Graham Winter on How to Manage Performance and Stress in High-Stake Situations
In today's fast-paced and unpredictable world, cultivating resilience and achieving sustained peak performance is more crucial than ever. Drawing from insights shared by Graham Winter, a renowned expert in performance psychology, we dive into practical strategies and timeless principles that can empower individuals to navigate challenges and excel in various facets of life.
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Anchoring on Personal Values: A Guiding Light in Turbulent Times
Graham Winter emphasizes the significance of anchoring on personal values as a compass to steer through uncertainty and adversity. Individuals can make decisions aligned with their principles by identifying and embodying core values such as courage, care, and mateship, fostering trust and cohesion within teams and organizations. This steadfast commitment to values is a beacon of light, guiding individuals through the darkest storms and helping them stay true to their purpose.
Strategies for Adversity: Building a Strong Foundation
To weather the storms of life, Graham Winter advocates for building a robust foundation grounded in physical fitness, mental frameworks, and diverse perspectives. Regular fitness routines enhance physical well-being and bolster mental resilience, enabling individuals to face challenges with vigor and determination.
Additionally, Graham developed a framework called ADEP (Achieve, Develop, Enjoy, Partner) about 15 years ago to address performance management in high-stress environments. This framework emerged from a project with a large organization dissatisfied with its performance appraisal system. They wanted a more dynamic and supportive approach.
Here's a breakdown of the framework.
Achieve: Attaining meaningful outcomes and goals.
Develop: Growing skills and capabilities.
Enjoy: Maintaining energy and enjoyment in activities.
Partner: Building strong, trustworthy relationships.
This framework helps leaders and teams sustain performance and engagement by focusing on these four key elements. Graham uses this approach with his clients and his own life, consulting with his coach regularly to ensure balance and effectiveness.
Success as a Harmonious Balance: Integrating Professional and Personal Fulfillment
For Graham Winter, success transcends mere professional achievements and encompasses a harmonious balance across various dimensions of life. Individuals can achieve holistic fulfillment and well-being by dedicating time and energy to family, health, relationships, and career pursuits.
Success, therefore, lies not in the relentless pursuit of external accolades but in aligning actions with intrinsic values and aspirations. Through this balanced approach, individuals can navigate the complexities of modern life with grace and purpose.
Cultivating Trust and Confidence: Keys to High-Performance Living
Central to Graham Winter's philosophy is the cultivation of trust—trust in oneself, colleagues, and the game plan. This foundation of trust forms the bedrock of high-performance environments, enabling individuals to maintain composure and confidence in demanding situations.
Trust is nurtured through thorough preparation, open vulnerability, and clear communication, fostering strong bonds and collective efficacy within teams. By fostering a culture of trust, individuals can unleash their full potential and achieve remarkable feats even amidst uncertainty and adversity.
Continuous Growth and Self-Discovery: Navigating the Journey of Life
Finally, Graham Winter emphasizes the importance of continuous growth and self-discovery as fundamental pillars of personal development. Just as athletes develop user guides to understand their strengths and preferences, individuals must invest in introspection and self-awareness.
Individuals can navigate life's challenges with resilience and adaptability by gaining insights into their unique qualities and tendencies. This journey of self-discovery fosters personal growth and enables individuals to unlock their full potential and lead fulfilling lives.
Connect with Graham Winter: Embark on a Journey of Transformation
To embark on a journey of transformation and peak performance, connect with Graham Winter on LinkedIn or explore the resources available on his consulting firm's website, Think One Team. With Graham's wealth of knowledge and experience, individuals and organizations alike can unlock new levels of resilience, excellence, and fulfillment in all areas of life.
In conclusion, Graham Winter's wisdom offers invaluable insights into thriving amidst adversity and achieving sustained peak performance. By anchoring on personal values, embracing adversity as an opportunity for growth, and fostering trust and collaboration, individuals can transcend limitations and realize their fullest potential.
As we navigate the complexities of modern life, let us heed Graham Winter's lessons of resilience and peak performance and strive to create lives filled with purpose, passion, and profound fulfillment.
Connect with Graham Winter
Website — https://www.thinkoneteam.com/
Linkedin — https://www.linkedin.com/in/graham-winter-b4b5a59/
Transcript
Graham Winter
(0:00) Test this on yourself, Julian. (0:02) When you're going well, when you're having a good period of time and you feel like you're performing, these four things will be in place. (0:08) You're achieving meaningful outcomes.
(0:11) You feel like you're making progress, goals, and so on. (0:14) You're developing and growing. (0:16) So there's a level of stretch, a level of growth in skills, capabilities, and so on.
(0:22) There's a level of energy and enjoyment in what you're doing. (0:25) So there's more energy in than there's energy out. (0:27) There's certainly going out, but there's some coming back in.
(0:30) It's being replenished. (0:31) And then the final one is, there'll be some people around you who are strong collegiate relationships who you can trust as partners. (0:40) So if you think of the four letters, ADEP: achieve, develop, enjoy, partner, that's where I start with any leader.
Julian Hayes II
(0:52) Welcome to another episode of Executive Health & Life. (0:54) I'm your host, Julian Hayes II, back at it again, as I always say, with another fascinating guest. (0:59) And today I'm speaking with a gentleman who played first-class cricket before retiring early to pursue a career as a performance psychologist.
(1:06) He's now one of Australia's leading performance psychologists. (1:09) He's stepped into a high-profile career. (1:11) He's working with top executive teams of international corporations, the Australian Test Cricket Team, Olympic gold medalists, among many others.
(1:18) I'm speaking with Graham Winter, who was the three-time chief psychologist to the Australian Olympic team. (1:24) He's also the founder of the consulting firm, Think One Team Consulting, and a five-time best-selling author, including the newest book that they have, Toolkit for Turbulence. (1:33) Without further ado, Graham, how are you doing this morning?
(1:38) Julian, I'm doing really well, thank you. (1:40) It's lovely to spend the time with you. (1:42) Well, I appreciate it.
(1:43) It's very interesting how we're so connected now in this world now that it's nearly evening time for me and it's morning time for you. (1:50) So I'm always fascinated by technology and just how it's just so easy to connect this now.
