Finding the Magic between FEEL and PERFORMANCE

Education Industry Association, San Francisco July 2011

James ClawsonDarden School of Business

University of Virginia

RECAP: Does how you feel affect your performance?

• How many times have you been asked by supervision at work how you want to feel?

• Do you KNOW how do you WANT to feel?• The pervasive management assumption:

PWD WTHTD ROHTF

• This is a formula for mediocrity.© James G. Clawson 2

Focusing on Feel to PerformDave Scott

49, Six-time Ironman Hawaii Champion

“During a race, I never wear a wristwatch, and my bike doesn’t have a speedometer. They’re distractions.

Outside, 9/03, p. 122

All I work on is finding a rhythm that feels strong and sticking to it.”

3© James G. Clawson

“I stopped loving golf at exactly the time I decided to turn pro.” - Tom Weiskopf , Golf, July 2004, p. 133

What’s the difference between a“job” and “work?”

People pay me a lot of money to go away from my family, stay in cheap motels, ride on the bus all night, and eat rubber chicken. But when the curtain goes up and the light on the camera goes on, THAT I do for free.

- John Molo, Grammy winning musician4

© James G. Clawson

Trek unsupported 850 miles to the South Pole

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Trek 1,700 miles alone across the Australian Outback

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Sailing Around the World Alone

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K2, the “Savage Mountain”East Face

Over 10,000 feet of extremely technical climbing.

The Climbers

Joel Shalowitz has climbed the highest peaks in the Andes and Cascades. An avid warrior in the fight against cancer, Joel has participated and coached teams for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training and Hike for Discovery programs and remains the only person to have completed every type of event for TNT including 6 marathons, a triathlon, 2 century bike rides, and 5 86/100 mile inline skate races. In 2007, Joel Co-founded Climb For Hope and collaborated in designing the successful expedition of the worlds highest active volcano, Cotopaxi, in raising over $150,000 to support the development of a vaccine to fight breast cancer at Johns Hopkins. When he isn’t teaming up in the outdoors, Joel spends his time operating and advising for-profit and philanthropic start-ups. In 2007, he started Exposure Ventures in partnership with Chris Warner in their mutual goal to help individuals and organizations achieve higher possibilities.

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Bicycle

Parachuting

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Tech

nica

l Roc

k Cl

imbi

ng

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Single Breath Free Diving

-557 Feet

Why do people DO these things?

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FLOW

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Time warps (slow or fast)Lose sense of selfIntense focusPerform at highest levelSeems effortless (flow)Internally satisfyingRegain larger sense of self

Adapted from FLOW by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi

What do you think of Flow …

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It seems to come from a variety of sources But can you repeat it regularly or is it

“unmanageable?”Could you design it into your life?More importantly, what if it were in you, that

is, what if you could transport it from one activity to another?

Study of World Class Performers

NEWBURG’S CAREER SAMPLES

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World Class AthletesTouring MusiciansHeart SurgeonsExtraordinary ExecutivesWarriors/Naval Aviators

550 World Class Performers

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The Resonance Model

revisit your dream

dream

obstacles

preparation

Doug Newburg, PhD

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dream

The Resonance Model

Doug Newburg, PhD

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“When people come to work, it’s important that they be connected to a dream.”

- Bill Gates, Fortune, 1/26/04, p. 124

Two Kinds of Life’s Dreams

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LD externalWhat you wanted to be

or do.Externally measuredAchievement based“Success”

LD internalHow you felt at your

best.Internally measuredExperience based“Success”

Your internal Life’s Dream (LDint)

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Is not a “goal” which is a “false dream”

Is a connection between resonance producing activities and the Feelings that come at the peak

Goals vs “Experience” (feel)

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Much of the industrial era has focused on goal setting

Achievement orientation often drives our behavior at the expense of our emotional experience

Remember to remember how you feel is equally as important as what you do.

The dangerous “outside-in” nature of educational goals.

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Assertiveness OUTSIDE

INSIDE

0%

100%

50%

Fear ofRejection

24Good to Great, by Jim Collins, Harper

Jim Collins’ answer: The Hedgehog Concept and Passion

PASSION

SKILL and TALENT

ECONOMIC

RETURN

BHAGs

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Examples of Feel …

Easy speed (Jeff Rouse) Playing to win at the highest

level (Dawn Staley) Out of my chest Being at one with my

surroundings Peaceful, satisfied, alive Buoyant, connected mastery Light, unhurried, and

engaged.

