Thrive on Pressure

Graham Jones: For me it's immense, it's huge, I've never seen the likes of it before. When you think about leadership in normal times it's difficult enough but in the modern business world it's even harder and we talk about the new normal. I'm not entirely sure what that is but it's certainly where leaders are more visible, they're more exposed, their performance is even more crucial. There are uncertainties, there's unpredictability, it's just roller coaster times basically.

Rachel Salaman: And have you seen that become more prevalent in recent years then?

Graham Jones: Yes I have, I have. I've seen it turn into quite a bit of stress in leaders who have never experienced anything like this before and they're not equipped to deal with it very well actually, it's huge.

Rachel Salaman: So what causes the pressure, you mentioned a few things there but can you go into a bit more detail?

Graham Jones: Well obviously given what's going on right now in the business world just simply the environment is enough to cause lots of pressure for leaders but we also have that other thing and that's ourselves. Leaders place an enormous amount of pressure on themselves in terms of expectations, they make themselves vulnerable, they distort their perceptions, their job security might not be as certain as it was before, at least in their own heads anyway. It comes from two sources, it's the environment and our own expectations of ourselves.

Rachel Salaman: One theme that runs throughout your book is the idea of real leaders versus what you call safe leaders. Can you explain that idea and how it relates to pressure in some of the things you're talking about.

Graham Jones: Yes. If I start with safe leaders, I've essentially defined the differences between safe leaders and real leaders as the motives, the motives to lead. It's not necessarily how you lead, it's why you want to be leaders in the first place, and for safe leaders it's very much about job security. It's about the rewards, the package, that comes with being a leader and safe leaders are under lots of pressure at the moment because job security isn't as great as it used to be so they're playing it very safely, keeping their heads down, waiting for the good times to come back. The problem is they don't know when the good times are going to come back. Real leaders, they accept pressure, they know it's part of the job and they thrive on it. It's about making things happen, it's about leading the organization as opposed to the personal motives, they want to make a difference, but of course in making a difference you make yourself visible and you're into that exposure thing again, maybe lonely, vulnerable and the pressure can be enormous but it's something that real leaders accept, it's something that safe leaders avoid.

Rachel Salaman: And you say that real leaders need to create high performance environment. What does that have to do with pressure at work?

Graham Jones: Well I think any leader in any organization has a responsibility and accountability to create high performance environments anyway. What do I mean by high performance environment, well it's an environment where high performance is firstly inevitable but then sustainable. I've come across too many leaders who take on all the pressure themselves and they need to share it around because they've got people who are very capable of dealing with pressure themselves and who can actually thrive on it. So high performance environments, yes, there's pressure but people actually thriving on that pressure engaged and hugely committed to the organization.

Rachel Salaman: What does this have to do with your idea of mental toughness because in your book you talk a lot about how you need to develop mental toughness in order to thrive on pressure in the way you've just described?

Graham Jones: Well people respond differently to pressure first of all. You can go under unfortunately, you can cope with it which basically means you just get by but there's some sort of strain and drain on the system or you can thrive on it, you can actually use pressure to your advantage, and that's where mental toughness comes in, it allows you to thrive on pressure. There are four key aspects that my research has identified of mental toughness. There's staying in control under stress. Everybody gets stressed from time to time and it's keeping that stress under control. It's about maintaining self-belief when you're under that pressure. It's focusing on the things that really matter and it's remaining motivated for the right reasons so, yes, mental toughness can really help you thrive on that pressure.

Rachel Salaman: Let's talk about those things in a bit more detail now starting with the first one you talked about staying in control. It's interesting in your book you talk about how important it is that we choose our responses and in this case it's about choosing our response to pressure isn't it?

Graham Jones: It is, I don't want to go all academic here but the key message is we all have a choice to make about how we respond to pressure. It's out there, it comes with the role of being a leader. We can choose to thrive on it and use it to our advantage or we can go under, we get into negative thinking patterns. The expectation becomes too great, becomes overwhelming, and then we become stressed.

Rachel Salaman: Do you think there are ever situations where you can't actually choose, where it's beyond your control how you respond?

Graham Jones: I would imagine of course there are but in the vast majority of cases you do have a choice and even under the most arduous of circumstances it's real leaders that find they do make the choice, actually love the pressure, thrive on it and use it to their advantage.

Rachel Salaman: So how would a leader go about doing that? Is it about just telling themselves to or is there more to it than that?

Graham Jones: Well first of all it's about recognizing it's part of the job so it shouldn't be a surprise to you that you are under pressure and also it's about recognizing that you do have that choice. It can take you under, it can debilitate you, but also you can be really energized and invigorated by it. It's choosing that mindset, that crucial mindset that okay it's here, you know it's not going away, I can use this to my advantage. It's mainly about the mindset that you bring to the situation of leadership.

