Optimising Elite Performance
You are the people we look to for inspiration.
Be it in sports, business or politics, elite performers and their leaders hold important positions in organisations and in society. Your performance has a huge impact on your life and the lives of many others.
I believe in the importance of valuing and helping you in your role. My focus is on supporting you to optimise performance through understanding and being yourself and developing cultures that enable this.
People First – Performers, Leaders and Teams Second
Whether you are an individual performer, a team player, or an organisation leader, ‘people being people’ is ever-present.
In my work, it is important to see, value and work with ‘you’, the person behind the performer or leader.
This often gets forgotten in the pursuit of high performance.
Finding ‘Your Way’ to Optimise Performance
I view every individual and group as having the answers to their own questions. My job is supporting you to find them.
While we all have traits that won’t change much over a lifetime, others can be developed until they feel more ‘right’. We can optimise performance by doing it ‘our way’ rather than trying to do it someone else’s way or as something we are not. Similarly, an organisation’s culture can continuously expand and evolve until it ‘fits’. Team cultures that support people to be themselves while achieving the organisation’s goals are those that sustain high-performance over time.
My goal is to help you to perform your way, to lead your way, and to operate as a unit that supports individual and team.
Psychologically Informed Coaching and Facilitation
The key to high performance is always changing. Optimising it requires a very ‘live’ way of working.
My approach involves developing a continuous understanding of ‘you’ as person, people or organisation and the areas of growing you wish to embark on. From here, I support you in making formulation-driven changes.
We can work together in different ways, from the individual level to the organisation level.
Working with the Individual
Performance Coaching
Although all coaching is person-specific there are commonly occurring features. At a foundational level, it may involve supporting you to develop psychological skills, tools and strategies to optimise performance.
Examples include:
- Developing decision-making and problem-solving ability.
- Expanding your capacity to regulate momentary anxiety.
- Growing your ability to cope with longer-term worries.
Other common topics include:
Purpose, Passion, and Values. Breathe life into performing and make it more fulfilling.
Fear. Learning to work with fear rather than being ruled by it.
‘I’m not good enough’. Separating your worth as a person from being completely tied to achievement.
Imperfection. Dealing with the inevitable imperfection that comes with the pursuit of perfection.
Criticism. Distinguishing ‘healthy critical analysis’ from ‘punitive self-talk’.
Relationships. Working on the challenges you face with the people and wider world around you.
Leadership Coaching
As a leader, you hold the most challenging position in your team or organisation. You face the complexity of balancing:
- The everyday perspective with longer-term thinking.
- Forging ahead with developing relationships.
- Being forthright with being empathic.
- Being directive with empowering others.
Leadership coaching focuses on the interaction between:
- Personalised leadership (Who am I as a leader? What are my values/purpose? What is my leadership style?
- Team leadership (How do I inspire other people, persuade them to follow me and work collaboratively in doing this?).
- Organisational leadership (How do I support the organisation to maintain policies and systems that achieve its objectives?)
Strong personalised leadership requires continuously developing and replenishing:
- Self-awareness (values, identity, emotions, motives); and
- Self-regulation (balancing what is important to you with what is important to others, objectively exploring strengths and weaknesses, aligning behaviour with values and identity, and being your ‘true self’ as a way of promoting trusting relationships with others).
This supports you in driving a culture of ‘psychological safety’, a core component of team and organisational leadership.
Working with Relationships
Relationship Facilitation
Performance and leadership coaching can involve supporting an individual with managing relationships (i.e. with their experience of another person).
At other times, two people may agree that a ‘stuckness’ has emerged in your relationship, and you wish to work on it together.
In relationship facilitation, I work with each person in the relationship and the way in which they come together.
Group Facilitation
If you are working or leading in a high-performance environment, often you do it as part of a team. Through group facilitation, I can support your team in:
– Strengthening relationships, communication, shared perspective
– Reconnecting with purpose, passion, and values
– Exploring blocks to achieving goals
– Addressing underperformance
– Negotiating times of transition
On other occasions your team may require a structured approach to workshop design and delivery. I develop trainings that range from shorter educational pieces to longer more in-depth trainings.
Team cultures can be placed on a continuum from ‘fear-based’ to ‘psychologically safe’ (i.e. it feels okay to ask questions, share concerns, and disclose mistakes without fear of being shamed or demeaned). This is a core underlying factor within group work.
I design all group work for your specific context making our initial discussions important to co-creating what you need.
Working with the System
Culture and Organisation Coaching
When working with the overall system, ‘my client’ is no longer an individual or even several individuals, it’s the culture you form when you come together. I work with organisations to develop cultures that:
I. Support people to optimise performance
II. in a way that is true to themselves,
III. while achieving the organisation’s goals.
There are three overlapping components to this work:
1. Co-Assessment. We outline the ideal high-performing culture that would enable your team or organisation to achieve your goals.
2. Shared Formulation and Understanding. We identify the obstacles that are preventing you from fully realising this.
3. Intervention Development and Implementation. I work with you in making changes to address the issues identified in the first two stages.
Beyond the System
Impact on Wider Society
If you are an elite performer, a leader or a high performing organisation, you have a big influence on society. I believe in supporting you with the complexities that this brings.
This happens whether you want it to or not. It is for you to decide how ‘active’ a participant you are within it. For some, you just want to let your performing do the talking. For others, you wish to influence causes close to your heart.
Wherever you or your organisation are on this continuum, I can help you in developing your position ‘for now’ and if it changes over the course of your career or an organisation’s lifespan.
In my view, it comes back to supporting you, as person or organisation, to be yourself – to develop clarity around your unique ‘way’ of being in the world and grounding the rest of your work within this.
Optimising Elite Performance
Get in Contact
To explore how I can help you, book an initial 15-minute call, or use the details below.
+44 740 356 3340
hello@padraigcotter.com
hello@padraigcotter.com