Knowing the ingredients of a performance is crucial if you want to work on what matters to improve from ok to good to great. If not, you could be investing time, energy and even money on improving something that makes no tangible difference.
Often though, those performing don’t necessarily know what the essential elements they need are. This can even be the case when friends and colleagues tell them they are ‘good’. Or, you may know some of the building blocks but don’t know how they fit together.
When I am helping someone to prepare for a big Communication Moment I am as specific as possible to highlight the smallest of elements that need improving. These tips and techniques then knit together to build incremental improvements that have a compound effect that supercharges a client’s performance capability.
Negative examples could be an over-emphasis on certain words in a speech, trailing off at the end of sentences, a habit of using filler words or umms and ahs, being led by the interviewer and losing control of the pace of a Q&A, or allowing nerves to take over.
Positive examples are using chunking to compile your information, building content around story structures, using jump off lines to speak with authority, having pre-prepared plans on how to breath to stay calm and focussed and many more.
I’ll bring this to life a little by using football as an example. You may not think that the first touch of a ball passed to you is all that important, other than making sure you stop the ball rolling so that you are in control of it.
Once you have the ball under control you then have an opportunity to choose whether you pass the ball, who you pass the ball to, or if you run or dribble with the ball at your feet.
But what if your first touch doesn’t necessarily just stop the ball but instead opens your options on what to do next by, for example, moving you away from a defender and into space?
I used to think I was a decent football coach because my players left training with smiles on their faces. They’d had fun but hadn’t necessarily learnt anything and weren’t improving in the way they should.
As I have focussed increasingly on the ‘technical detail’ in football I have been able to coach the nuance of that first touch and what constitutes a ‘good’ one but also the impact it can have on the wider performance.
This is a building block or essential element that any top footballer will have built into their performance through repetition and deliberate practice.
It is this detail that matters whatever you are trying to get better at and is how I help people become better communicators and those I coach become better footballers.