Graham Winter
(1:54) It does make it so easy, doesn't it, which has its upsides, but it has its challenges about the amount of stuff that we're dealing with as well. (2:04) But then the opportunities are just fantastic. (2:06) So this is one of those.
(2:07) So lovely to spend the time with you.
Julian Hayes II
(2:09) It is. (2:09) And so I always love to go back into the past before coming to the present and then looking into the future. (2:14) And so if I was gonna meet you, if we met you as a teenager, would we be surprised of the work you're doing now or would it be expected?
Graham Winter
(2:24) It's a really interesting question. (2:25) My parents, I think if they'd said as a 15-year-old would say, Graham has no idea what he wants to do. (2:31) So they sent me to get this vocational guidance testing with a psychologist.
(2:36) And the psychologist, I remember, came out with two recommendations. (2:39) You could do law or do accounting. (2:41) I hated maths, so that was out of the question.
(2:45) My father was like, well, okay, maybe you do law. (2:47) And I said, no, no, no, I wanna do what the guy who was doing the testing was doing. (2:51) I'm gonna be a psychologist.
(2:53) And that was from that moment on. (2:54) So I think if you got me at probably 16 and a half, I would have said, I'm gonna be a psychologist. (3:01) I'm gonna be working with people in business, helping them to be good at their jobs.
(3:07) And here we are 40, 50 years later and we're still going.
Julian Hayes II
(3:12) Yeah, and so another, the sport of cricket, that I'm not familiar with it that much. (3:18) I've seen it through the grapevine, heard about it. (3:20) So I guess the first thing is what got you interested in cricket?
Graham Winter
(3:25) I have no idea. (3:27) I can never remember not playing with a bat and a ball. (3:30) So I guess it's probably like kids in the States.
(3:32) They grow up playing baseball. (3:33) We grew up playing cricket and I was pretty good at it. (3:36) So I got the rewards from that.
(3:39) And then, you know, subsequently went on and played in two sort of championship winning teams in Australia. (3:45) So we won the sort of long form game and the short form game. (3:49) But then I retired pretty early because I was trying to juggle an early career with Cooper's and my brand alongside playing first-class cricket.
(3:59) And then, yeah, the opportunities I'm sure we'll talk about to go into the sports psychology area arose. (4:04) And yeah, I decided that I'd achieve what I wanted to in cricket. (4:08) And there were other things that looked really exciting on the horizon.
(4:11) So I headed for those.
Julian Hayes II
(4:13) Yeah, that was gonna be one of my questions because typically athletes are usually forced to retire just due to maybe not being able to do the job as well anymore. (4:22) Or if you're a boxer, you just get knocked out one too many times. (4:25) And so you don't go back in the ring.
(4:27) And so it sounded like for you, you were still performing at a high level at cricket and still making this transition to this other world. (4:36) So did you have any initial questioning of like, am I, is this the right time to make this move and to go all in on this thing?
Graham Winter
(4:45) I think if it was these days, I would have because now cricket's so professional. (4:49) So what's called the big bash league, the 2020 league and the world championships are on in the States and West Indies over the next few months. (4:59) So I think if it had been in that situation, I would have had a contract, I would have had a good income and potentially a sort of six, eight year horizon, something like that.
(5:07) But yeah, we would try to juggle doing this, travelling nationally, playing and then coming back and working. (5:14) So for me, honestly, it was a no brainer. (5:16) I wanted to play first class cricket.
(5:18) I didn't think I was good enough to get into the national team. (5:23) And as it turned out, the then coach of the local cricket team, the state cricket team that I was playing in was also on the board of the Institute of Sport and they were looking for a psychologist. (5:35) And the guy who ran it was one of our top football coaches.
(5:39) And he was adamant that he said, I don't want somebody that's university specifically trained in sports psychology because there really wasn't anything in Australia in those days. (5:48) It was really probably States, Canada and so on. (5:51) He said, I want somebody who's playing elite sport.
(5:54) So it was a pretty short list. (5:56) I think I might've been the least. (6:00) And away we went.
Julian Hayes II
(6:02) So interesting. (6:03) So we're gonna fast forward a little bit kind of on your career trajectory and probably go to something that probably a lot of people are interested in and you probably talk about a decent amount of times is the getting involved with the Olympic teams there and doing that. (6:16) So I guess the first time you're doing that, I would think it's a feeling of, wow, this is pretty cool, but it's pretty high stakes.
(6:26) And I guess at that point in your time, did you feel fully prepared for it? (6:31) Or was this, did you, because sometimes I guess I'm getting it. (6:34) Sometimes we have this thing of feeling like an imposter or saying, are we truly ready for this moment or something?
Graham Winter
(6:40) Yeah, I think the thing that it was a bit weird because we were, we'd been briefed and we were, I mean, we were trying to help athletes to cope with an event that can very easily overwhelm them. (6:54) And then you walk into it yourself and go, oh my goodness, it's like 26, 28 world championships. (7:01) There are more media here than there are athletes.
(7:05) It is just as, I always remember one moment when one of our Australian teams said to me one day, it was their day at their competition. (7:13) And they said, I'm not ready. (7:14) It can't be today.
(7:16) And for every Olympic athlete, it's always something they're working towards and then suddenly it's today. (7:23) So yeah, I think it took a little while, but then I used to switch into professional mode. (7:28) You know what you need to do.
(7:31) And obviously I just had a fabulous team around me, the Australian Olympic team, the leadership, the medical team, the coaching team and so on have always been incredibly professional. (7:43) So that made that very easy to be able to operate in that environment. (7:47) But yeah, I think it's a good point that early phase and athletes find that as well.
(7:52) It's very easy to get, just lose your attention. (7:55) Yeah, and the swimmer has got to stay in their lane. (7:57) It's so easy to get distracted by all these other things going on.
(8:00) And that's the biggest challenge.
Julian Hayes II
(8:03) Yeah, and speaking of attention, I think this is a great segue as we start to dive into psychological resilience. (8:08) But I was doing some research and I actually found something interesting. (8:10) I think you typed it or tweeted it four or five years ago, ironically.
