Finding the Magic between
FEEL and PERFORMANCE
Education Industry Association, San Francisco July 2011
James Clawson
Darden 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 Perform
Dave 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.
All I work on is finding a rhythm that feels
strong and sticking to it.” Outside, 9/03, p. 122
© James G. Clawson
3
What’s the difference between
a“job” and “work?”
“I stopped loving golf at exactly the
time I decided to turn pro.”
- Tom Weiskopf , Golf, July 2004, p. 133
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 musician
© James G. Clawson
4
Trek unsupported 850 miles
to the South Pole
5
Trek 1,700 miles alone
across the Australian Outback
6
Sailing
Around the World Alone
7
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.
9
Bicycle
Parachuting
10
11
Technical Rock
Climbing
Single Breath
Free Diving
-557 Feet
Why do people DO these things?
13
FLOW
Time warps (slow or fast)
Lose sense of self
Intense focus
Perform at highest level
Seems effortless (flow)
Internally satisfying
Regain larger sense of self
Adapted from FLOW by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi
14
What do you think of Flow …
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
15
NEWBURG’S CAREER SAMPLES
World Class Athletes
Touring Musicians
Heart Surgeons
Extraordinary Executives
Warriors/Naval Aviators
550 World Class Performers
16
The Resonance Model
dream
revisit
your
dream
preparation
obstacles
Doug Newburg, PhD
17
The Resonance Model
dream
Doug Newburg, PhD
18
“When people come to
work, it’s important
that they be connected
to a dream.”
- Bill Gates, Fortune, 1/26/04, p. 124
19
Two Kinds of Life’s Dreams
LD external
What you wanted to be
or do.
Externally measured
Achievement based
“Success”
LD internal
How you felt at your
best.
Internally measured
Experience based
“Success”
20
Your internal Life’s Dream (LDint)
 Is not a “goal” which is a
“false dream”
 Is a connection between
resonance producing
activities and the Feelings
that come at the peak
21
Goals vs “Experience” (feel)
 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.
22
The dangerous
“outside-in” nature of educational goals.
100%
Assertiveness
OUTSIDE
50%
INSIDE
Fear of
Rejection
0%
23
PASSION
Jim Collins’
answer:
The Hedgehog
Concept
and
Passion
BHAGs
Good to Great, by Jim Collins, Harper
24
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.
25
Be careful of the
“achievement orientation”
1.
2.
3.
4.
Other dangers of the
achievement orientation:
Winning at any cost
Making the numbers is #1
Emerging hollowness
Character and ethical implications
Energy
26
The Resonance Model
Preparation
dream
preparation
Preparation, practice, rehearsal,
WORK
Doug Newburg, PhD
27
Preparation
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
28
The Relationship between Dream and
Preparation: Vijay Singh, pro golfer
“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.
29
STAMINA: the preparation “problem”
dream
preparation
Doug Newburg, PhD
30
Relationship between
stamina and the “dream”
“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?
31
The difference between
“work” and a Job
JOB:
what you have to do
?
?
WORK:
what you choose
to do with your life
32
Penguin too much, you think?
33
Wake ‘em up!
34
Self Leadership is Managing Energy
ENERGIZES
•
•
•
•
•
•
DE-ENERGIZES
•
•
•
•
35
The Resonance Model
Obstacles
dream
preparation
Setbacks
Obstacles
Successes
Doug Newburg, PhD
36
OBSTACLES
Adversity has ever
been considered the
state in which a man
most easily becomes
acquainted with
himself.
- Samuel Johnson
37
Typical Reaction to Obstacles:
Getting stuck in the “Duty” Cycle
dream
preparation
s
obstacles
s
38
What happens when one crosses the
divide between choice and obligation?
CHOICE
Energy?
Productivity?
Creativity?
Innovation
Engagement?
Commitment?
Buy-In?
OBLIGATION
39
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.
40
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.
41
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.
42
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
43
The Resonance Model
Breaking through the SOS Barrier
dream
revisit
your
dream
preparation
obstacles
44
Revisiting the Dream
 Reconnecting with your emotional
experiencing
 Reconnecting with “why?”
 Balancing experience with results
 Getting OUT of the “duty cycle”
 Paradoxically improves results
45
Revisiting the Dream
“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
46
What is “success?”
• Money?
• Fame?
• Power?
• “afterward, you want to do it
again.”
47
One surgeon …
 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
48
49
How do you approach your work?
dream
revisit
your
dream
preparation
obligation
© James G. Clawson
50
“feel” and “goal”
are not the same…
…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
51
So, we come back to this question:
How do you want to feel?
52
Resonance
is a question of
inward and outward harmony
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
53
The Pursuit of Excellence
"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
© James G. Clawson
54
Five Key Questions
1. How do I want
to feel today?
5. What
are you
willing to
work for?
4. How can I
2. What does it take
get it back? RESONANCE to get that feeling?
3. What keeps me
from that feeling?
55
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE
Find Your Resonance
Invest in Your Resonance
Enjoy Your Resonance
Help Others Find Their Resonance
56
If you want
more on the
FEEL PERFORMANCE
relationship
57