Be careful of the “achievement orientation”

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Energy

Other dangers of the achievement orientation:

1. Winning at any cost2. Making the numbers is #13. Emerging hollowness4. Character and ethical implications

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The Resonance ModelPreparation

Doug Newburg, PhD

dream

preparation

Preparation, practice, rehearsal, WORK

Preparation

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People ask me, “How do you play so well?” I practiced, intense “shedding.” If you’re willing to put in the time, you can do it to a certain level. Maybe I have a special talent that is intangible, but if you are willing to put in the time, you can really get it together.” Bruce Hornsby

The Relationship between Dream and Preparation: Vijay Singh, pro golfer

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“Confidence doesn’t come from winning. Winning comes from confidence. And that confidence comes from hard work.”

- Vijay Singh, Golf Digest, “From the Gallery,” June 2005. Singh won nine tournaments in 2004, was ranked #1 in the world, and is known for his extraordinary practice regimen, hours and hours a day.

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STAMINA: the preparation “problem”

Doug Newburg, PhD

dream

preparation

There will be no stamina topersistunless you love

the thing

Relationship between stamina and the “dream”

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“Even to this day I get a thrill out of just hitting balls. Seeing the shot and then hitting the shot. If I can hit the ball the way I want to hit it on the range, I’d rather do that than play golf. I just love the feeling of hitting good golf shots.”

- Vijay Singh, Golf Digest, April 2008, page 188.

What do you enjoy enough that you can persist doing it just for the joy of doing it?

The difference between “work” and a Job

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??

JOB: what you have to do

WORK: what you choose

to do with your life

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Penguin too much, you think?

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Wake ‘em up!

Self Leadership is Managing Energy

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ENERGIZES• • • • • •

DE-ENERGIZES• • • •

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The Resonance ModelObstacles

Doug Newburg, PhD

dream

preparation

SetbacksObstaclesSuccesses

OBSTACLES

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Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

- Samuel Johnson

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Typical Reaction to Obstacles:Getting stuck in the “Duty” Cycle

dream

sobstacless

“Stuck in the

Have-to Duty

Cycle”

preparation

What happens when one crosses the divide between choice and obligation?

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CHOICE OBLIGATION

Energy?Productivity?

Creativity?Innovation

Engagement?Commitment?

Buy-In?

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We all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires and comets inside of us. We are all born able to sing to birds and read the clouds, and see our destiny in grains of sand.

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But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad about what they had allowed to wither in themselves.

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After you go so far away from it though, you can’t really get it back, just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heavy, and they don’t know why.

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The truth of life is that each year we get a little further from the essence that is born with us. We get shouldered burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel like you’ve lost something… and you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl, and she calls you “sir.” It just happens.

From “Boy’s Life,” Robert MacCammon

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The Resonance ModelBreaking through the SOS Barrier

revisit your dream

dream

obstacles

preparation

Revisiting the Dream

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Reconnecting with your emotional experiencing

Reconnecting with “why?” Balancing experience with results Getting OUT of the “duty cycle” Paradoxically improves results

Revisiting the Dream

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“Just mixing it up with the guys and being in the hunt is a rush, and I can’t wait to experience those feelings again.”

Tiger Woods, after three months rehab on his knee, Golf Digest, October 2008, p. 55

What is “success?”

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• Money?• Fame?• Power?

• “afterward, you want to do it again.”

One surgeon …

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Asks patients to tell “why they want to live longer”

Asks for a photo after surgery This reconnects patients with their dreams Reconnects surgeon with his dream: to

prevent deaths like his grandfather’s Personal Management Process: he

reconnects with his dream through patients’ photos

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How do you approach your work?

revisit your dream

dream

obligation

preparation

50© James G. Clawson

“feel” and “goal” are not the same…

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…we still had a long way to go. Like ants getting over an enormous obstacle we climbed up without appearing to make any progress. The slope was very steep. . . The air was luminous, and the light was tinged with the most delicate blue. On the other side of the couloir, ridges of bare ice refracted the light like prisms and sparkled with rainbow hues. The weather was still set fine--not a single cloud--and the air was dry. I felt in splendid form and as if, somehow, I had found a perfect balance within myself--was this, I wondered, the essence of happiness.

Maurice Herzog, Annapurna, p. 166

So, we come back to this question:

How do you want to feel?

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Resonance is a question of inward and outward harmony

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I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance with our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, 1988

"Excellence is attained by those who care more than others think is wise, who risk more than others think is safe, who dream more than others think is practical.“

Bud Greenspan

The Pursuit of Excellence

54© James G. Clawson

Five Key Questions

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1. How do I wantto feel today?

2. What does it take to get that feeling?

3. What keeps me from that feeling?

4. How can Iget it back? RESONANCE

5. What are you

willing to work for?

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

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Find Your ResonanceInvest in Your ResonanceEnjoy Your ResonanceHelp Others Find Their Resonance

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If you want more on the

FEEL PERFORMANCE relationship