Tips on resilience and performance from an ex pro athlete 💪

Hello, everyone! Thank you for listening.

My name is Kirsty Hulse I am the founder of Roar! and I'm joined today by Geoff Griffiths.

So, Geoff is three things. Firstly, he is the managing director of marketing agency Builtvisible.

Second, he's a good friend of mine.

And third, and what I think is most interesting for us today is his background.

He's a professional athlete and we've been friends for a while. I think in particular, you must learn things about resilience, handling failure, regulating nerves, loads of things that I think are really important things that we can apply to theworkplace.

So first, Let's create a hypothetical situation.

1. You are about to go on the pitch for an important match. And you know that it's a really difficult game. What are your thoughts before you set out into the Arena?

I think first and foremost it's really being nervous, being anxious - is a good thing. If you don't care enough that you're a bit anxious, you're a bit on edge, then you probably shouldn't be doing what it is that you're about to do. So that was always one way of sort of working with it.

I never really had nerves as such other thing person as a player, because I sort of detach from it. But you always have anticipation. So the way I would sort of guess reframe it would be if as anticipation like this is the thing I love doing. I think from where I say it was always about anticipation and excitement, that this is the one time a week when you get to actually just express yourself. And that was always Yeah, I guess my approach.

2. Okay. So that's so interesting. I have two questions on that. The first is you reference the inverted U, the saying here what's that?

So it's sort of a psychological model. Is it where it says you need a certain amount of stress in order to perform at an optimal level. So at the bottom of that curve, if you don't have any stress, any kind of stimulus, then you're not going to perform at your optimal. There's definitely a point where you peak, which is the right amount of stress, and that varies between individuals and something to look at that might drop off. So all of a sudden, if you have too much stress, it negatively impacts your performance that you get all these stories taking sport of people getting the yips or whatever they call it where there's just too much. And I can't actually sort of cognitively process what they need to do and everything sort of force of pieces.

3. So that's really interesting already. So your stress means you perform better?

I think everyone has, like, a base level of where they sit with that kind of stress. So I can remember times when I definitely did get a little bit nervous when I was much younger. And I sort of sort sports is sort of be on an end, whereas what I learned sort of essentially like emotional regulation. So, again, reframing it as well. Actually, this is me being really excited because this is the thing we every week we do all this training to go out and actually play the game. So why would you be nervous about that? It's actually this amazing, exciting opportunity. So it's quite a bit of work on just looking at that. So 100 says it is a learned thing. I think everyone starts they have different entry points for that. It's a coachable skill, in my opinion.

I want to come back on to how we can learn that. But you also said something else intrigued me. As for the first question was you said, I don't get nervous. I get apprehensive. What's the difference?

So I think it's just a framing thing. Like, it's not even it's just excitement, really. It's not even apprehension is sort of like I say, if you're a full time athlete, you're one chance every you have one child a week to really express yourself and go out there and perform. So if you're not nervous about that, there's probably something wrong. And those two things go hand. Obviously want to do your best as part of the team. But especially if something like Redwoods, a team sport, and it's quite similar with business. Sometimes you lean a lot of people and you have to rely on them. They have to rely on you at different times, and you can sort of use that communities, those people with you to get through something. So if you're feeling particularly nervous, I guess it might just be like having a bit of a joke. It someone or whatever it is to take the edge off. And that's why people are there.And that's one of the things I love about rugby and teams is that you always have that outlet, I guess, to sort of help manage it. I think if you're on your own, obviously, all you're going to do is ruminate, you're just going to sit there and make this massive thing.

Towards the end of my career, when I wasn't full time, I was part time and do a freshly as I had all this other stuff going on, and all of a sudden rugby wasn't to be on an end. It was just this thing that I got going to do is really enjoyable. And I had absolutely zero nerves. So there was no the excitement was there, but it never tips over to nerves, whereas when I was full time, absolutely. Sometimes you'd feel a little bit of God, like what's around the corner. But again, that's what your teammates are for.

You revert back to process, you know, what your one role is in the team at that point, and understanding that, regulating your emotions that way, bringing it back to something really tangent and process driven gets you through.

