What Is High-Performance Coaching?

High performance coaching helps individuals and teams reach their peak performance, not only in their careers but in various areas of their lives.

I developed the Cognitive Athlete to guide business leaders to improve their performance at work and provide them with the knowledge to make their workplace a high-performance environment where everybody is given the tools to perform at their best.

A key element to my coaching is also giving you the tools to achieve balance in your life by allowing time for rest, recovery and a social life, without negatively impacting productivity.

My 20-years of experience coaching elite athletes and teams to achieve peak performance has given me a unique insight into how excellence is truly achieved. I believe there are so many parallels between the business and sports worlds when it comes to high-performance coaching. That’s how the concept of the Cognitive Athlete was born. We are all athletes, just competing in different arenas.

Why Do We Need High Performance Coaching?

Is something holding you back from achieving your goals?

Do you lack motivation, willpower, or self-discipline?

Through expert guidance and scientifically backed techniques, I will help you achieve your goals in the following areas:

Career – I will help you make clear plans and goals for your career and show you how to achieve them. I will also teach you valuable leadership skills.
Behaviour – The Cognitive Athlete program teaches you how to break bad habits and form good ones. If you suffer an unfortunate setback, whether in your career or personal life, my high-performance coaching can help you recover.

Stress management and mental resilience – The Cognitive Athlete high performance coaching program will teach you techniques to cope with stress, avoid burnout and have a better work/life balance.

High Performance Techniques

One of the most effective and scientifically backed methods I use is “flow” and how to access this state.

I am sure that many of you will have heard of the term “flow” and its links with peak performance. The godfather of flow is a researcher called Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose 1990 paper “Flow: The psychology of optimal experience” has been cited over 35,500 times in academic papers.

What is a flow state?

“Flow states are defined as optimal states of consciousness. These are states where you feel your best, and you perform your best” – Flow Genome Project.
From Csikszentmihalyi’s work, there seems to be some clear pre-conditioning to get in a flow state, and my high-performance coaching will teach you how to access it.

So, what is required to access a flow state?

1. Complete Concentration
   When was the last time that you were 100% concentrated on one task? Nowadays, this is nearly possible unless we set up the environment to help with this.
2. Clear Goals
   Make sure you set clear and specific goals. A lack of understanding of what needs to be done leads to a lack of success.
3. Challenge/skill balance
   This is the hard part. We need to find the task challenging enough to drive dopamine but not too much to become anxious.
4. The experience is intrinsically rewarding
   This can be difficult to understand. Think about the different activities that drive flow – skiing, surfing, playing a musical instrument – as based on intrinsic rewards. From a work standpoint, it’s the idea of purpose and whether the job is fulfilling.
5. Effortlessness and ease
   Due to a mixture of neurochemicals, activities can feel easier, and different areas of the brain are being activated. Therefore complex problems become simpler to solve.
6. Actions and awareness are merged
   We feel and do; it’s that simple. Sometimes, it feels that we are already doing the activity before we have thought about it.
7. Feeling of control
   There must have been a time in your life when you felt in total control and had confidence in what you could do.

What’s stopping you from achieving peak performance?

Performance = Potential – Interference
Emotional interference gets in the way of us achieving peak performance. Examples of interfering emotions are anxiety, guilt, and fear. High performance coaching can help you understand your true potential and support you in addressing these interfering emotions.

Summary
High performance coaching is about helping you become the best version of yourself and achieve your goals. It’s especially beneficial for career or life planning, coping with stress, honing leadership skills and behaviour change.