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
1
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
2
NEWBURG’S CAREER SAMPLES
World Class Athletes
Touring Musicians
Heart Surgeons
Extraordinary Executives
Warriors/Naval Aviators
550 World Class Performers
3
The Resonance Model
dream
revisit
your
dream
preparation
obstacles
4
Doug Newburg, PhD
The Resonance Model
dream
5
Doug Newburg, PhD
“When people come to work, it’s
important that they be connected to a
dream.”
- Bill Gates, Fortune, 1/26/04, p. 124
6
Not much happens without a dream. And for
something great to happen, there must be a great
dream. Behind every great achievement is a
dreamer of great dreams. Much more than a
dreamer is required to bring it to reality; but the
dream must be there first.
- Robert Greenleaf, Servant Leadership, p. 16
7
Two Kinds of Life’s Dreams
LD external
 What you wanted to be or do.
 Externally measured
 Achievement based
 “Success”
8
LD internal
 How you felt at your best.
 Internally measured
 Experience based
 “Success”
DREAMS (LDext & LDint)
 Natural
 Given
 Forgotten or put aside
 Discovered or Built
9
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
10
The relationship between
LDexts & LDints
Activities
Feelings
11
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.
12
The dangerous
“outside-in” nature of corporate goals.
100%
Assertiveness
OUTSIDE
50%
INSIDE
0%
13
Fear of
Rejection
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
14
Jim Collins’
answer:
The Hedgehog
Concept
and
Passion
PASSION
BHAGs
Good to Great, by Jim Collins, Harper
15
Does how you feel
affect your performance?
 How many times have you been asked by supervision at
work how you want to feel?
 How do you WANT to feel?
 The pervasive management assumption:
PWD WTHTD ROHTF
 This is a formula for mediocrity.
© James G. Clawson
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.
Be careful of the
“achievement orientation”
1.
2.
3.
4.
Energy
18
Other dangers of the
achievement orientation:
Winning at any cost
Making the numbers is #1
Emerging hollowness
Character and ethical implications
The Resonance Model
Preparation
dream
preparation
Preparation, practice,
rehearsal, WORK
19
Doug Newburg, PhD
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
20
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.
21
STAMINA: the preparation “problem”
dream
preparation
22
Doug Newburg, PhD
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.
23
What do you enjoy enough that you can
persist doing it just for the joy of doing it?
What’s the difference between
“work” and a “job?”
“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.
- Grammy winning musician
24
The difference between
“work” and a Job
JOB:
what you have to do
?
?
WORK:
what you choose
to do with your life
25
Going to a Job
26
Going to Work
27
Self Leadership is Managing Energy
INFUSES
DRAINS










28
The Resonance Model
Obstacles
dream
preparation
29
Setbacks
Obstacles
Successes
Doug Newburg, PhD
OBSTACLES
Adversity has ever been considered
the state in which a man most easily
becomes acquainted with himself.
- Samuel Johnson
30
Typical Reaction to Obstacles:
Getting stuck in the “Duty” Cycle
dream
preparation
s
obstacles
s
31
What happens when one crosses the
divide between choice and obligation?
CHOICE
32
Energy?
Productivity?
Creativity?
Innovation
Engagement?
Commitment?
Buy-In?
OBLIGATION
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.
33
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.
34
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.
35
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
36
The Resonance Model
Breaking through the SOS Barrier
dream
revisit
your
dream
preparation
obstacles
37
Revisiting the Dream
 Reconnecting with your emotional experiencing
 Reconnecting with “why?”
 Balancing experience with results
 Getting OUT of the “duty cycle”
 Paradoxically improves results
38
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
39
What is “success?”
 Money?
 Fame?
 Power?
 “afterward, you want to do it again.”
40
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
41
42
How do you approach your work?
dream
revisit
your
dream
preparation
obligation
43
© James G. Clawson
“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
44
So, we come back again to this
question:
How do you want to feel?
45
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.
46
Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, 1988
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
47
© James G. Clawson
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?
48
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE
 Find Your Resonance
 Invest in Your Resonance
 Enjoy Your Resonance
 Help Others Find Their Resonance
49
Key Points …
 Pay attention to your internal Life’s Dream as well as




50
your external Life’s Dream
Ask yourself, “if you’re not resonating, will you be
performing at a world-class level?”
Pay attention to your experience along with your
achieving.
It’s your life: what are you willing to work for?
Ignore Task AND Process at the risk of your
enjoyment AND your performance
Implications for
Team Managers
Can you distinguish between LDext and LDint?
Can you identify your LDint?
Can you identify your team’s LDint?
Can you help people reconnect with their
LDint?
 If you could, what would be the impact be on
team performance?




51
Additional Ideas and Concepts
52
IMPACT OF YOUR DREAM FOCUS
External Life’s Dream
Internal
Life’s
Dream
+
-
+
Poor but
Happy
PASSION
Lost and
Wandering
53
Rich but
Empty
Maria Sharapova on “feel”
Bernie Goldberg: You are not all that comfortable with all the hoopla...
Sharapova: I understand it...I understand that part of it...I understand that
this is just part of my life. But do I like doing it all the time? No. I'd
rather be on the court.
Goldberg: So being back on the tennis court is more relaxing for you...
Sharapova: It is a feeling that you have...that I have hit a ball
since I was four years old...have I been in front of a camera since I was
four years old? No, that's not why I came to the U. S. I didn't come here
to be in front of a lens. I came here to work my butt off.
55
Leadership is about
managing energy,
first in yourself
and then in others.
56
First in yourself …
 In your
experience,
what proportion
of people are
fully engaged at
work?
57
Amazing grace, how sweet thy sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found.
Was blind but now I see.
An American Hymn
58