Rachel Salaman: So using it to your advantage would be something like feeling the pressure and then channeling it into your activities.

Graham Jones: Channeling is a great word to use actually because as you know I've worked with Olympic and world champions in the past and they're under enormous pressure. It's all relative of course given what's going on in the world right now but in the moment these athletes are under enormous pressure what they ought to do is channel their thoughts into positive thoughts about being energized and actually using it as opposed to be abused by it. So, yes, channeling is great word to use and I think that's a great image that leaders can have in terms of when they're under pressure gaining control of it and channeling it to a positive end and thriving on it.

Rachel Salaman: But of course, as you say, everyone feels stressed out sometimes and in your book you have a really useful section where you outline several relaxation and calming exercises that people can do to control the stress. Which one of those is your favorite or the most useful do you think?

Graham Jones: Oh I think they're all useful but as you've put me on the spot to go for one there's actually something called abdominal breathing which I use a lot and I've taught many leaders over the past few years and it's a very simple technique where you actually breathe into your abdomen. Now I know that's physically not possible so you actually imagine yourself breathing into your abdomen and it has a very, very powerful calming effect just calming the whole body down. You're often in intense physical response and just bringing it under control, yes, getting composure in a situation.

Rachel Salaman: And when would a leader use that. Would they just take five minutes out of their day?

Graham Jones: Well you have to practice it first of all but when you've practiced it and it becomes a skill then one or two deep breaths will help in a few seconds in that important conversation when you're starting to get frustrated and angry before that important presentation or the meeting you're just about to chair or the negotiation that's going badly wrong. Yes, just take a few seconds, that's all it takes.

Rachel Salaman: Now you identify a kind of response that you call stinking thinking. What is that and what's the best way to deal with it?

Graham Jones: Stinking thinking, I'd like to claim ownership of that but unfortunately I can't. An American sports psychologist friend of mine first used the phrase stinking thinking and I stole it from him. It's about this classic mindset where you focus on the negatives, you focus on the things that could go wrong, you catastrophize about what might happen. You focus on the things that have gone wrong rather than all the positives that have happened. You have this classic yes, but, mentality where somebody's trying to reinforce something you've done well but you want to continually focus on the things that didn't go well, they should and must thinking. It's all a way of putting pressure on yourself which will turn into stress if you don't control it.

Rachel Salaman: So how can you control it?

Graham Jones: Well again it's awareness, it's recognizing when you're doing it using some simple techniques. Thought stopping is a classic technique that people use, it might just be a simple image of a No Entry sign, the red sign with the white stripe across it, no entry, don't go there, you know it's bad for you. It could be a different perspective by asking yourself questions about is it really that bad, surely there are worse things going on in the world right now. These can be really simple yet powerful techniques at the same time.

Rachel Salaman: Tell us a bit more about should and must.

Graham Jones: Well if you think that you have to do something well, you have to succeed as a leader, you must satisfy your people, you must engage and motivate them, then you're actually imposing lots of pressure on yourself, your own expectations are enormous. If you have a desire to do all those things it's a different motivation. There's no pressure on yourself, it's just a way of wanting to be as opposed to a way of having to be.

Rachel Salaman: And so you should stop telling yourself you have to do these things?

Graham Jones: Quite simply, yes. Inevitably as a leader there are some things you have to do but if you continually focus on the having you're not helping yourself at all. It's got to be a strong desire and that's getting back to the distinction between safe leaders believe they have to do things whereas real leaders, they want to do things, they have a strong desire to do them. It's a difference in motivation.

Rachel Salaman: Those things are all to do with your first key skill of mental toughness which is staying in control under stress and the second one is strengthening your self-belief and in your book you point out the difference between self-belief, self-esteem and self-confidence. So can you just outline how those things differ.

Graham Jones: Yes and again I'm risking over complicating things here but I believe that self-belief is made up of two things. It's made up of self-esteem and it's made up of self-confidence and self-esteem is essentially how you feel about yourself as a person and it's more enduring. You'll think about things that go back a long time in your life that help you judge and value whether you're a good person or not whereas self-confidence is very much in the moment. It's affected by the situation you find yourself in, the people that are surrounding you, how you're perceiving the situation and I claim in the book, my strong advice, is that people should build their self-esteem because that will actually help people's confidence and maintain confidence when the pressure's really on.

Rachel Salaman: So what's your advice for a leader who wants to build his or her self-esteem?

