Making the best of back-to-backs
As I watched Wimbledon over the weekend, I was reminded of a mental model I’d come across, which was based on research into elite tennis players. This looks not at the physical skills needed to win each point, but at the mental skills needed to move from one point to the next. How do they play their best point regardless of the outcome of the point they have just played?
What they are doing is using the transition to maximise the success of the point to come, and good leaders can do the same thing. The 4 Rs model focuses on the gaps BETWEEN tasks to optimise performance. In an ideal world this gap would be a good new minutes, perhaps an hour. But we all face the daily curse of the back-to-back meeting. So how can you optimise anything when you barely have time to go to the loo or grab a coffee? The answer is an intentional mental check list of micro-actions:
First up, RECOVER: this a small action to recognise that the previous task is finished, and mark the return to neutral ground. You can do this by closing a document or tab, finishing any notes and putting your pen down, taking your headphones off, spinning in your chair - whatever.
Next is to RELAX, and this is about noticing whatever emotion you’re carrying from the previous task and letting it go. The simplest and best way of doing this is by some deep breathing, but neck rolls or stretching also works well. This is critical to avoid taking unhelpful emotions into an environment where they don’t belong. The feelings associated with a successful sales meeting are not useful heading into a 121 with an underperforming team member. And vice versa.
REFOCUS is literally about identifying what the next task is and, more importantly, its purpose. What is your contribution to the task? What does a good outcome look like? How are you showing up? Make an intentional decision here - I think of this as pointing your head in the right direction. You can jot down a couple of words to focus the mind, or mutter an intention under your breath, ‘I will listen to everyone’s point of view before jumping in with my own…’
And finally READY, a moment to prepare your body for the next task - this can be by finding a new page on your pad, standing up and sitting down again, putting your glasses back on. Anything will do as long as its purposeful and intentional.
So that’s RECOVER, RELAX, REFOCUS and READY. Each action should become a ritual - actions we know we can do well, that give us confidence to move into the next moment - deliberate, explicit and repeatable, even if time means they can only be small and quick. In this way, we can learn to be at our best from moment to moment, and come out of a disastrous meeting to serve an ace in the next one.
Photo by Mario Gogh on Unsplash