THE BUSINESS REVIEW FOR PROCUREMENT LEADERS
by Steve Smith
Whether you are a senior business leader or an Olympic athlete, the key to success is a winning mindset. This term, along with the alternative, “positive mental attitude”, are, unfortunately, often viewed as meaningless business jargon. However, it is true that battles are won and lost in people’s heads long before they are fought. Our thoughts dictate our moods, our emotions, our body language and, ultimately, our ability to perform. Ensuring the way you approach a challenge mentally is correct is the key to success.
What most people forget is that thoughts are not random; we can learn to control
them to ensure that we always perform with an aura of self-belief.
The world’s top business leaders have a strong connection with their
inner thoughts and train them, as an athlete would train a muscle, to make
them work in their favour. Here are five things you can do to achieve the same
results:
1. Find your voice
Sit up straight and take deep breaths,
inhaling for a count of eight and repeating when you exhale. After four repetitions
you should feel simultaneously relaxed
and alert. Now listen intently to the sound of silence and you will begin to
recognise a combination of voices. Focus on the most immediate and clear voice:
this is the manifestation of your “inner voice”. Learning to control
and develop this voice is the way to develop a winning mindset and increase
your success.
2. Practice under pressure
You cannot replicate the pressure, so why bother practising? To some extent, this is true, but you can create stressful situations for your practice run. For instance, professional golfer Colin Montgomerie practises putts by playing 100 consecutively; if he misses one, then he starts all over again. He has added a pressure to the situation, as he would much rather be back at the clubhouse instead of starting on putt number one all over again!
Try practising a presentation in front of your team or your partner. This is frequently more nerve-wracking than presenting to the board, but it will help you to hone your skills and provide a “live” pressure situation. Practice and preparation lead to performance.
3. Run the movie
Different people have different ways to motivate themselves and focus on
performance. Positive visualisation is a great way of developing a winning
mindset. Create a clear and vivid image in your mind, complete with sights,
sounds, smells and emotions. Run this “movie” over and over again
until your big meeting; when it happens you’ll feel as though you’ve
already been there.
What movie are you running in your mind before your performance? Take five minutes out prior to that pressure situation and use it to focus mentally on how the meeting should run. What will it look like? And what will it feel like when you get the result you want?
4. Have a winning routine
Most successful business leaders have their own way of preparing that puts them in a confident mood to perform. These “winning routines” form strong emotional associations. You can develop your own and learn to associate them with feeling great and being ready to perform.
5. Walk the walk
When you have control of your inner state, you will automatically assume
the body language of an ultra-confident person. In turn, when you’re
not feeling confident and need to regain the edge, you can change your inner
state by changing your body language.
Close your eyes and imagine an ultra-successful you. How do you look? How do you hold yourself? This is the person you need to be. When you walk tall and assume the correct posture there will be an automatic change in your attitude. People buy confidence. Your colleagues, board members and employees will feel the change, and in turn your inner belief will grow.
Never simply walk away – always analyse a performance, taking emotion
out of the situation. When you do this, look on it as an outcome, learn from
it, make the changes and come back stronger. The outcome is the only thing
that matters, so use it as a crucial indicator to enable you to change and
adapt your plan on the way to achieving your goals.
Steve Smith (stevesmith@raisethebarltd.co.uk) is Britain’s most successful high jumper and director of business training and coaching company Raise the Bar
