Boost Your Performance With This Game-Changing Equation

The following is adapted from Naked at Work, the new book for leaders by Danessa Knaupp.

“Anyone can learn to play tennis.”

That’s what renowned tennis-instructor-turned-business-coach Tim Gallwey believed when he successfully taught a complete novice to wield a racket on live television.

Gallwey synthesized his inner game theory into a simple equation for performance: Performance = Potential – Interference.

As I’ll explain in this article, applying this equation to your leadership skills and business performance can accelerate your career like rocketing a tennis ball off a backswing.

Your performance at any given task—playing tennis, developing strategy, or mobilizing a team—is simply a matter of your potential to perform that task (what you know) minus what’s in your way (your interference).

Think of a train on a track. If the train can reach a maximum speed of seventy-five miles per hour, it will achieve that speed unless something is in the way. That something, whether it is internal engine trouble, a train ahead, or a tree across the tracks, interferes with the train’s ability to reach its top speed and slows the train down.

In my years of experience as an executive coach, I have not found a framework that better captures how to optimize outcomes for individuals, teams, or organizations. My clients have broad responsibilities, ambitious agendas, and many obstacles.

While the train is a simple, straightforward example, the senior leaders I work with face complex, detailed problems. The performance and potential framework reduce those problems to their most basic elements, and solutions often surface quickly.

As an example of how you can use the equation and identify interference, let’s look at the work of Dr. Martin Levy, a professor of orthopedic surgery at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. Dr. Levy specifically designed his surgeon training program to eliminate interference.

Traditionally, when a surgeon is training, instructors watch her perform a procedure and give her feedback. The observing instructor recommends adjustments, offers constructive criticism, and praises what the surgeon did well. Dr. Levy realized that conversation of any kind decreased the surgeon’s ability to perform. Both praise and criticism drew students’ attention away from the procedure to what their teacher thought of them. Talking was interference.

Dr. Levy shifted the approach and began to reinforce correct movements in surgery with a dog training clicker, the same plastic handheld device that trainers use to get Rover to roll over.

Each time a surgical resident did something right—picked up the right instrument, or made a neat incision, for example—the observer would press the clicker. A click generated the correct behavior the next time. No click prompted a different approach during the next attempt.

Residents quickly understood what behaviors to repeat and what behaviors didn’t meet the mark. Over time, the surgeons that experienced clicker reinforcement repeated correct behaviors faster and more often than surgeons receiving verbal praise.

The praise or correction from instructors was interference for these deeply motivated, intelligent doctors. They had enormous potential, but their performance was negatively affected by discussion of any kind with their instructors. The use of the dog clicker supplied necessary feedback without creating a significant distraction. The situation very clearly fit the equation; when interference was removed from potential, performance improved.

Interference can be internal or external, real or imagined. Like Dr. Levy did with his surgeons, you must identify the interference in your life and remove it from the equation.

For a train, external interference looks like a fallen tree ahead on the track. For a skilled surgeon, internal interference is the emotional response to a professor’s public correction. Interference can affect individuals and teams. Naming it and addressing it can be easy and straightforward or much more complicated, requiring many steps and significant time.

When I work with clients facing interference, we use Gallwey’s performance equation to answer three questions:

• What is the potential for performance?
• What specifically is interfering?
• How might you address that interference?

Using this framework, you can run through the process independently before a large meeting, in a tricky negotiation, or during other business situations to eliminate interference. You might not know what’s in your way now, but it’s worth your time and energy to find out so you can remove the things that distract from your potential and pump more energy and focus into your performance.

For more advice on improving your professional performance, find Naked at Work on Amazon.

Danessa Knaupp is an executive coach, CEO, and keynote speaker, shifting the global conversation on leadership. She has coached hundreds of executives across every major industry and has developed a reputation as a candid, compassionate and courageous leadership partner. She is the author of the leadership manual, Naked at Work: A Leader’s Guide to Fearless Authenticity. She regularly addresses C-suite audiences on how to harness the power of real authenticity (not #authenticity) to drive measurable business results. Danessa earned her executive coaching credentials from Georgetown University, is credentialed by the International Coach Federation, and holds a B.A. in Psychology and Sociology from the College of William and Mary. She spent more than 20 years as an entrepreneur and a senior executive, and ultimately, CEO, before founding her coaching practice. Connect with her at danessaknaupp.com.