Beyond High Performance: What Great Coaches Know About How the Best Get Better

The athlete’s work is about constantly getting better. For athletes, work is where they practice growing. Moreover, for athletes, the work is about what it’s doing to them as much as what it’s doing for them.

They all want to grow and improve. They don’t simply want to be the best. They want to constantly explore their capabilities.

“All meta-performing roads lead to teams.”

the purpose of flushing out our beliefs, of taking the red tablet, of stimulating the blame reflex, is not to judge the beliefs. They may very well be helpful beliefs that we want to keep around. We simply won’t know until we get them out and then play with them.

The source of a lack of energy is always internal. You’re de-energized because of how you’re relating to whatever it is you’re doing.

Whether my observations were “correct” or not is beside the point. As a new leader, I was questioning everything, but one question I wasn’t asking was this: Are my complaints in alignment with the goals and values and timing of the people who are leading the organization?

Generally, high performers don’t usually think about culture. They usually are thinking about their own performance or maybe the performance of others.

It’s about looking at work as a means of creative output, of adding value.

It’s “what are we capable of?”