(8:15) And you were talking about focus and the power of it. (8:18) And I love the way you broke that down. (8:20) You had a short where you talked about the state of what is, and you had the medium, which is talking about what if.
(8:27) And you said, this is like the danger zone. (8:29) This is where anxiety lives. (8:30) Then you had the longer term, which is the why not, where you have vision, purpose and hope.
(8:36) And when I think about this, that makes sense. (8:39) But maybe I'm wrong on this, but I have a feeling that most of us live in that medium zone a lot of times. (8:46) And so what are some of the first things that you do to help us get out of that medium zone and either get in that short or that long-term zone?
Graham Winter
(8:56) I think a lot of it's got to do with awareness of your mindset and that natural human tendency to want certainty. (9:04) When I finished this, as you said, we're at the start of the day here in Australia and my next two meetings, one's with the CEO of, they run a big travel leisure business all around Australia. (9:15) And then the next one runs the defence agency.
(9:19) Both of them have said to me in different ways over the last couple of months, my people all want certainty. (9:26) I can't give them certainty. (9:27) And my point is no, but you can give them clarity. (9:31) And to me, clarity is that ability about to go out a couple of horizons. (9:36) Bob Johansson from the Institute of Future talked about this three or four years ago, this sort of notion of go out into the future, be clear what your vision is, what your purpose is, what you're getting towards, what your intent is, then come back to the present. (9:49) What are my core values?
(9:51) Yeah, what are the critical things I need to do? (9:53) And that's one of the reasons things like agile works as a sort of process that then enables you to focus on what's in front of you and deal with it. (10:01) So I think it is a little bit mechanical, but it's also that awareness that as human beings, we do have the tendency to very easily be taken away from our current focus by wanting to control the future or wanting more certainty.
(10:16) And I think that's often the challenge.
Julian Hayes II
(10:18) Yeah, when we hear the word performance or psychological resilience, how would you explain that to someone? (10:23) Someone comes up to you and says, hey, Graham, what is psychological resilience? (10:26) I hear this word a lot of times.
Graham Winter
(10:29) It probably applies in a couple of different ways. (10:32) I think there's the resilience that we might expect when people experience a really significant setback or challenge. (10:38) And that's ability to dust yourself off and learn from that and be able to move forward again.
(10:45) And then I think this is the thing that we're experiencing. (10:48) And yes, the thing that we covered in the recent book, Toolkit for Turbulence, this whole sort of concept of, the concept that we're having this regular turbulence. (10:56) So to some extent, resilience is that ability to kind of hold your sort of intent.
(11:02) What we talked about a few moments ago is keep in mind what your intent is, recognising that the metaphor I use with most of my business clients is your organisation's like a fleet of yachts. (11:12) And we have a sense of where we wanna go, but we're gonna have to navigate our way through that. (11:17) And the resilience to me is the ability to retain that sense of confidence and purpose in what you're doing, and then to be able to manage your own energy and so on.
(11:26) Many things that you cover regularly in your broadcast, that whole sense of how do I maintain my level of energy and focus and confidence and so on in an environment that quite easily depletes or degrades that. (11:39) And that's where some of the Olympic experience I think is quite helpful, because you get almost an amplified experience of what that's like, and gives you a chance to sort of test out stuff as well.
Julian Hayes II
(11:49) Yeah, that was kind of gonna be one of my points as well, in terms of, I would think that going to talk to the CEO, which we're going to do after this call here, those are pressures, especially there's a lot of people that are probably at that company and that organization. (12:05) And there's a lot of people there that not even including the families. (12:09) So that's a very high pressure, high stakes situation.
(12:11) Just like the athlete that's performing for representing the country, and especially you did the Sydney Olympics as well, right? (12:19) Yeah, I did, yeah. (12:19) Yeah, so I mean, that probably felt even more pressure.
(12:22) But yeah.
Graham Winter
(12:24) Oh yeah, it was made very clear to us.
Julian Hayes II
(12:27) I can only imagine. (12:29) And so in that situation, what are, I guess some of the first steps in terms of getting our composure and centering ourselves to navigate this pressure in this moment?
Graham Winter
(12:43) Yeah, great question. (12:45) I've developed this little framework to about, I don't know, 15 years ago now, something that was post the sport area, but it was when a particular sort of reasonably large organization sort of came to me and said, and they're actually looking at their performance management system. (12:59) So their sort of regular performance appraisals and so on.
(13:02) And I said, we think our system's ridiculous. (13:06) It gives us feedback months after things have happened. (13:10) Everybody sees it as an administrative process, and it seems to damage the relationship between our leaders and people.
(13:19) Could you sort of come up with something a little bit different? (13:21) And it was a great little brief. (13:23) So we went back to the basics of sports psychology and performance psychology and said, if what we're wanting to do is to sustain performance, let's start by defining what we mean by performance.
(13:34) And we came up with this quite simple acronym, which was sort of based on the research. (13:38) And the acronym is ADEP. (13:40) So test this on yourself, Julian.
(13:41) When you're going well, when you're having a good period of time and you feel like you're performing, these four things will be in place. (13:48) You're achieving meaningful outcomes. (13:51) You feel like you're making progress, goals, and so on.
(13:54) You're developing and growing. (13:56) So there's a level of stretch, a level of growth in skills, capabilities, and so on. (14:02) There's a level of energy and enjoyment in what you're doing.
(14:05) So there's more energy in than there's energy out. (14:07) There's certainly going out, but there's some coming back in. (14:09) It's being replenished.
(14:11) And then the final one is, there'll be some people around you who are strong collegiate relationships who you can trust as partners. (14:20) So if you think of the four letters, ADEP, achieve, develop, enjoy, partner, that's where I start with any leader. (14:28) And the defence person I'll talk to in a few hours time, that's really where we're gonna be with them because it's reasonably early days working with them.
(14:37) It's helping them to understand what's important to you. (14:40) And then we'll put that into horizons. (14:42) So maybe a year or two, but we'll then bring that back into 60, 90 day horizons.
