The dark nights have started to draw out and Spring is almost upon us. In sporting terms, the “business end” of the football season is unfolding, and we are into Round Four of the Six Nations Tournament in Rugby Union.
Whilst I played football, I always like to watch Rugby Union and have become more interested in the sport over the past few years. It was the Six Nations that reminded me of an interview Sir Clive Woodward had on “Don’t Tell Me the Score” podcast, a while back, where he spoke about a T-CUP approach.
T-CUP which stands for “Thinking Correctly Under Pressure. Nobody is born with the ability to perform under pressure, but we must handle pressure every day. All of us experience pressure to varying degrees at different times in our lives. This is especially true in leadership and if this is true of ourselves, this might be true for our people as well.
· How are you currently responding to pressure situations?
To apply T-CUP approach we must prepare mentally for situations that could arise in the future. The practice being that, because we have had some forethought on the situation, then the decisions we make are much better than reacting blindly to a situation. An example in a sporting context would be, if I was to ask a group of football players ahead of an important match: ·
- “You are one goal behind with five minutes remaining on the clock, how do you respond?
- “What are the potential benefits and consequences of your ideas?”
- “What other ways are there to approach this?”
- “What now is your plan of action?”
By conducting this thinking exercise, prior to the event, if the issue arises the players are thinking in a slightly calmer and more precise way, knowing that they have given this prior attention. They will have also had the chance to play out their thinking, maybe even practice their plan in a training session. This can apply to leaders and their teams as well.
This approach highlights another benefit of Coaching and Coaching Super-vision. To plan out our approaches to potential issues and to spot those issues before they arise. As we are time precious, we sometimes may only respond to the problem as it occurs or after it has impacted us:
- Is the way we currently respond to pressure serving us and our people in the best way possible.?
- Can we respond to pressure situations differently?
By conducting this exercise earlier, the rewards are reaped by identifying the potential pressure moments early. Through adopting a curious mind-set, we can be sharing our thinking with others and having our thinking challenged. This will lead to new learning and a plan which can be applied in a pressure situation. And if we do this for our teams, we can also help our clients adopt a T-CUP approach for the pressure situations that they may face in the future.