We have never been fans of the ‘tough it out alone’ approach to dealing with life’s challenges. The environment we shape and the people we journey with has a huge bearing on how well we perform and overcome obstacles and challenges when they arrive.
The nature of organisation is that it’s a collective endeavour. We need to work with others to get things done. Success is not the product of one individual but of many players who all play their part, big and small.
How we build teams and create a healthy environment around us helps us to get through the tough stuff and perform. How this is achieved is the focus of Part 3 in this series on building resilience under pressure, on our insights page. The resource is a book that explores the world of elite Olympic and Paralympic sport.
One of the key lessons from this book is that even when the sport is an individual event, even the most talented individual will not reach their potential of peak performance unless they have the right team and environment around them. Success is always the result of a team effort.
Turning potential into world-beating success
We came to know one of the contributors to this book through our work with the English Institute of Sport. As a Performance Director, her role is to create an environment that enables athletes to be their best and to beat their best when it matters.
The Talent Lab tells the story of how ‘a smart-thinking army of athletes, coaches, talent finders, innovators, disruptors, analysts and psychologists’ used cutting-edge insights to turn Team GB into an Olympic superpower and how other organisations can learn from this experience.
It’s an excellent book that unpicks the importance of Leadership, Culture, Talent Spotting, Nurturing of Potential, Teamwork and Analytics / Evidence, and covers areas such as resilience, disappointment, moving goalposts and learning. It’s a very readable, enjoyable and insightful book and you can read a longer review here.