(14:48) And that's how I'll work with him. (14:50) That's how I'll get him to work with his teams around how do we create an environment in which people can achieve meaningful outcomes, develop and grow, enjoy what they're doing with energy and partnering. (15:01) And with their teams and equally with themselves at any given moment, they will need to find different ways of dealing with that.
(15:09) And personally, I've got a meeting, trying to think what day of the week it is now. (15:14) We're on, I think it's just started. (15:17) So I've got a meeting with my coach on Friday.
(15:19) I catch up with him about every three months. (15:21) We will be sitting down with the ADEP framework. (15:24) He will be asking me questions.
(15:25) Where's the energy? (15:26) What's that been like? (15:28) Did you get to the achievements?
(15:30) What didn't you get to? (15:31) Okay, next phase, what do you wanna do? (15:33) So knock on that a little bit, but I would really encourage people to think about ADEP as a framework. (15:38) So I think it's so simple and it's just proven to be so effective in all sorts of different ways for individuals, but also for boosting engagement in teams, which is some extent the Holy Grail if you're a team leader and a business leader.
Julian Hayes II
(15:52) I love that concept. (15:53) I absolutely love that concept. (15:55) And that got me thinking you're absolutely correct.
(15:58) When that thing is going really well, there's at times where, I mean, hope people don't hear this too much cause I talk, health is supposed to be my subject and I talk about it, but I can even go on a little sleep. (16:09) Like I don't even need as much required sleep cause you have this natural energy.
Graham Winter
(16:14) You do, don't you?
Julian Hayes II
(16:15) Yeah. (16:15) And so it's, and I think that's one of the things of how we see certain presidents live longer and athletes just live longer and you see how can they go about having short sleep or such high stress. (16:29) And I think it's just ADEP here that is a key intangible of that, that is helping them bypass what, yeah. (16:40) And so with that said, out of that, out of those four, which one is usually one of the ones that most people would struggle with if you had to pick?
Graham Winter
(16:50) It's an interesting one. (16:51) Cause what, from what you were just saying a couple of moments ago, what I'm always trying to do is help people to understand what is right for you. (16:57) You're a unique individual.
(16:59) You're a high performer in your own right. (17:01) And it's one of the best gifts that the person I use as a coach ever gave me when he said, don't try and copy what somebody else is doing. (17:09) You're not trying to live the life of somebody working inside an organisation for 30 or 40 years.
(17:14) You're trying to create your own life. (17:17) So let's understand what each of those are. (17:20) So, I mean, accepting that individuals will have different elements.
(17:23) So almost, I'd probably answer it in two ways then. (17:26) One would be in any given 60, 80, 90, 100 day, 120 day period, as you've highlighted, people will have a deficit or an excess in one of those. (17:35) So there'll be a big achievement piece.
(17:37) You know, like myself and my co-author Martin Bean wrote the Toolkit for Turbulence book early last year. (17:42) We worked massive hours to put that in. (17:45) The energy dropped away.
(17:46) Some of the partnering relationships dropped away. (17:49) The development was pretty good, but it was narrow. (17:52) To me then, a good coach and myself was then trying to replenish those later as well.
(17:58) And in some respects, it's probably those last two that are most often likely to suffer. (18:02) If you look then more across the board, it's the not investing in your own energy and enjoyment, particularly for your high performers who are very driven. (18:10) And sometimes it's the partnering.
(18:13) It's, I mean, one of the little phrases I use a lot with my clients is people first, task close behind. (18:20) So it's just kind of remembering that, yeah, I know we've got a lot of stuff to do. (18:23) The numbers aren't looking good.
(18:25) I know my first conversation this morning will be under pressure from the board. (18:29) I haven't quite hit the numbers in the first quarter. (18:32) Yep, okay.
(18:33) How do we approach this people first, task close behind? (18:36) Because the danger is the person will start to dive in and try and tackle all that themselves rather than how do I mobilize my people? (18:43) How do I bring creativity to this challenge?
(18:46) That often is the issue when you've got these big sort of issues coming.
Julian Hayes II
(18:51) Yeah, and I tend to think as we're drawing parallels so between the athletic world and in the business world, and especially with early stage entrepreneurs as well, we can throw them in there as well. (19:01) And I can attest to this as well, that I tend to think that something that's very vulnerable is our self-worth. (19:08) Because a lot of times it's predicated on our output, on our performance and our achievement.
(19:13) So what are some kind of tools that you go about in helping a lot of these people with kind of preserving their self-worth and being able to separate their identity from kind of their vocation and their job?
Graham Winter
(19:27) Yeah, I think you've partly answered, you've almost answered the question there. (19:30) It's that conversation about who are you? (19:32) Who am I?
(19:34) And yeah, I'm a psychologist, but I'm also a father. (19:37) I'm a grandfather, I'm a writer, I'm attempting the wingsuit, a variety of other things. (19:45) I'm a very avid sort of fitness person.
(19:48) Yeah, I'm a reader. (19:50) And then you go, okay, and then underneath that, who are you? (19:53) I think I'm a pretty creative sort of person.
(19:56) So it's trying to understand the, who are you? (19:59) And then, I mean, the language I'll often use is, I wanna try and create the environment in which we can help you to bring your superpowers. (20:08) What are you?
(20:09) What are your superpowers? (20:10) But those superpowers are in your whole life, not just in the workplace. (20:16) And I think that is, for most of the business people I deal with, as you said, the early stage entrepreneurs, we've got a couple of tech companies we work with, they're under massive pressure from the capital markets to keep, particularly recently, keep hitting profit.
(20:30) I mean, previously, maybe it was more about growth. (20:32) So that takes a lot of pressure. (20:35) So I think what you're endeavouring to do, Heifetz talked about it years ago on adaptive leadership, that sort of concept of getting on the balcony.
(20:42) So I think it's that ability for people to get on the balcony and have a perspective. (20:47) And from that, they learn that I'm not my performance today. (20:51) I'm not my performance over the weeks.
(20:54) I am who I am. (20:55) And my performance is something that I do. (20:58) And it's a critical part of me.
