The Trusting Mindset

Overachievement: The New Model For Exceptional Performance
by John Eliot, Ph.D.

(Page 4 of 6)

In the 1976 Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austrian Alpine skier Franz Klammer took home gold with a final run that skiers still talk about with awe. No competitor had yet been able to catch the leader and defending Olympic champion, Bernhard Russi of Switzerland; numerous times, officials had to halt the skiing due to dangerous, icy conditions on the course, and even though the final event had the green light, the course still seemed too slick to permit the kind of double-poling usually required for a fast start. Klammer, however, skated hard out of the gate, double-poling wildly. The ice didn't give way, throwing his weight to one ski. To regain his balance, he tried to shift to the other ski. He lost his balance in the other direction.

The key to winning in Alpine is to run the straightest line from start to finish, staying in a low, aerodynamic tuck while keeping your skis gliding flat, almost frictionless over the hill. Klammer was anything but aerodynamic. He whipped around the sheered corners first on one leg then on the other, clipping gates, just missing the out-of-bounds fences, his arms and feet flailing, his skis slipping and clattering as he hurtled down the mountain.

Most ski fans were praying for Klammer not to get killed. His own coach, Toni Sailer, later commented, "I closed my eyes and thought this was the end of the gold medal. I only dared reopen them when I didn't hear the sound of a crash."

Somehow defying physics, Klammer barreled over the finish line, careening to a stop, snow flying. He barely avoided piling into the crowd of fifty thousand who all seemed to be waving red and white Austrian flags. Klammer looked for the scoreboard: Russi 1:46.06. Klammer 1:45.73 - the fastest time of the day and the gold medal!

The press was all over him. ABC's Wide World of Sports, famous for dramatizing spectacles such as the "Agony of Defeat," wanted to know:

"How in the world did you do that?"
"What?" said the gold medal winner, a battery of microphones stuck in his face.
"WIN!"
"Well, I'm a pretty good skier, you know," replied the charismatic Austrian with a wink.
"No, how did you clock such a fast time with such a terrible run?"
"What do you mean terrible? I think gold's a pretty good color."

One journalist pointed out that he was clearly off balance, his arms wind-milling, catching too much air yet somehow managing to ski faster than competitors who turned in nearly perfect runs. Then came the classic reporter's question: "What was going through your mind?"

"What was going through my mind?" Klammer repeated, as if trying to understand what the guy was getting at. "Nothing. I was just trying to get there [pointing to the finish line]. Fast!" Evidently Klammer was not thinking about the correct line down the course or the proper technique to maintain flat skis. He wasn't thinking about gold medals, either. Franz Klammer was just racing. Where? To the finish line.

But how did he do that?

How did he manage to keep skiing without thinking the same things that all the "average" performers (and reporters) in the audience were thinking - that he would break a leg or eat a gate or surely lose his number-one World Cup ranking? How did he keep from thinking about crashing? Those are the kind of questions I would have asked Franz Klammer at Innsbruck because the answers provide the secret of high-stakes performance not only in sports but also for actors, musicians, business executives, doctors, and performers in every other field that requires someone to step into the limelight and excel under pressure. How do they not think about all the distractions and possible outcomes and the details of a given performance when they're under the gun?

Fortunately, over the past decade as a student and teacher of performance psychology, and now also as a professional adviser to performers in many different fields, I have been able ask hundreds of other talented men and women how their minds work under pressure. I have found that the top players in every field think differently when all the marbles are on the line. Great performers focus on what they are doing, and nothing else. When Tiger Woods or Muhammad Ali cannot seem to make a false move, when Warren Buffet or Bill Gates is in the middle of a deal, when Yitzhak Perlman or Al Pacino blows the critics away with a performance, they are not thinking about their technique, what their teachers told them, what their attorneys or accountants advised. They are able to engage in a task so completely that there is no room left for self-criticism, judgment, or doubt; to stay loose and supremely, even irrationally, self-confident; to just step up and do what they're good at, concentrating only on the simplest nature of their performance. Superstars perform so naturally and so instinctively that they seem to be able to enter a pressure-packed situation that would terrify or freeze most people as if nothing matters. They let it happen, let it go. They couldn't care less about the results.

