Shall we follow the athlete's example?

Leaders need to take a lesson from the athlete. Athletes are very intentional about their weekly plan. They set rituals in place for performance.

Does a Leader need to train like an athlete?

Should a leader approach building their ideal performance at work like an athlete trains to build their performance in competition? A classic Harvard Business Review article, by Loehr and Schwartz, suggests that the missing link for leaders is that they need to approach their leadership endurance and capacity like an athlete. They need to honor what the body needs to hit its peak performance and find that “edge”. Athletes have figured out how to optimize their training, rest, nutrition and sleep and be very intentional about their weekly training plan. They do not waste time, they focus on their long term goal by completing many small tasks or rituals. These rituals may seem unimportant yet they all point to the long term goal, for an athlete it is to build endurance, capacity and skills to succeed. Leaders' long term goals are similar to athletes yet the importance of the weekly training plan or rituals is not stressed to the same level. Loehr and Schwartz suggest calling these daily actions rituals to elevate their importance and to stress that they are nonnegotiable.

They suggest a leader’s weekly plan includes actions to build capacity in these 4 areas: physical fitness, emotional fitness, cognitive fitness and service fitness. These 4 areas all intersect and support one another.

Today is a good day to plan your week.

Do you have physical fitness rituals planned?

Schedule yourself today. Physical fitness is the foundational skill to build endurance, the body is carrying around that amazing brain of yours, it needs support all day to solve the big problems you will encounter this week. The emotional fitness rituals also should be performed daily, one example is relaxing your face and softening your voice before a meeting to enhance your parasympathetic response or your perceptive setting again to help solve the challenges this week. Our emotional setting influences our capacity at work. We strive to be in a 3:1 positive to negative emotional balance each day, it is math, we need to put these rituals into place to set ourselves up for success. Cognitive fitness rituals could include new perspectives and looking for new patterns and of course if builds off your physical and emotional settings as well. Service fitness means finding how your work impacts others, building capacity to serve the community and your team as this will help give you sustenance or motivation to continue to build your ideal performance state. It is vital to know the meaning of your work and how it impacts others.

Drs. Marzena Buzanowska and Dr. Tiffany Love and I will be sharing team building strategies with a neuroscience foundation. I will be discussing building capacity for change and ideal work performance in more detail at The American College of Healthcare Executives Congress in Chicago this week, please stop by and say Hi if you are present- Wednesday 2 pm! I would love to meet new colleagues. #ache24 #acheohio

For now, be sure to plan your week for success. Set your rituals in place, put yourself in your calendar for ideal strength and endurance in these busy times.For more help, feel free to join my free facebook group, Brain Fresh, where I will share accountability, performance and capacity for change tips for leaders and those busy professionals that wish there was a playbook for navigating the workplace.https://www.facebook.com/group... believe in YOU!

Mary

thebrainfresh@gmail.com

PS- Free Productivity Tips

https://brain-fresh.newzenler....