4. So you said we said this a couple of times, and you said the one chance to express yourself. What I'm really interested in is how can you reframe it in a context of Yes, there's nerves there. But actually, this is my one chance to express myself, so I can channel these nerves and turn them into excitement. How would you say someone can do that in a meeting context?

That's a very good question. So I think the first thing again is coming back to just relying on the idea of team. So, you know, you're going to have people that deal with this stuff are different ways. And what that means is that there's going to be people who deal with it very differently. But equially there is going to be people who are experiencing the exact same thing that you are as well. So just going back to the team for the pitch team of your own business, I guess. And like having a chat with them about sort of what is the job we have to do, removing the emotion from it, talking about what this is the process we're going to go to, because actually, I find in pitches, one of the things I know quite early on is that everyone's just a human being like, they've all got their own issues. You've got people have kids that I own while they go through some mountains of their personal life and all that stuff,when you become too sort of anxious, stress about things, you don't realize that you just think that there to attack you or whatever it is. And I think there's, like, just Yeah, having that context. Sometimes you need someone else to just tell you that. I think surrounding yourself with people who have been there and done it is really, really important.

The best way to learn it is a bit of exposure to help kind of help you adjust to it rather than just go full wax straight in.

I'm going to ask you, like, a really specific question now. You’re going into a high stakes meeting: What thoughts are you thinking before you do that? I'm assuming that you are trained to think thoughts that will benefit your performance before you perform?

I think all of this stuff always comes back to self awareness. So if you understand that you're nervous, that's great. But if you understand that you sort of need to be, then even better. And if you understand where you really perform, then you're really, really ticking and understanding how you regulate that. It all comes back to self awareness and questioning yourself thinking about that stuff.

5. So this sounds to me like a process. So the first step is to understand that nerves goods, the why are you nervous?

Yes, and that's the self awareness part is not understanding why you're nervous. You're not nervous unless care. But that was always my thing. Like, you care about your own performance. You care about the team's performance. It's exactly the same in business because you care about representing your Department or representing the company or just representing yourself. If you weren't a bit nervous, you're probably in the wrong job. If you regulate that correctly, you will just bring you the absolute best version of yourself. You won't undersell yourself. You won't overdo it.

6. You keep using this word regulate, and I really want to explore that, but I'm gonna Park that because I think that's a whole separate thing, this regulation. What is a fascinating is you must have, like, in the moment you're playing a game and you keep the ball can and you fuck it up. Like in the moment you don't have space time to lament. So I guess my question for you is how do professional athletes manage control channel professional disappointments?

Just the same answer. So it's just regulation idea. If you understand yourself how you react to things, you're much better and quick to deal with that. So if you miss tapes, kick, if you got whatever it is, the ability to just completely Park it and move on is a difficult thing to do if you got no exposure to that.

But again, it's a really, really coachable trained skill. It's not just an innate talent. And again, look at it positively.

So if you were to drop and border it's, like, what would I do next time? That is different to that, because there's always another time. There's always an opportunity. And I think what defines a really, really top top players and other players in sport is those people that can just move on from that and have taught themselves to move on from there.

And it's the same thing with if you're selling and you don't get the gig, then you can beat yourself up about it. You can be miserable about it. But if you again change the way, think about it. There's probably a there's loads you can learn if you just look at how you did it. You could also take the approach of what it wasn't right and you could take quite a sort of philosophical view of it, and you can deal with it that way.

Just looking at yourself and understanding what the opportunity is like a massive part of how I operate. I don't know why I operate like that, but if we lose something, that's just an outcome.

If we lose something, that's just an outcome.

If you lose something that's just an outcome, it's just an episode to you can't control that.

Control the controllables is very, very rugby things, but it informs exactly how, like, legit team operate in terms of if we're completely happy with even that we've done and we don't generate the outcome that we're after, absolutely fine.

No one's there trying to do a bad job, no one's there trying to mess it up. If we've gone through all of the process, we want to go through and we don't get the outcome. I don't care. It wasn't meant to be.

