up up question,
Speaker 3: you know, are there any types of coaching? Performance coaching
Speaker 3: gets confused with or how to differentiate itself from other
Speaker 3: types of coaching?
Speaker 2: Broadly, coaching is hard to differentiate anyway, unfortunately, for better
Speaker 2: or worse. Right, there's lots of types of coaches, and
Speaker 2: people also think about coaching with things like mentoring or
Speaker 2: other sorts of advising that goes on. So I think
Speaker 2: what makes performance psychology and performance coaching a bit unique
Speaker 2: is really the focus on peak performance and helping people
Speaker 2: be their best consistently, whereas sometimes things like executive coaching
Speaker 2: might focus on tactical or operational aspects of a business,
Speaker 2: or traditional psychology is focused on fixing mental health problems. Right,
Speaker 2: So performance psychology can kind of live in the middle there,
Speaker 2: and it's really about the individual as a performer, the
Speaker 2: team as a performer, the organization as a performer, but
Speaker 2: not necessarily about you know, should we pursue this tactic
Speaker 2: or that tactic, or should we execute this acquisition or
Speaker 2: should we not execute this acquisition, or what does it
Speaker 2: mean to be a new CEO. You know, we can
Speaker 2: talk about some of those things, but ultimately, perform coach
Speaker 2: is not necessarily designed to address that in the way
Speaker 2: maybe executive coaching or mentoring or advising might help with
Speaker 2: some of those other issues.
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you for that clarification. As the next question,
Speaker 3: you know, we talked a little bit at the and
Speaker 3: your introduction about you know who your clients are, but
Speaker 3: can you tell us maybe give us a little detail
Speaker 3: about you know, why should someone should consider this type
Speaker 3: of coaching.
Speaker 2: I believe that everyone who's working in a high stakes,
Speaker 2: high pressure environment is a performer, and I think there
Speaker 2: are actually quite a number of high stakes, high pressure
Speaker 2: environments that require good performance. Right, So even things that
Speaker 2: people don't typically think about as a performance, like parenting,
Speaker 2: for example, I think is a high stakes, high pressure
Speaker 2: situation for most people. And as a new dad, I
Speaker 2: certainly feel that. And then you've got obviously different challenges
Speaker 2: that you're working through, you know, as a CEO of
Speaker 2: a company, or different challenges again if you're working in private,
Speaker 2: do your venture capital, but ultimately you're dealing with high
Speaker 2: risk decisions and high stake situations that require a bit
Speaker 2: of skill to be able to navigate it. And so
Speaker 2: what I've found is that a lot of the same
Speaker 2: things that impact the pro athletes that I've worked with
Speaker 2: impact really everybody. And I kind of break my work
Speaker 2: down into five or six sort of key buckets. So
Speaker 2: the first is what I would call stealth regulation. That's
Speaker 2: the ability to control, moderate, direct your thinking, feeling in physiology,
Speaker 2: and to be able to optimize your own learning and
Speaker 2: become an expert in your own way. So it's kind
Speaker 2: of two parts, how you learn and how you control yourself.
Speaker 2: The second is leadership, and athletes, of course have to
Speaker 2: work on their leadership, regardless of being a starter or
Speaker 2: a bench player. The same thing is true with pretty
Speaker 2: much every executive or even parents, right you're leading your kid.
Speaker 2: Third is kind of relationships and communications. It's kind of
Speaker 2: related to that leadership bucket, but it's a little bit different.
Speaker 2: Right we all are learning how to work best in
Speaker 2: our teams, whether again that's your family unit, your basketball team,
Speaker 2: or your investment committee. You have to be thinking about
Speaker 2: all the ways that those things come together and how
Speaker 2: you operate. Fourth would be decision making. So you know,
Speaker 2: obviously decisions happen on different time scales, But ultimately there
Speaker 2: is a process that we can all develop and a
Speaker 2: set of skills we can all deploy to help us
Speaker 2: make more effective decisions. Things like identifying our own biases,
Speaker 2: coming up with frameworks around decisions for our values, learning
Speaker 2: what information to pick up and wait for or to
Speaker 2: build out to make a more effective decision, when to
Speaker 2: trust our intuitive expertise, and when to be slow and deliberate.