Graham Jones: To remind yourself of the things that you do well. I mean you are a leader for a reason, you're sat in that chair in the leader's office in that part of the leader's open plan office because people have recognized things you do well and often as leaders we forget them because we're reminded of the things that perhaps aren't going so well. So, again, a really simple technique because most of these techniques are very simple. It's just to remind yourself what you do well, the things you have done well in the past and why it's you sitting there as a leader and not somebody else.

Rachel Salaman: You also note though that leaders don't do themselves any favor by trying to be perfect and you have some advice for perfectionists don't you.

Graham Jones: Yes and the advice for perfectionists is to not be a perfectionist, as simple as that, because nobody can be and if your goal is perfectionism every time then sadly you'll fail virtually every time. It's accepting that mistakes happen, it's about again this recognition thing, what is a perfectionist thinking style, their must's and have to's, their perfectionist's thinking styles. It's about setting achieving goals. They can be tough goals to achieve but they're achievable at the same time because perfect goals aren't unfortunately.

Rachel Salaman: So you mentioned that self-confidence is different from self-esteem although they are related and you also deal with this in your book. What's your best tip for building self-confidence versus self-esteem?

Graham Jones: There's a classic sound bite which is called Control of Controllables and often we lose sight of that and we lose our confidence because we fluctuate enormously from moment to moment. We focus on the things that we can't control, we focus on the things that we're finding really difficult, focusing on past experiences where things have gone well. Using our positive self-talk we talk ourselves into being confident as opposed to talking ourselves out of it. You mentioned stinking thinking earlier, if you engage in stinking thinking you're probably not likely to be very confident. It's just having the positive images, positive thoughts in your head and controlling those thoughts.

Rachel Salaman: How hard is that for people in your experience?

Graham Jones: Well I guess there are people around like me because it is pretty difficult and often when you're under pressure you don't know what to do and it's people like me who can advise on hey have you thought about doing this, thought about doing that, do you recognize what it is about you that doesn't help in these situations so I'm not saying it's easy. I believe the techniques are easy but the really difficult part of it is just becoming aware of when you need to use these techniques and then having the confidence actually to start using some new techniques.

Rachel Salaman: And relating this back to pressure the idea is if you strengthen your self-esteem and your self-confidence you'll be able to deal with pressure more effectively. Yes, you'll deal with it in a much more positive way and it'll help you accept the pressure and actually learn to love it because that's what the best athletes in the world say, they say they love the pressure and that it makes them perform better.

Rachel Salaman: So the third key skill of mental toughness is channeling your motivation to work for you and you've mentioned motivation a couple of times. In your book you talk about different types of motivation, what are your main points here?

Graham Jones: In the book I did books between what I've called healthy motivation and unhealthy motivation and it's based on the simple principle that you can have two people who are highly motivated so on a one to ten scale where ten is maximum motivation you might have two people reporting in to you who are tens and as a leader you'd be very satisfied with that but what you might not know is that one of them who scores ten really enjoys the job, goes to bed at night thinking I can't wait to get to work tomorrow morning because I'm really turned on by the job and the tasks I've got to do tomorrow, that's a really healthy motivation. Unfortunately, the second person who also scores a ten might be driven by fear of failure by goals that he or she didn't believe possible are possible to achieve. They're almost desperate to succeed and that causes stress in those people. So you have almost a positive healthy motivation and a negative unhealthy motivation and it's important to distinguish between not just the quantity of motivation but also the quality of it because that will drive people's behavior and their success or failure.

Rachel Salaman: So if you're a leader and you recognize these different types of motivation among the members of your team what do you do with that information, how does it work for you?

Graham Jones: Well it's recognizing how people need your support. People who have a healthy motivation probably need lots of positive reinforcement and encouragement and people with a negative unhealthy motivation probably need your support. They probably need you to sit down with them and talk about the stress that they're probably under and how you can support them with that and how you can help them reframe their thoughts so that they can turn their motivation into a positive form of motivation. It is about getting to know your people really well actually.

Rachel Salaman: And what about the relationship between motivation and goals and thriving on pressure, how do those things work together?

Graham Jones: Well inevitably if you have an unhealthy motivation your goals are probably going to be negative goals in that it's about not failing and the pressure's going to be enormous and it's almost certainly likely to turn to stress. The healthy motivation is probably associated with still stretching goals but they're achievable and of course it's associated with a positive mindset, let me out there, let me achieve it, let me make things happen so it's a very positive relationship.

Rachel Salaman: Have you got any advice for leaders about how they can go about determining the different types of motivation among their team other than just sitting down with people and asking them?

