Peak Performer

In this podcast episode, I'm reading Chapter 3 of Stewart Cotterill's The Psychology of Performance and discussing the difference between self-confidence and self-efficacy. Throughout this reading, I interrupt the narrative to offer my own input, clarity on certain aspects, and tips and advice on how to build up your sense of efficacy.

In this week's episode of The Mental Game, I'm talking with Rob O'Donohue from Gartner Consulting on how to create positive workplace culture for small organisations. You'll learn in this episode that even if you are a solo business owner, you can begin to create the right workplace culture for the future. The seeds planted now while you build your business will be vital for positive workplace culture and growth later.

Why do airline manufacturers hide potentially catastrophic faults from their customers? Why does big tech use behavioural psychology to take advantage of young developing brains? And why do car makers hide vehicle emission data from the public? At the core of these breeches, is unethical decision-making by business leaders with concern for profit at all costs. Unethical Leadership results from a skewed sense of priority, a heightened sense of self-importance, and

Self-determination is an important concept when considering the human motivation to work and perform. Self-determination theory (SDT)1 explains human motivation, and according to Edward Deci, it is “the energy for action. It gets us up in the morning and moves us through the day”. Motivation allows us to make personal choices based on survival, integration, and work with others and allows us to feel we have control over the direction of our lives.

Over lockdown, I had been considering formats for some new content on work. Settling on an audio series, the loose plan was to meet up with people from diverse backgrounds and record our conversations around the question; How do you feel about daily work?

So as restrictions eased last month, I nabbed Dr Jonathan Murphy, a former psychology lecturer of mine and now senior executive of learning and development at Enterprise Ireland for a chat. Cumiskey's Pub, Dublin 7 was the venue and over several hours we discussed topics such as social media and free speech, Chomsky on academic freedom, the meaning and purpose of work, and in this short clip, the benefits of a psychology degree to all areas of life and work. (No pints - unfortunately!)

The following 4-minute clip is an intro to the longer publication of our conversation due out in September as part of the series on Work. I'll be asking supermarket workers, barristers, dentists, unemployed people, nurses, and a variety of other professions, how they feel about daily work. Subscribe to Human Performance to receive these personal and sometimes moving conversations.

Guest Profile

Dr Jonathan Murphy

Dr Jonathan Murphy is a learning & development specialist with Enterprise Ireland. A former lecturer and researcher, he currently works with senior business leaders and c-suite teams to enhance their non-cognitive skills and strategic leadership capabilities. His background is in the cognitive neuroscience of learning & memory, decision-making, human performance, and entrepreneurship and innovation.

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Transcript

Larry (00:00):When you were a kid, what was the goal? What did you want to be?

Jon (00:08):I can't honestly remember when I was, like under 10 or 12. I think as a teenager, I dabbled with the idea of being a musician and did the whole thing as a teenager, played in the band and I actually went to college to study that. I studied music and media management at college, and I loved the first year of doing that. And then in second year, I realised as with most things in life that it's going to be who you know in the industry and not what you know. And I think one of the things that I'd tell this advice to anyone coming out of college or anyone in a job that they're not happy with, you know, it's; try and build your network, try and like the importance of human relationships actually getting in and sitting down in front of somebody and building a relationship that way is really, really important. Um, the importance of saying yes to opportunities.

So oftentimes we're really busy. We tend to limit what we do. We limit ourselves to stuff that we're comfortable with. I think, one of the things we introduced for final year students was the employability and action module, was going out and doing volunteer work. Now I'm in two minds on volunteer work because I think there are exploited practices that go on there massively in psychology. Huge, right. I wrote an article in the Irish Psychologist in 2017 or 18, that was around the health of academic psychology. And it was [advocating for] making a better future for psychology graduates, and also showing them opportunities outside of academia and outside of the usual stuff. So I can remember, you would have been told in first-year and maybe throughout the degree, would have been all of your various sub-disciplines in psychology, but it wasn't really expressed to an extent it was, but the skills that you develop the way in which you can transfer them over to be very useful in areas of whether it be, project management or whether it be sales roles or whether it be in eh…

Larry (02:18):It really is fundamental, isn't it? Like I found that... I mean, I did it the other way around. I had a practical life experience and then went into academia.