As we say in performance psychology, "They play with their eyes." They just look at the target and shoot. And the ball goes in, the deals get closed, the stage performance is thrilling. Often, in my opinion, the results are works of art. Asking Franz Klammer to recreate that gold medal run would be like begging Leonardo to paint another Mona Lisa. It just doesn't work that way.

The good news: Research and experimentation have proven that this kind of exceptional thinking is within everyone's reach. But before you can master this superstar's mindset, you first must understand why, when people ask great performers like Franz Klammer, "What was going on in your mind?" they are inclined to answer, "Nothing."

Journalists and fans tend to take such responses as displays of arrogance or coyness, or as rehearsed sound bites. But the neurobiology of high performance actually confirms Klammer's answer: What he was thinking at a cognitive level was truly "nothing."

To be sure, great performers are well trained, experienced, smart, and, in some cases, divinely talented. But the way their brains work during a performance is a lot more like a squirrel's than like Einstein's. Like squirrels, the best in every business do what they have learned to do without questioning their abilities - they flat out trust their skills, which is why we call this high-performance state of mind the "Trusting Mindset." Routine access to the Trusting Mindset is what separates great performers from the rest of the pack. By all accounts, being free to turn your skills loose under the gun is an intoxicating feeling. The source of that sensation, however, and the ability to do it, is hardwired in every one of us. In fact, you've probably already experienced the Trusting Mindset, without even knowing it.

"As If It Doesn't Matter . . ."

If I were in the room with you right now - about six feet away - I'd ask you to toss your car keys to me. You'd be able to handle that, right? In fact, I bet that if I asked you to do it six times in a row without any other instruction, you'd toss those keys right at me, chest-high, every time. I'm pretty sure about the result because I perform this experiment every year in my class by tossing my car keys to students, and having them return the toss. Sometimes I use a whiteboard marker or an eraser (if I don't want them running off for a joyride). But whatever the instrument, they toss it back perfectly every single time. If you're like my students, you'll be thinking: "What's so amazing about throwing a set of keys to someone six feet away? That's not hard."

You're right. Key-tossing is a skill that we all seem to have. I bet you could do it sidearm, left-handed or right, even behind your back. Tossing an object a few feet is so easy that, as the saying goes, we don't even think about it. To perform exceptionally - whether it's hitting a golf ball pure, closing a critical deal, pulling off a big sale, moving an audience with a violin concerto, or even transplanting a heart - requires you to be in that same state of mind, empty of all doubt, without any thought about the mechanics of what you're doing. You cannot pull up all those years of education, training, and experience in your memory as you perform - that's the "Training" Mindset. In the Trusting Mindset, you have to let all that expertise be there instinctively. Our ability is maximized when we let our skills do the work, not our heads. As professional golfers like to say, you have to trust your swing. You just have to toss the keys - pure Trusting Mindset.

The results of putting the Trusting Mindset into play are never disappointing. Anyone who has experienced its astonishing benefits is eager to figure out how to tap back into it, making it the Holy Grail of high-stakes performance. Unfortunately, people tend to devote too much time to thinking critically and evaluating themselves. In my teaching and consulting, I have found that people get it better once they understand more about how their brains actually work under different circumstances.

Copyright © 2005 John Eliot, Ph.D.. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.

About the Author

Dr. teaches business and psychology at Rice University and is adjunct professor at SMU Cox School of Business Leadership Center. He is the former director of Rice's program in sports management and performance enhancement. In 2000, he co-founded The Milestone Group, which provides performance consultation and training to business executives, professional athletes, and corporations nationwide. Clients have included Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Adidas, NASA, the United States Olympic Committee, The Mayo Clinic, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and hundreds of elite individual performers.