‘The Inner Game and its Practical Application in Leadership Development’ is the conference that expert trainer, consultant, and coach Timothy Gallwey has offered in Madrid. An event sponsored by the EEC, the key points of which you can find summarised here.
Expert tennis player and coach, Tim Gallwey rose to fame in the mid-70s with his book ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’, in which he revealed that winning a match has more to do with the internal dialogue taking place in the player's head than with external factors. This original way of understanding performance quickly interested the business world, which saw in it an opportunity to move from the traditional command-and-control model to one based on trust and commitment.
According to Gallwey, the key to this organisational change lies in developing individual leadership and taking responsibility for one's own career path. “Since childhood, we've been selling off parts of our lives. We've done it in search of approval, of love; the reasons may have been many and varied,” stated the expert, who also said that “these parts can be recovered” because “each of us is the CEO of our own life.”.
Increasing that leadership, Gallwey explains, involves “following our instinct”. Self-confidence is one of the pillars of ‘The Inner Game’ methodology in tennis and business because, according to the author, confidence in our own abilities is directly related to our expectations, the goals we set for ourselves, the energy we invest in trying to achieve them, and therefore with our performance and our results.
From his experiences on the court, Gallwey observed how on many occasions his own instructions as a coach got in the way of the student's learning, and discovered how the body (which, he says, includes the brain and memory) knows more and can do more than we usually believe.
“Action, practice itself, without instructions, without judgments, without fears, is what improves performance,” argues Tim Gallwey, who in his first book already states, “peak performance requires a mental deceleration. This means less thinking, less calculation, less judgment, less worry, less fear, less expectation, less trying to force things, less regretting, less controlling, less nerves, less distraction. The mind is calm and silent when it is fully in the here and now.”.
Ultimately, what Gallwey presented at the conference, which was attended by over 250 professionals including coaches, HR professionals, and business leaders, is that there is a disconnect between what we can achieve and what our minds tell us we can achieve. “The inner self has two voices, one is your true self, the other talks to you and usually does so in a way that judges actions, making you doubt your abilities. One speaks a lot, the other doesn't speak at all; it's more of a feeling and has an intelligence that is beyond words,” he assures.
Deceiving that part of ourselves which tries to make us small is one of Gallwey’s findings, a “trick” in his words that consists of “distracting the mind by directing its attention” towards some detail so that it is occupied with something else and stops sending messages like “without me you couldn’t do it.” Such is the importance of interference, and detailed Gallwey’s work, that he has measured it in a formula where PERFORMANCE = POTENTIAL – INTERFERENCE.
Excessive control, expectations and judgements are what diminish performance, he says, both in ourselves and in others. “Judging is a huge interference with learning, enjoyment and performance,” he explained, revealing what, in his experience, is the essential triangle in personal development: Learning, Enjoyment and Performance. “The inner game is a viable alternative to the traditional command-and-control methodologies that are taken for granted at work. […] The success of this path will depend mainly on each individual’s willingness to grant themselves a radical level of trust”, in the words of Peter Block, in the prologue to ‘The Inner Game of Work’, which Gallwey published in 2001.
So, the key to increasing results is learning. Learning to learn. And learning, according to Gallwey, is trusting the abilities I already have, my own potential. “It’s bad luck to meet someone who tells you how to do something. People love to teach what we would learn better on our own,” Gallwey said in Madrid.
Being able to bravely face learning, with a clear perspective, and greasing the mechanism that allows us to adapt quickly to changes is one of the keys to success advocated by both Timothy Gallwey and coaching. Coaching, as a tool, helps individuals step out of their comfort zone and establish new ways of understanding reality and implementing new actions that move them closer to their goals.
This is about developing leadership, first your own and then that of others. “Getting the best out of yourself means you win and you enjoy the process,” concluded the coach, for whom it is essential to know how to answer questions such as “What am I doing here?, Where do I want to go?, What am I going to do once I get there?”.
“If these are to be my last words,” he said as he left, ”let them be that it is an individual responsibility to balance learning, performance, and enjoyment.”.