(21:00) And there's no question, if that's not going well, I'm going to start to experience some of those elements of self-doubt and so on. (21:08) How do I then get that perspective back? (21:11) And I'd go back to ADEP, well, maybe some partnering, maybe some rebooting the energy levels up again, that's possibly dropped away. (21:19) Maybe we need to develop some different skills or mindset or approach. (21:22) So sorry to come back to that same frame, but to me, it's useful to be able to make sense of the sort of challenges that you're talking about.
Julian Hayes II
(21:30) It very much is because the last one of that is the partner. (21:35) And I tend to think that, and just some of the research I've read as well, is that a lot of times, a lot of high performers tend to insulate themselves. (21:44) As more troubles come, they tend to just clammer down and put themselves on an island. (21:50) And I think about myself and that was my natural habit is to bunker down and say, I'm going to figure this problem out. (21:56) I just need more time to do it. (21:58) Instead of going for help, I just bunker and close off.
(22:02) So I think that's a very applicable thing there because community is valuable, but it seems that a lot of times that's the last thing that we tend to do. (22:09) We tend to be thinking of ourselves as superheroes.
Graham Winter
(22:12) Yeah, I was running a session in Melbourne, Australia last week with a group of about 40 leaders who our defence department here have this sort of early to mid career acceleration program. (22:25) So they bring 40 people in who have already been quite effective in careers outside of defence and then bring them into defence and see whether they can give them a 12 month experience or they do two to six months placements, mainly in defence science and technology. (22:40) And I was brought in to have a conversation with them around resilience and psychological safety.
(22:46) And I sort of said to them at the start, you might be wondering what you've got yourselves into given that three hours into your program and they've brought a psychologist along to talk to you about resilience and psych safety. (22:57) So you can imagine the sort of challenges that you might be facing going ahead. (23:03) But I think it's normalising that.
(23:05) It's, you know, the process that we went through there was just getting them to think about, yeah, we always call it a psychologist awareness acceptance action. (23:13) So it's like, I need to be aware of my strengths, my weaknesses, what I'm feeling. (23:18) As I said then, look, I just got up on stage.
(23:19) I've been feeling a bit nervous. (23:21) I was expecting that. (23:23) I could accept that or I could catastrophise that.
(23:25) You're gonna also experience times as you say, when am I aware that I'm over narrowing? (23:31) Am I aware that I'm becoming isolated? (23:33) Am I aware that I'm a bit angry and frustrated?
(23:35) Am I aware that I'm avoiding something? (23:37) Okay, let's firstly accept that is human nature. (23:41) We are wired to do that.
(23:43) Yeah, we are wired to avoid threats and to get back to certainty. (23:48) But we also know that what we do best within our, you know, in anything that we're doing is when we go towards an opportunity, go towards the goal, go towards what we wanna do, go towards being the best we can be rather than to protect ourselves. (24:03) So to me, the first piece of this puzzle is awareness.
(24:06) The second piece is acceptance that I'm a human being. (24:09) I am not going into a high performance environment without self doubt, without fear, without anxiety and without some default things that are gonna degrade my performance. (24:21) The question then is, can I then accept that and then move forward?
(24:26) And typically then it's that, so what are the tools I need to move forward? (24:31) And I mean, as you probably gather from my background, I'm a bit of a pragmatist. (24:35) You know, there's an old rule in performance psychology says the last thing you learn is the first thing that falls apart under pressure.
(24:42) So to me, that basically means whatever you're gonna do, do something that's practiced and make sure it's pretty simple. (24:47) One of the most practiced and simple tools we've all got is the short-term goal. (24:53) Talk to special military, talk to emergency medicine, talk to anybody operating these really high stakes first responder environments.
(25:02) They will assess a situation, break it down into what can we do and move towards the first goal. (25:09) So that to me is that awareness, acceptance, action is such a simple mental model. (25:15) You hear pilots say the same thing, aviate, navigate, communicate, keep the plane in the air, navigate to find somewhere to land it, communicate to ensure the support there when you land.
(25:25) So it's those simple mental models that you're endeavoring to embed in yourself and in others that are your tools. (25:33) They're your mental toolkit that you go to when you're in these high demand environments.
Julian Hayes II
(25:39) Man, I really love that. (25:41) You mentioned superpower a while back and I wanted to go, cause a lot of times we hear, this is another thing that we hear people talk about and I have my own theory on how do you find your superpower. (25:52) But with yourself, how did you realize that you found your superpower or how'd you go about it?
Graham Winter
(25:59) I think probably, yeah, I'll probably go back to the conversations again with a couple of people I've used as mentors and one who I've used as a coach for a number of years. (26:11) And I think both of them helped me to recognize that I've got lots of memories of experiences of being an athlete and being in business and doing big speaking events and working on challenging assignments and so on. (26:28) And as humans, we have this natural tendency to look back on those and remember all the things that we did wrong.
(26:34) Like, oh my goodness, I was nervous, I felt doubt, I felt like as an imposter and so on. (26:39) And I think what both of those two people did was they helped me to extract out of that that the reality was you actually did really well. (26:49) And once you felt, the language we often use is once you felt about the same size as the mountain, so it wasn't too big, wasn't too small, you're in that kind of flow zone, what did you see?
(27:04) What did you find? (27:05) And I was like, oh, well, I'm really creative, I'm energetic, I'm intelligent. (27:09) I love to move things forward.
(27:13) I'm practical, I'm pragmatic. (27:14) You go, okay, well, they're probably your superpowers. (27:17) So now how do you create the space to play to your superpower?
(27:20) And that's what we've just been talking about a few moments ago is developing my awareness. (27:24) And that's what you're doing with athletes is, a psychologist doesn't help an athlete to do anything that they can't physically already do. (27:33) Question is, how do you do it in what potentially, and it's not very helpfully called the biggest day of your life?
(27:40) Because one of the ways not to do it is to call it the biggest day of your life. (27:45) But yeah.
Julian Hayes II
(27:46) So it's almost then and that's the case. (27:49) When you said that right there, I thought that was interesting because I don't think I've ever heard that usually for people to not say, hey, this is the biggest stage of your life or this is the biggest moment of your life. (27:59) Yeah, I think that's the first time I've ever heard that.