Jon (02:29):And how did you find that then? Did you find that it was stuff that was completely out of whack with your experience?

In the pursuit of success, we can lead ourselves astray. Caught up in how we might be perceived or in anticipation of the prize, we lose our focus. The work itself becomes less important than the material results. This is detrimental to high performance. High performance can only ever be seen in retrospect. In other words, it's only when the job is done do we get to see the fruit of our work. It's a paradox; we've got to forget about making it happen and get into the work for its own sake. Rewards will be a reflection of our degree of focus, and focus is self-activating - we can't force or coerce it. It is a case of the self becoming absorbed in the work rather than being an observer of it. All thought about our performance takes us out of the work. It is a consequence of the absence of the thinking self that success comes about.

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In this episode, we will explore the autotelic personality and the aspects of the self essential for peak experience in work, sport and indeed, life. We will also explore the nine optimal conditions for Flow according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. High performance in all domains of work and play requires it, and the degree to which we may cultivate these aspects of personality will almost certainly influence our performance results. Want to become a better actor, writer, craftsperson, athlete or businessperson? Consider these 9 aspects of the autotelic personality and work consistently to build them in yourself.

Read about The Autotelic Personality

The Performatist is a concept of the individualised, yet universal self. It is that version of humanity that grows out of self-direction and autonomy. The Performatist is the one who makes a dent in their own particular corner of the world. Whether that dent is small or large is irrelevant. What is important is that we become the active agent in command of our own work and life experience. This is not a narcissistic, neo-liberal capitalist position that insists you must be the quintessential entrepreneur, take on the world and conquer it. In fact, in this philosophy, material gain and wordly recognition are secondary or even tertiary to the primary motivation. The Performatist is someone who is self-determined, self-directed, but humanistic and in tune to the impact of their actions on others. To The Performatist, there is nothing to gain except inherent enjoyment of the work, and no one to conquer except themselves. In this way, The Performatist is the one who follows their own path, not for success’ sake, but for the enjoyment of the work itself.

In today's episode, I'm exploring five key psychological skills of elite performers. Elite performers in all fields of work, sport, the arts, and beyond possess psychological skills that enable their higher-level output. Research reports that psychological skills training, comprising psychological techniques and strategies for self-regulation and mental preparation & recovery, is an essential component in high-level achievement. So, if we want to excel, we must adopt and perfect these mental skills. In this article, we will explore five important psychological skills, offer support from findings of empirical research, and suggest ways by which you can develop these skills in yourself. OK, let's retrain your brain.

Read; 5 Key Psychological Skills of Elite Performers

Read more about The PERMA Model; humanperformance.ie/what-is-resilience

In the late 1960s, the father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman and his research associate, Steven Maier, were part of a team that discovered the phenomenon of “learned helplessness." They found that dogs, rats, and mice, when subjected to mild electric shock over which they had no control, would learn to accept it, making no attempt to escape. It was later shown that human beings act the same way. They learn to be helpless.

Over many years of research, Seligman and colleagues discovered that about 30% of subjects never become helpless. The reason why, he says, is optimism. Seligman subsequently developed a means to assess responses as either optimistic or pessimistic. They discovered that people who refuse to give up, have the habit of seeing setbacks as temporary and changeable. In other words, they feel they can do something about it. The researchers realised they could, as Seligman said, “immunise people against learned helplessness, against depression and anxiety, and against giving up after failure by teaching them to think like optimists.”

Over his years of research, Seligman found that the most satisfied, contented people were those who had discovered and exploited their unique combination of what he called “signature strengths,” such as humanity, temperance and persistence and developed the PERMA model of psychological wellbeing.