MOODSET!

In 2020 I published a book called Accelerating Automatic. It draws on my experience as a Performance Coach with Exceed, a Facilitator at Cape Leadership, and before that as a Royal Marines Captain. In the book, I unveil a simple model for personal and team mastery. The model integrates mindset, method, and mood while also unpacking the elements of leadership, teamwork, and discipline.

The concept of mood as it contributes to mastery is perhaps the least understood from what I have experienced. For this reason I have chosen to focus many articles on the topic of mood and to give leaders some valuable insights into how some of the best-known sports coaches and business leaders have created appropriate conditions for excellence.

The language of leading and lagging indicators is somewhat understood in theory but the correlation between the two has been an obsession of mine over the last 50,000 hours of my career-time as an accountability-partner for teams in a variety of different industries from elite military to upstream energy.

Netflix recently released a fascinating series called “The Playbook”. I watched every episode in one go. It was like intravenous inspiration for me. The insights from Jose Mourinho and Patrick Mouratoglou were especially intriguing because their guidance influenced some of the most talented and egotistical athletes on the planet. All five of the episodes provided principles for performance from proven practitioners. I was then able to analyse these phenomenal pointers, and identify trends while also reflecting on my own playbook for “moodset” mastery.

Some say that a corporate team is different to a rig team which is different from a sports team. A factory floor is different to a shop floor which is different from a football pitch or a tennis court. But there is a common denominator – people. And to get the best out of people is a craft which requires relentless curiosity and infinite service.

I am an avid reader, drawn to authors like Simon Sinek, Malcolm Gladwell, and Matthew Syed. These authors are some of the most respected voices when it comes to what it takes to unlock “Great”. I learn from them and many others. Their findings often reveal further fascinating ideas about how sustainable progress has been made, and what we can learn from societies, communities, and outliers.

Keep an eye out for further articles and my forthcoming presentations about mastering “moodset” to sustain excellence in a changing world. This is particularly important at this present time when many are working in isolation. As with locker-room inspiration for athletic excellence, the subtle cues for optimal productivity wherever we work, are worthy of deliberate focus in order to achieve measurable progress, and of course in order to celebrate every small success!