Performance Is a Cognitive Sport. So Where's Your Coach?
Why the brain you lead with deserves the training, recovery and coaching athletes take for granted
An elite athlete walks into competition with a coach on the sideline, a planned recovery and months of mental preparation behind her. A senior leader walks into a Tuesday of high-stakes decisions with a calendar, a coffee and the expectation that she should simply be able to handle it.
Both are performing at the edge of their capacity. Only one of them works in a world that treats performance as something to be trained.
In this episode, Virginia Palm looks at what sports psychology figured out decades ago about how high performance actually works, and why most workplaces still haven't caught up. Drawing on research showing that mental practice measurably changes the brain, and works best for tasks that depend on thinking and decision-making, she makes the case that leadership is a cognitive sport. She then sets out the signals that coaching yourself is no longer enough, for individuals and for organisations.
In this episode:
- Four lessons from sports psychology that most workplaces are still missing
- Why recovery is part of the training, not a break from it
- Why most leaders are learning their hardest skills mid-competition
- What a classic piano study revealed about how rehearsal changes the brain, and what it doesn't prove
- Why your brain is being trained every day, whether anyone is deciding what for
- Four signals you've outgrown self-coaching, and four signals your organisation needs to rethink its training ground
Research referenced:Pascual-Leone et al. - Modulation of muscle responses evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation during the acquisition of new fine motor skills (Journal of Neurophysiology, 1995)Driskell, Copper & Moran - Does mental practice enhance performance? (Journal of Applied Psychology, 1994)Toth et al. - Does mental practice still enhance performance? A 24-year follow-up (Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 2020)
Your brain is being trained every day. The only question is whether anyone is choosing what for.
Find out more about brain coaching for leaders and organisations at augment-mind.com
