Creating A Winning Mindset
The psychology of engagement gets messy and complicated sometimes but it really doesn’t have to be that way.
In The Five STEPS to a Winning Mindset, Professor Damian Hughes, author of Liquid Thinking and How to Think Like Sir Alex Ferguson, shares what he thinks are the best ways to create a winning mindset in both our personal and professional lives.
So, how do you help your school teams?
Damian distills the five keys principles that separate the best coaches and teams from the rest:
1. Simplicity
2. Thinking Skills
3. Emotional Intelligence
4. Practicality
5. Story-telling
Let’s look at these 5 steps in more detail:
1. Simplicity
State your purpose, be laser sharp, pinpoint and say what the bottom line is. What is your core message?
When the film ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ was pitched it was described as ‘James Bond with whips and horses’ – this is what is called as BLUF – Bottom Line Up Front. This acronym is a standard military communication that is precise and powerful.
This style of communication is in your face and says what it needs to say in simple, unambiguous language.
2. Thinking Skills
This is about creating the unexpected by laying a tripwire and giving people something to mentally munch on.
As we spend most of our time doing things by routines and by habit, we need to break the pattern of predictability by using the gap theory of curiosity.
Promoting this approach helps build resilience, confidence and performance over the long term.
3. Emotional Intelligence
We have to make people care because if they do then they will act.
We looked at methods of creating emotional impact to engage an audience. We saw a video of Michael Burke’s sobering news report from the Ethiopian famine in the late 1980s. This is widely seen as the catalyst that made the UK public stand up and take notice. The impressive thing with this is that he had failed numerous times with previous reports because he was using non-emotional and factual language. He refined his approach & it worked, thankfully.
This approach is what is known as ‘contain and explain’ and works because it is based on investing in us as people, creating a relationship and making us trust and care.
4. Practicality
We need to help people understand and remember. Big data and dynamic content might sound impressive but they might as well fall on deaf ears.
Damian’s advice is “to pitch your communications at a 6 year old or an 86 year old in order to have far more impact.”
5. Story-telling
Stories act as simulation and help guide people in how to act. Hughes looked at how Pixar animators use a simple 6-stage methodology to tell a story that can be translated into everyday use – these films share the same narrative DNA:
- Once upon a time there was …
- Every day …
- One day …
- Because of that …
- Because of that …
- Until finally …