Graham Jones: Well, yes, it's about watching and listening to your people very carefully indeed and it's about watching and listening to them in their day to day activities as opposed to having a formal conversation with them and just the language that people use. Those words must and should and have to, I've already said earlier, are a sign that people are under an unhealthy motivation if you like, that they're having to succeed, they fear failure, whereas people who are experiencing a healthy motivation, their language is much more positive about wanting achieve things, a strong desire comes out of the language. Body language is another classic one, people who are enthusiastic, energetic, probably is a very healthy motivation whereas those people who are quite reserved, abnormally reserved, unusually reserved for them, it's probably an unhealthy motivation, a fear. Are people willing to take risks, are they willing to challenge the leaders, that's probably an unhealthy motivation. If you're challenged in an unhealthy way by people who feel you're giving them too much work to do and you're asking them to achieve goals that are probably unachievable it's probably an unhealthy motivation but to be challenged in a positive way by people experiencing a positive, healthy motivation, it's about almost how they're challenging you to get more of them, that they're capable of more and to give them more responsibility, more accountability I think so the challenge I think looks different as a function at different levels of motivation.

Rachel Salaman: And the fourth skill of mental toughness that you talk about in your book is directing your focus to the things that really matter. Now how does this relate to pressure?

Graham Jones: Under pressure, I'm over generalizing horribly here, but under pressure a lot of leaders focus on the things that you just can't control, those things that are in their face, the marketplace, the negotiation that just went wrong, the sale that just didn't happen. So they're the things we can't control and it's about focusing on the things that really matter, the things they can control which is the really important thing. Unfortunately, we only have so much focus so what we focus on is absolutely crucial.

Rachel Salaman: So give me an example of something that really matters versus something that one shouldn't focus on under pressure.

Graham Jones: One thing actually which you'll probably find surprising is focusing on recharging your batteries. When people are under pressure they often don't switch off when they go home from work and when they're trying to get to sleep at night. So just knowing that actually this is the time to switch off from the pressure and to focus on something else will help you enormously. Focus on success, that's probably difficult to do in the current business environment because there are so many failures around and so many people telling you that we are going to fail. Focusing on success, focusing on achievements is particularly important right now I think, that's just a couple of examples of what we should be focusing on.

Rachel Salaman: And how much should a leader help their team to focus on the things that really matter as well?

Graham Jones: I think a leader has a responsibility to do that. Of course the team will still choose what they will focus on but I think a leader has responsibility to help the team focus on things that have gone well for example rather than beating yourself up when things go wrong, just reminding yourself about what has gone well. Things you need to focus on which are crucial to performance, those things that really matter because there'll be some team members out there who are probably focusing on job security right now unfortunately and that's a distraction. It's important to focus on again the things you can control, the things that will drive performance which in the end will actually help you keep your job.

Rachel Salaman: Talking about distractions in your book you have a section on how to deal with distractions because all leaders will have to deal with distractions on a day to day basis. Can you share some of your thoughts there?

Graham Jones: Well it's interesting because often people talk to me about having things to do during the day and they separate them from goals and I remind leaders that actually your to do list is a set of goals that you have for the day and you should use them as your focus for the day to define the small tasks, quick things to do, but also set yourselves the bigger focus of what you want to think about and what you want to make decisions on, on that particular day. So the to do lists that people have are much more important than people could ever imagine and that's one particular example that I use personally. I'm a big to do list person but not just tells me what I've got to do tomorrow, it tells me what I've got to focus on at the same time and that's a big difference. I mean what you're trying to achieve tomorrow should somehow fit in with what you're trying to achieve next week, next month, next year and eventually the whole of your career. If you're able to join things up in that way that will really help and, again, going back to working with elite athletes they have a long term goal which they break down into medium term and shorter term goals and the practice they do day in day out will always be aligned with medium and longer term goals and I think if leaders in business are able to adopt that mindset and that practice it really helps their focus day to day. It's not just about fighting fires then, it's about always moving forward in a direction that you're in control of towards a positive future.

Rachel Salaman: So what are your top three tips for leaders who'd like to start thriving on pressure rather than feeling overwhelmed and stressed out?

Graham Jones: Top three, okay, can I have the top thirty three. No, okay, three. The first one is about using the pressure because it can abuse you. So use it learning to accept it as being something positive can really help you, I think it's really important. The second one I'd go for is focusing on what really matters. Forget the things you can't control, it's pointless, it's a waste of your energy, your mental, focus on the things that really matter and then the final one is that classic sound bite I talked to you earlier about, it's control the controllables, it really does work. Work out what you can control and control them.

Rachel Salaman: Graham Jones, thank you very much for joining us.

Graham Jones: Thank you Rachel.