If there were things we could have improved on and we didn't get the outcome what fantastic opportunity to learn, because we wouldn't have found that little nugget unless that happened. And if we go through the process and we win again, it's like the counter. You can't let the victory disguise what you might have missed.

You can't let the victory disguise what you might have missed

So tell me more about that.

Assuming that you win, that's not you. That's the process. That's the process of working that time. So the question becomes, and this is all exactly the same in sport, because you're only as good as your last game. It's nothing to do with the outcome.

I often say we should focus the focus on progress, not the result. I think when we focus on results, that's when we get in our heads. But when we're just focusing on incremental progress, that'swhen actually we move and we drive and we grow. And I think you'll say the exact same thing, but even you took it one step further. You've said even when you succeed, that's actually just that process worked, but that's still a way to learn and to grow and to develop. I think we know that you can learn through your mistakes, but you're saying you can learn through your successes as well.

If you if you win and you look at it objectively and you can trace it back, there's always ways we can improve. You don't just do the same thing every time, because that's what got the result with that particular client or in a game.

We ran this play, it works again, you don't just repeat that blindly. That's madness. So, Yeah, there's always opportunities to learn. But the nice thing about that is that if you just take it as base level that there's always opportunities to learn, then what's failure? Well, it's the best opportunity.

There's always opportunities to learn. But the nice thing about that is that if you just take it as base level that there's always opportunities to learn, then what's failure? Well, it's the best opportunity.

If you fail, actually more as a bigger opportunity to learn because there's something there to iterate.

So you have a team of 60 now this year, so I want you to imagine if you will, I am on your team. And I am junior. I'm just starting out and we go to a meeting together, and I am nervous. It's difficult, and I fuck it up by all standards. I mess it up. We've all been there. What are you saying to me?

The way I see it in a junior role your job is to learn. Not necessarily perform.

Yeah, if you mess it up, I think again, it all comes back to the self awareness. So instead of pointing out failures, I think the interesting conversations about what have you learned? What would you do differently? What you think? Because if you build self awareness, then the intuative improvement for learning, the opportunity that failure presents, the success present takes care of itself. So that's what I do is I'll ask them, well, that was a big exposure for you. What you think went well, what didn't go well, see what they say. And then they're probably going to repeat back where they felt that they weren't quite good enough. But then if your job as a manager, obviously, to help them understand it, but it has to come from them, because if they don't get it, they won't have a self awareness, which means you won't be able to regulate your emotions of your feelings, your anxiety nervousness next time because we're in control of it, whereas if they're in control of it, then actually the next time. You've got this fantastic opportunity to use all things that you've learned about yourself in the next situation that you find yourself in.

I think that's one of the nice things about being a junior is there should be a culture that facilitates that in any kind of agency environment, particularly then you're going to do young players all the time in sport.

Tell me about your biggest professional failing and then tell me what you learnt.

Well, my career didn't work out because I was a full time professional. I was destined for I believe I was going to make it, and I didn't if, you know, partly I'd say injury when you look back with hindsight, it's also probably wasn't good enough. And I think the thing I learned from that is that I need to take control of that situation so I could have let that happen to me where what I did was in proactively said, Okay, what's another way of looking at this if I'm not going to make it, what is it that I actually go out and do?

I think the back now and it's like maybe could have done it, but essentially it's a failing or I didn't achieve what I wanted to achieve. But equally, all the experiences I lived through there help me become who I am today.

And you know what? As you were sharing the answer, I was almost like getting goose bumps because you articulating that is that's my agency story. It's the same thing that I could have done it. I absolutely could have done it. But at some point you go, you kind of have to have that tough awareness, see the reality and also acknowledge that pursuing something to the end and I'm doing in versus commerce because what is the end isn't always necessarily the win.

Sometimes the win is just choosing the better pursuit for you. The merit isn't in the outcome. The merit is in the lessons.

I feel like there's so much to explore here. What’s one list thing you want to share with our audience?

Verbalize the experiences that you're going through, because then you create that sense of team.

Well, Geoff, thank you so much.

Geoff Griffiths is the Managing Director of Builtvible - you can find him here.