(28:01) And is that it's better to be in neutral? (28:04) Is that kind of how you would approach them?
Graham Winter
(28:07) Yeah, I think it's recognising that, you know, three months, six months, 12 months, whatever leading up to an event, it's really helpful to have a level of motivation to do your preparation. (28:17) I mean, that's what's anxiety is all about. (28:19) Anxiety says, there's a threat, come and get ready.
(28:23) So in some respects, I think that's useful, but also the sort of motivation that, you know, I wanna go to the Olympics, I wanna, you know, I wanna excel and so on. (28:32) But what you wanna do closer to the event is not get ahead of yourself and also not get, not take on pressures that you can't do anything about. (28:43) And I've seen athletes, had numerous athletes sort of say to me over the time, the thing I found most challenging about the Olympics wasn't the people in my sport, it was the people in other sports.
(28:55) And you start to think about that like, are you kidding? (28:57) And people find it hard to believe, but you walk into an athlete village when you've got these massive, tall basketballers, huge weightlifters, you know, you've got track athletes and rowers and kayakers in the best shape of their lives. (29:12) It's pretty easy to get intimidated.
(29:15) So what to me, what the best athletes have been able to do is develop that ability to not totally to cocoon themselves, but at least to be able to recognise there's an area here where I wanna bring my energy to that I can do something about. (29:30) There's a whole lot of other stuff that I can't. (29:33) And what I wanna be able to do is to sort of bring my best in that moment, trust myself to bring my best in that moment.
(29:41) And for the vast majority, it's just not helpful to be saying, yeah, today's grand final day. (29:48) It's useful a while back, cause it got you out of bed and got you in the gym, but today, we're just gonna go and do business. (29:55) We're gonna go and enjoy ourselves.
(29:56) We're gonna go and celebrate how good we can be. (29:58) Let's see how good we can be in this environment. (30:01) That's what you're looking for, not, well, if I do well, I'm gonna win Olympic gold medal.
(30:06) You're not gonna be thinking about what you need to do.
Julian Hayes II
(30:09) I love that. (30:10) And so I wanna do a quick overview of some of the concepts from the recent book here, cause I think it's a very important topic because I think in the world of business, and you probably know this better than most of us, is that I feel like there's a radical shift in terms of how we do work, how we do business and everything has just been flipped up on the side of its head. (30:30) So one of the concepts in the book that I thought was interesting was the defensive mindset.
(30:38) And could you just briefly explain what's the kind of the opposite of that in terms of like, it says defeat the defensive mindset and how do we even fall into that trap?
Graham Winter
(30:47) Yeah, I think it's pretty much what we were talking about a few moments ago, this tendency that we all have to go to war, to receive a threat. (30:54) So you go into a business meeting, you think of people listening today, they go to a meeting today or tomorrow and it's a reasonably high stakes meeting. (31:03) So there are a variety of threats in that meeting.
(31:06) There's threats of loss of control, there's threats of loss of certainty, there's the sense of do I appear to be capable and competent and so on. (31:14) So all of those things can easily cause us to, as you said earlier, to sort of become a little more isolated and we become defensive, so we tend to protect ourselves. (31:25) And the sort of examples of that, if you're a more task-oriented person, you might become more perfectionistic and just keep tweaking something.
(31:33) You might become more competitive, but not in a go towards the goal, but you're too worried about comparison to somebody else. (31:40) Just talking about the Olympics a moment ago. (31:43) You might become over-controlling and you might therefore lose others and cause that sort of sense of rift with others.
(31:48) Or on the other hand, you might become more passive. (31:50) So it's this sort of almost like aggressive, defensive or passive defensive. (31:54) Passive is like I avoid the decision, I stay away from the conflict or whatever.
(31:59) That's that natural defensive reaction and most of us get it, because that is the fight, flight, free sort of thing. (32:09) The opposite of that to me is a sort of a mix of growth mindset meets adaptability and we call it adaptive mindset. (32:16) And that's that I'm going towards my goal, I'm clear what my vision is, I just want to engage and coach my people.
(32:22) So how do I go towards that versus being defensive? (32:26) And I think again, most of your listeners would recognise that, think about what is it that your natural triggers are? (32:33) And I personally, I'll tend to get more perfectionistic.
(32:37) I tend to get a little more controlling. (32:40) That's my tendency to react. (32:42) Okay, that's gonna work okay, perhaps in the short term, there's likely to be a cost to that.
(32:47) What are the costs? (32:49) Well, perfectionistic, stress, controlling, probably gonna lose a bit of initiative from some of my team, may not communicate things as well, probably not creating enough creativity and so on. (33:01) So it's just that awareness of the defensive.
(33:04) And when we asked, it's a brilliant leader in Australia, Tanya Monro, she's our chief defence scientist. (33:11) And I asked her, she runs Defence Science Technology, so they have thousands of defence scientists and researchers and so on working in Australia, but also the AUKUS sort of alliance now as well. (33:22) And yeah, I said to her, look, if you think of Defence Science Technology and the environment your people are working in, what do you see the biggest challenges?
(33:31) And I thought she would have said, critical thinking, keeping up with technology, collaboration, she went straight to defensive mindset. (33:39) She said her biggest challenge is to keep our minds open to what the opportunities are, while we're so overwhelmed by all of the challenge and change and so on. (33:48) It's so easy for people to become defensive and to settle back into their tried and tested routines, which is, as you said, Julian, the world's changed dramatically.
(33:58) And we found that with Toolkit for Turbulence, we interviewed 15, and Tanya was one of them, 15 top executives about their experience of turbulence from COVID moving forward. (34:09) And the types of turbulence, they're everywhere, the AI, supply chain challenges, the geopolitical issues, the inflation, capital markets, all sorts of different turbulence, but all of those have that same human effect. (34:24) The danger is if we're defensive, we're not gonna bring out our best self.
Julian Hayes II
(34:29) And one of the other things on there was anchor on personal values. (34:34) And I thought that was interesting. (34:35) And black swan decisions.