Speaker 2: You know, all these things play a part in how
Speaker 2: we perform. And then finally is performance under pressure. And
Speaker 2: there's a set of skills that again you need whether
Speaker 2: you're diffusing a bomb, shooting a free throw, you know,
Speaker 2: giving a big pitch. Right, These same skills actually cut
Speaker 2: across the different spaces, and so of course you teach
Speaker 2: them in different contexts, but I think ultimately those are
Speaker 2: sort of the core buckets are really good pformance coaching,
Speaker 2: and again you touch on some of the tangential things
Speaker 2: that come with that, right. You know, if you're talking
Speaker 2: about leadership, that might bleed into something like executive presidence,
Speaker 2: where you're figuring out how you show up and be
Speaker 2: more confident, right, and that's again a performance psychology skill.
Speaker 2: Or if you're thinking about decision making. You might be
Speaker 2: thinking about how you do things like hiring and firing,
Speaker 2: which is one type of decision, but it's still related
Speaker 2: to the way that you process that information. So you
Speaker 2: can kind of see how you feel in all the
Speaker 2: core challenges underneath those big buckets. And that's what I
Speaker 2: rely on as my framework for the work that I do. Amazing.
Speaker 3: I love how that framework really fits this broad I
Speaker 3: love that so how broadly you define performance? First of all,
Speaker 3: because you know, for example, I am also a parent.
Speaker 3: I don't think of parenting as being a performance, but
Speaker 3: it is in a way, right. It's high pressure and
Speaker 3: a lot of times the decisions that you make have
Speaker 3: long can may have long term implications, right, and you
Speaker 3: don't really know in the moment right what those are.
Speaker 3: I'm curious as to whether do you coach parents as well.
Speaker 2: I've worked with a few parents. Yeah, And obviously, especially
Speaker 2: if you're working with high performers and business for example,
Speaker 2: oftentimes those performers are also parents, and your parents is stressful, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's hard, and so if you're if you're in a
Speaker 2: stressful situation, again, a high stage environment, there are going
Speaker 2: to be some skills from performance psychology that are going
Speaker 2: to help you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean the reality is right, is that
Speaker 3: our lives are not as siloed as oftentimes we would
Speaker 3: like them to be, and of what happens at work
Speaker 3: can bleed into what happens at home and so on
Speaker 3: and so forth. So I think it's really Again, I
Speaker 3: think it's great that this framework helps you address how
Speaker 3: you show up generally, whether it is work or home.
Speaker 3: So so, what sort of outcomes have you seen from
Speaker 3: this type of coaching? And you know, can you can
Speaker 3: you share any real coaching stories that are audience be
Speaker 3: interested in learning about.
Speaker 2: Can share some real stories without sharing some real names
Speaker 2: that help to protect the people that I work with.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, I think a host of outcomes
Speaker 2: that you can kind of associate with performance coaching. I
Speaker 2: think some of the more foundational or fundamental things are
Speaker 2: feeling more in control, right, having a sense that you
Speaker 2: are kind of the agent and author of your own story,
Speaker 2: that you have a sense of how to best execute,
Speaker 2: you understand how to perform well. I think a second
Speaker 2: outcome people often experience is feeling more confident, and that
Speaker 2: often comes from that experience of feeling a bit more
Speaker 2: in control of themselves or their situation. But it also
Speaker 2: changes the way that they show up, the way that
Speaker 2: they interact and are personally, the way that they communicate. Third,
Speaker 2: I think is feeling more motivated. Right when you're really
Speaker 2: tapped into and feel confident in the skills that you develop,
Speaker 2: then pressure becomes like a privilege, right. It becomes an
Speaker 2: opportunity to perform better versus something to be afraid of,
Speaker 2: and that increases motivation. Fourth, I think you would get
Speaker 2: improved leadership and communication. And broadly, you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of really good teamwork, whether it's sports or business, is
Speaker 2: how you talk to your teammates. It is how you
Speaker 2: interact with your teammates, and so being an effective leader,
Speaker 2: being an effective communicator becomes part and parcel elevating everyone's
Speaker 2: game so that you can be successful. So those I
Speaker 2: think would be a few of the outcomes that you
Speaker 2: could expect. And I mean, gosh, I've now worked with
Speaker 2: performers across a range of spaces, but one of my
Speaker 2: favorite stories is I was doing some work with an
Speaker 2: MBA player who struggled a bit with shooting at the
Speaker 2: free throw line, which is you know, for any players
Speaker 2: kind of a unique experience because you practice this skill
Speaker 2: so much, but in practice you can never replicate, you know,
Speaker 2: twenty thousand people staring at you and screaming at you
Speaker 2: and hoping that you miss right if you're on an
Speaker 2: away game, and so you're kind of out there in
Speaker 2: a team sport on an island for a moment, you know.
