The Cycle of Excellence: 5 Steps to Peak Performance

Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell says that to bring out the best in people you have to focus on the interaction between what is within a person and what lies outside. Properly aligned, you can achieve peak performance. By peak performance he means “consistent excellence with improvement over time at a specific task or set of tasks.” “While no one has ever achieved the goal of ‘being all they can be,’” he says “everyone has it in them to deliver peak performance defined in that way.”

In Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People, Hallowell, combines brain science and performance research to help you get the most out of people’s brains (including your own). To ignite peak performance, he has created a process called the Cycle of Excellence. It is a five step process, that when followed completely, leads to excellence. The steps are:

1. Select. A person needs to first figure out what it is they should be doing. It is the intersection of three elements—what they’re good at, what they like, and what adds value to the organization or world. All of the other steps are based on this first pivotal step.
2. Connect. The fact is, “people who are doing things that suit them feel connected to others and to a mission, and they achieve at the highest levels.” Leaders must make a daily effort to create a positive work environment as modern life conspires to disconnect people. “Do all you can to reduce toxic fear and worry, insecurity, backbiting, gossip, and disconnection.” Positive connection is an important key to peak performance.
3. Play. We often don’t recognize the importance of play—any activity in which the imagination gets involved—in catalyzing peak performance. “Imaginative engagement produces new ideas and creative thoughts. It also boosts morale, reduces anxiety, and makes a heavy load seem lighter.”
4. Grapple and Grow. When employee enthusiasm wanes, we often point to commitment. Hallowell says that commitment is probably not the problem. “Rather it is being made to work on a task they can’t do well, or one that is going nowhere and over which they have little or no control. In fact, most people love to work, given the right conditions. This means that if employees have selected, connected, and played well, grappling and growing in the job will be far easier. Steps one, two and three cannot be skipped. Grappling and growing can lead to mastery, and a sense of well-being and accomplishment. “One of the most helpful skills a manager can develop is the ability to challenge the right person at the right time.”
5. Shine. “The goal here is for every person to feel recognized and valued for what they do, not just the stars of the show. Remember, as valuable as it is to learn from mistakes, people grow even more when success is noticed and praised.”

The brain’s plasticity—its ability to grow and change throughout life—means that none of us are stuck with who we are. With the proper attention we can learn to perform better. “All people want to work hard and will work hard, given the right job and the right conditions, because it feels supremely good to excel.”

Unfortunately the modern world works against us. Hallowell has identified two paradoxes of modern life. First, “While we have grown electronically superconnected, we have simultaneously grown emotionally disconnected from each other.” Disconnection short-circuits the Cycle of Excellence more quickly than anything else. “Disconnection is one of the chief causes of substandard work in the modern workplace. But it is one of the most easily corrected.”

The second paradox is that “people’s best efforts often fail not because they aren’t working hard enough, but because they are working too hard.” Overwhelmed with data, we try to compensate by working harder trying to process more data. What we should be doing is erecting boundaries to regulate what we allow in. Leaders need to be helping people to regulate their lives and manage technology rather than pushing them to do more. Greater connection and engagement will result.

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