(34:37) Now we've heard of black swan events, but I don't think I've heard the phrase black swan decisions. (34:43) So I thought that was interesting.
Graham Winter
(34:45) Yeah, I mean, anchor on personal values, that originated, my co-author of Toolkit for Turbulence is Professor Martin Bean. (34:54) So Martin's a fascinating background. (34:56) He was the vice chancellor of one of Australia's largest universities.
(35:00) So 80, 90,000 students. (35:03) He was previously ran the Open University in the UK and he was also an executive for a number of years with Microsoft. (35:10) So he has a really unusual background.
(35:14) And he spoke to me just not long after COVID hit. (35:17) And so Australia's borders were closed. (35:19) University of 90,000 students, with many of them international students now locked out of the country.
(35:26) University also has quite large campuses in Asia, in Vietnam, for example, Singapore and so on. (35:34) And he said to me, it's looking now, if this continues as we think it might for the next six to nine months, we have around about a $300 million hole in our budget. (35:45) He said, I feel like I could be the, and the role is called vice chancellor.
(35:49) So it's the chief executives of the university. (35:51) He said, I feel like I could be the vice chancellor who loses the university. (35:57) And he said, what would you, if I was a cricket or an Olympic coach facing this challenge, what would you tell me to do?
(36:05) And I thought about it for a few moments. (36:06) And I said, I think the first thing I'd do would be to get you to anchor on your own personal values, Martin. (36:11) Because I think what you are likely to experience over the next few months is you're gonna be asked to make decisions that are gonna impact thousands of people.
(36:21) And you are gonna get pulled into the defensive mindset. (36:24) And I think what we need to do is to help you to understand in the absence of data, clarity, and so on, let's go back to what your core values are, and then let's share them with the team. (36:37) So he went away, he spent probably, I sent him back, I sent him back three or four times to people I knew well, and he won't mind me saying, because they're in the book.
(36:46) He came back and he said, Graham, I think my core values, and I want him to have a really strong story around each. (36:51) Martin has quite a significant disability that he's carried all his life. (36:55) And he talked a lot about how that shaped him.
(36:58) And he talked about his three values, his courage, care, and mateship. (37:03) He shared those with his team. (37:06) And then as we faced down these massive challenges of having to eliminate jobs and move people out and so on, we always came back to, how do we balance courage and care?
(37:20) How do we make sure that mateship and relationship is a part of that? (37:24) Because for Martin, he could anchor on that. (37:26) And that's what I would encourage people to do is to think, are there one or two or three of those anchor values that when everything else is stripped away and you're asked to make a tough call, what are the one or two values that you'll make them from?
(37:42) And I think that's more powerful than the traditional values on the wall in organisations that can be used well, but often are not.
Julian Hayes II
(37:51) Yeah. (37:51) And so as we get ready to start winding this conversation down, let's do some different questions kind of off the cuffs here. (37:59) And one of those is around your consulting firm.
(38:02) What do you enjoy most about your consulting firm?
Graham Winter
(38:06) Probably, I mean, the consulting firm's called Think One Team. (38:10) And it was, I founded it about 15 years ago now when I wrote the book, Think One Team, which has been an absolute bestseller in Australia. (38:18) It's done a little bit in the States.
(38:19) So if anybody wants to get it in the States, that'd be great. (38:22) It's just come out as its third edition in Australia. (38:25) And I think what I love is when Think One Team comes to life.
(38:30) It's when I'm speaking to people from organisations or they contact me. (38:35) I got one yesterday. (38:36) I'm working with this global, one of the global insurance companies at the moment.
(38:39) We had their executive team into Australia a little while back now. (38:43) And their head of people and culture sent me a little note yesterday saying, just fantastic. (38:48) Can just see people working so much more effectively now.
(38:51) I think it's really sparked them. (38:53) That's what I love. (38:54) I think it's exactly what I used to love with athletes.
(38:57) It's just saying, I don't know, when I come back to what do I do? (39:00) I like to help people solve their most complex problems. (39:04) I like them to help them pursue their biggest opportunities.
(39:07) And I think it's when I see them doing that, that's where that gives me a spark.
Julian Hayes II
(39:11) Yeah, and so when you hit adversity, what are some of your personal strategies that you use in your toolkit?
Graham Winter
(39:20) Probably two or three. (39:21) I mean, one is just regular fitness. (39:23) I made a commitment to myself.
(39:25) Actually, interestingly, when you're involved with Olympic teams, you have to do fitness assessments. (39:29) And I remember the head of medicine saying to me, I thought you would have been really fit because you're like used to play. (39:34) No, pretty good.
(39:36) I'm going, yeah, used to. (39:38) So I made myself a commitment that I would do a minimum of three fitness sessions every week. (39:43) And I made that commitment to myself in 1996.
(39:49) It's a long time ago. (39:50) And I can tell you in April, for example, I had 12 sessions. (39:56) And I have a heart rate monitor that I use, and I just make sure that that...
(40:00) So to me, that's almost my baseline. (40:03) The second one is to have my simple ADEP framework. (40:07) And the third is to have a couple of people who I value their perspective.
(40:12) Because if I'm really struggling, I'll give a couple of those mates a call and go, I'm thinking about this, what do you reckon, et cetera. (40:18) So I think it's fitness. (40:19) It's then that overarching balance.
(40:22) And then it's, I know when I need perspective. (40:26) And I get it, yeah. (40:28) Otherwise I'll get caught up in my own head.
(40:30) I'm a natural perfectionist. (40:31) So I will get myself caught up in worrying that, oh my God, it's gonna miss 2% of this. (40:35) So I'm talking to Julie and I should have said this and I'll go to...
(40:39) And yeah, that has a huge benefit, but it also has a cost. (40:43) And I know when I get stressed that, yeah, the volume goes up on that and somebody needs to go, hey, drop it back down again, fella. (40:52) You don't need to do this.
Julian Hayes II
(40:54) I used to be the same way when I was doing these interviews and everything. (40:58) And it's funny now people think, oh, you're just so naturally extroverted. (41:02) And I'm actually the opposite.
