The Performance Playbook for Success

After coaching thousands of leaders over the past 2 decades, I’ve distilled my best Performance Coaching into a brief but powerful tool I call the Performance Playbook. This playbook is the culmination of 20 years of working with high performers in almost every vertical from engineering to education, to healthcare and the creative arts.

Every coach knows winning is one thing; I mean let’s face it- the odds are that everyone will win at something at least once in their lifetime. However winning repeatedly- that’s a horse of a different color. The Performance Playbook was designed to simplify and even codify the process of repeat wins.

Did you know the #1 reason most entrepreneurs fail is that they get stuck in a cycle of taking ineffective actions? Think about it for a moment. We’ve all experienced this at one point or another: we get excited about ‘something’, we take actions to produce the result we want…and nothing. Nothing happens. It’s like we didn’t do anything at all. So we try again. Harder. Faster. LOUDER. And still Nothing. Eventually, we figure that we don’t really want to do this ‘thing’ anyway or worse we tell ourselves that we suck at doing this ‘thing’ and we walk away – ‘failure’. Later on when someone asks us about that ‘thing’- we say something like “oh, that ‘thing’? I didn’t have enough time, money etc” OR “ I had a better ‘ thing’ come along” but rarely do we admit that we got stuck. Plain and simple. We got stuck then we got dis-empowered, so we quit.

Sound familiar?

Well what if you had a magic formula that you could apply to ANY situation and set yourself up to win, reliably. Repeatedly. Time after time. Would that be awesome or what?! Now as a coach I gotta tell you that this is precisely when one would hire a coach, after all that’s what coaches do: work with you to hone your skills so you become a reliable and valuable high performer. BUT what if you don’t have a coach at your immediate disposal and you still need to produce a result? Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Performance Playbook.

For the sake of brevity, I’m only going to give you the highlights in this post. If you want to get into the nitty gritty send me a message and let’s schedule a FREE Fast Track to Success Call. In the meantime, I’ve provided a handy downloadable Info-graphic of the Performance Playbook here.

So without further ado…

Play #1: Context – This is literally EVERYTHING and should always be your first play as a high performer. The context is decisive. So if you don’t know the context you’re operating inside, you definitely have no clue where to start or finish when it comes to taking actions or defining your success.

Play #2: Commitment- This is my personal favorite. You see you are ALWAYS taking actions inside of your commitments. That being said, most people don’t realize what they are truly committed to. When in doubt, question yourself and your actions. What actions do you take on a daily basis? The answer points rather poignantly to your commitments.

Play #3: Intention- okay so I will level with you; its impossible to experience repeat success without intentionality. Period. Again, anyone can win once, maybe twice in awhile. But people who make it their business to succeed are intentional.

Play #4: Action- This may sound silly but a lot of people really don’t know that the ONLY thing that produces results is action. You’ve heard of analysis paralysis? Well this Playbook is designed to breakthrough that syndrome. In the words of one of my mentors: “You either have results, or excuses why not.” Your research, brainstorming, vision-boarding etc…is great unless it’s in the absence of action. In the words of another mentor “Insight always occurs in the absence of action.” In other words when you’re action- you’re too busy for anything other than taking actions!

Play #5 Results- Now we get to the results. A lot of people want results to be the first of second play, but I hope by now you’re starting to realize the first few plays are designed to position you for effective action the first time up so that you produce results quickly- rather than spin your wheels taking ineffective actions.

Play #6 Reality Check- This is where you track, analyze and translate your results into a tangible support tool for your success. Again most people are so focused on the result as the end game, they have little chance of being able to repeat their success. At best they chalk their wins up to luck or chance but get nervous when asked how they did what they did. It is ESSENTIAL to track, analyze and translate your results to determine which actions were effective and which actions were not. Quite simply you want to validate and confirm the quality and quantity of the actions you took to produce the results you have in front of you. IF YOU’RE NOT DOING THIS …YOU ARE NOT A HIGH PERFORMER.

Play #7 Acknowledgement & Debrief – and THIS is where the real magic is. After distilling your results into usable data, acknowledge the actions you took, the actions you did not take. Look forward to what actions you will be repeating and which ones you will not. Debrief whether or not your actions were in alignment with your commitment. Acknowledge if you at some point your intentionality waned. But most importantly, acknowledge yourself for showing up and for playing. Look for what you’ve learned in the process so far and allow yourself to experience and express gratitude for it all. When you are done.

Return to Play #1…whats your context NOW?

That’s it in a nutshell. The Performance Playbook is an intentional cycle that feeds on itself…much like the Ouroboros. This is what allows for repeated success: a system that repeats itself.

Now that you’ve gotten the basics of the Performance Playbook, which of the 7 plays will you take on this week? Drop a comment below and let me know.