Speaker 2: And so in individual sports things like golf or tennis,
Speaker 2: you get used to that performing by yourself, but in
Speaker 2: basketball you can mostly perform with everyone else, and then
Speaker 2: for a brief moment, everything stops and everyone's staring at you,
Speaker 2: waiting to see what's going to happen and how it's
Speaker 2: going to impact the game. And so a lot of
Speaker 2: players get nervous. And so I had one player who
Speaker 2: came and said, you know, I want to work on
Speaker 2: shooting free throws. I want to get more aggressive going
Speaker 2: to the basket, which is often going to mean I'm
Speaker 2: gonna spend more time with the free throw line. It's like, okay, great,
Speaker 2: well tell me a little bit about you know, what
Speaker 2: you're thinking or what you're feeling when you get up there.
Speaker 2: And his original approach was like, I'm just so nervous.
Speaker 2: I'm in my head. I started thinking about, you know,
Speaker 2: what if I miss, what am I going to do?
Speaker 2: What's the right tactic here? What will my teammates say?
Speaker 2: And my heart rate increases and my breathing increases, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: so tell me a little bit about how you deal
Speaker 2: with that right now. And his solution was to spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time right hoping that it would just
Speaker 2: kind of slow down. And what you find often is,
Speaker 2: and you know, for better or worse, it's actually quite
Speaker 2: a common tactic right across spaces. People are just waiting
Speaker 2: for it to stop, versus doing something reactively to address it.
Speaker 2: And so we started to think about, okay, well, what
Speaker 2: could we do and what would resonate for him? And
Speaker 2: it turned out that the most important thing we could address,
Speaker 2: which is often true for people who feel a bit
Speaker 2: of performance anxiety, is really addressing and reappraising the physiology.
Speaker 2: So you kind of have two parts. You have learning
Speaker 2: to do something with the actual increased adrenaline if you
Speaker 2: will right, learning to control your breathing with techniques like
Speaker 2: box breathing. You can practice things like mindfulness meditation that
Speaker 2: help you control and direct your attention. Really, learning to
Speaker 2: talk to yourself in a way that slows you down,
Speaker 2: even slowing your physical movements down, so that you send
Speaker 2: the message like Okay, I'm calm, and then you want
Speaker 2: to reappraise that stress as something more helpful. Right, So,
Speaker 2: we've all been socialized or conditioned into this belief that
Speaker 2: stress is bad and that we should all try to
Speaker 2: get stress out or away as quickly as possible. But
Speaker 2: the reality is, stress itself is not harmful. Stress is
Speaker 2: just your brain and body preparing you to do something effortful.
Speaker 2: And if you change the way that you think about it,
Speaker 2: we have all this data that shows if you appraise
Speaker 2: stressors as a challenge versus a threat, then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, the physiology becomes excitement, it becomes focused, it
Speaker 2: becomes determination, not oh my goodness, I'm about to melt
Speaker 2: down at the free throw line. So we worked on
Speaker 2: some of these skills, and then early on in my career,
Speaker 2: you know, we were in COVID and so there were
Speaker 2: times when we had no fans and times when we
Speaker 2: had some fans. But one of the privileges of the
Speaker 2: experience was getting to watch, you know, all these basketball
Speaker 2: games from up close and personal, and at one point,
Speaker 2: this player just looked at me at the free throw
Speaker 2: line and winked, and I was like, Okay, he kind
Speaker 2: of got it. And so those are the cool experiences
Speaker 2: you get to have in my world. Then I've had,
Speaker 2: you know, very similar experiences with executives who feel empowered
Speaker 2: when they give a pitch or feel like they're operating
Speaker 2: with their team at a high level deploying these skills.
Speaker 2: And that's what makes this work so fun is you
Speaker 2: get to see people in action be the best that
Speaker 2: they can be.
Speaker 3: That was That's a wonderful story. Thank you so much
Speaker 3: for being here with us today and sharing that story.
Speaker 3: And the one thought I would love to leave us
Speaker 3: with is this the idea that pressure become a privilege
Speaker 3: because you are motivated in the confidence that you have
Speaker 3: built by working with Coach Alex. Thank you so much
Speaker 3: for being here with us today and to our audience,
Speaker 3: if you would like to work with Coach Alex or
Speaker 3: one of our other qualified coaches, please visit us at
Speaker 3: theidmics dot com. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening. Please subscribe wherever you listen and leave
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