(41:05) And it was actually a training thing that I had to really work hard at. (41:10) And at first I had so many notes, like everything was detailed. (41:13) There was no room to maneuver anything because I was so nervous about conducting the conversation and everything.
(41:20) And now it's just fun now. (41:22) And kind of like you said earlier, when you talked about not making it such a huge event, that you're just doing this thing today. (41:29) And it takes so much pressure off of everything.
Graham Winter
(41:32) It does. (41:33) But you've earned that. (41:35) Let me, I'm gonna interrupt you, Julian.
(41:36) You've earned that. (41:38) Yeah, it's not like somebody listening today goes, oh, I like it, I'm just gonna be all cool and not worry about it and it'll turn out. (41:44) No, it won't.
(41:44) Julian's put in the hard yards. (41:47) Yeah, you've mapped it out. (41:48) You tested it, you prepared.
(41:50) That early stage, to me, that's great preparation. (41:55) And I've had this conversation with numerous of my clients, numerous of my colleagues who are psychologists who do similar sort of stuff. (42:01) And we've all come to the same conclusion that that sort of level of perfectionism, but then reduce it down is often a really significant characteristic of high performance.
(42:12) So you've done the work to earn the right to be unconsciously competent, which is what you wanna be able to do in a high performance environment. (42:23) You'll do the prep, then you can trust.
Julian Hayes II
(42:26) Yeah, and that ties into the next thing that I've been asking people and talking about lately, because me, like a lot of other colleagues and friends are, what I would say, we're early on our journeys in terms of professional development. (42:38) And there's this thing of, what are you building? (42:41) What's your end game?
(42:43) And a lot of times I see people now, especially in this social media world, where you could find yourself running someone else's race, where this person wants to build X amount of valuation for his company, and you may not want to do that, but you get yourself caught up in that. (42:57) So I tie this back to ask you, what does success mean to you?
Graham Winter
(43:03) I think I've always felt that it's been a balance (43:07) of levels of, and I've never properly come up (43:12) with a perfect sort of mission statement definition of it, (43:16) but I've always felt that it's a bit of balancing the, (43:18) you know, I've had a family, so it was always, (43:21) can I look and say, I'm not gonna, (43:23) you know, future Graham's not gonna look back and go, (43:25) gee, I wish I'd spent more time with my boys (43:27) when they grew up, or wish I'd invested more (43:30) in my own health or in my relationship or in my business. (43:34) To me, success has always been being able to bring the best you can to each of those, but recognise that it's an ingredient, it's a balance of those sorts of things. (43:47) So I guess success is that ability to step back and say, based on my values and what's important to me, I feel like I've got those in pretty good, pretty good, yeah, in Australia, we would say in pretty good nick, which means, yeah, I think they're okay in balance.
(44:04) So I think I'm saying success is a balance. (44:08) And I suppose I'd contrast that sometimes to people who are incredibly successful in one aspect of their life. (44:15) But I guess I've seen so much of it as a psychologist of what sits behind the facade of broken relationships and yeah, self-doubt and yeah, substance abuse and so on.
(44:28) So I think somebody who's comfortable in their own skin and who's making a contribution, that's being successful irrespective of what you're doing, how you're doing that.
Julian Hayes II
(44:40) And the last question here is, if someone comes up to you at a cafe and they asked you, what are one to three things that I can start doing today to create a more resilient mindset and set myself up to become more of a sustained peak performer? (44:56) What would you tell them?
Graham Winter
(44:58) I might just say exactly what I have always said to any of the athletes I work with and assuming they've done a bit of work already. (45:06) I would say the critical issue in any high demand environment and you wanting to put yourself into a high demand environment is trust. (45:16) And there are three things to trust that will bring you composure and confidence in that environment.
(45:21) The first is trusting yourself. (45:24) So make sure you've put in the preparation that you can trust in yourself. (45:29) Trust in your colleagues, trust in the people around you that you can be vulnerable with them so that they can help you to be the best that you can be.
(45:38) And then trust in your game plan. (45:40) So make sure that you have a game plan, that you're clear what steps are that you wanna take, not the certainty we talked earlier, but the clarity. (45:48) So I think I would say that, yeah, trust in yourself, trust in your colleagues, trust in your game plan.
(45:52) That's what's likely to bring you composure and confidence. (45:56) But that requires work like any other aspect of life. (45:58) It's not a simple little switch that you flick on and off.
Julian Hayes II
(46:02) Such is the thing with life, that it's about constant evolution and constant growth.
Graham Winter
(46:07) Exactly, yeah. (46:08) Getting to know yourself more and more so that you... (46:11) I mean, we use these things called user guides when we do team activities and each person has to develop their own user guide.
(46:18) And it's a guide to who they are and they share it with the team. (46:21) And it's like, this is who I am and this is what brings out the best in me and this is how I interact and so on. (46:26) So it's getting to know your own user guide, yeah.
Julian Hayes II
(46:29) And so that's a perfect way to put a bow on this conversation. (46:33) I really, really enjoyed this conversation. (46:35) I probably could have talked to you for two, three hours.
(46:39) And so lastly, where can listeners keep up with you and all your ventures in and everything that you're doing in this world?
Graham Winter
(46:47) LinkedIn is where I probably spend most of my time social. (46:51) So Graham Winter at LinkedIn. (46:53) And I think my team is pretty simple.
(46:55) So thinkoneteam.com. (46:58) That's the easy place to... (46:59) People can sort of see books and resources and things like that as well.
(47:03) And look, thank you as well. (47:04) I've really appreciated the conversation. (47:06) You are a master at just creating the environment in which people can have a really friendly and open and engaging conversation.
(47:13) So I really appreciate it. (47:14) Thanks, Julian.
Julian Hayes II
(47:15) Well, I appreciate that as well. (47:16) And listeners out there, I will have all those show notes and those links in there to everything that he mentioned, plus a few more things that I dig up and find. (47:23) And until next time, stay awesome.
(47:25) Be limitless. (47:26) And as always, go be the CEO of your health and your life. (47:29) Peace.
(47:29) Peace.
