Five tips for better performance
Whether performing on stage, presenting a business pitch or competing in sporting events, the ability to know how to perform well is vital in getting the best out of ourselves and others.
The ‘performance’ aspect of our lives can get lost in the routine of modern life. However, not being aware of how we can perform better and make full use of our creative abilities can lead to boredom, career decline or even burn out. So it’s vital that we understand how to perform well in order to continue to learn and grow throughout our careers and lives.
Here are five tips that might help in achieving better performance.
1. Understand why you have chosen your career and reassess that regularly
Unless you know why you have chosen your career, what you want to achieve from it and what contribution you want to make in pursuing it, performing well can be difficult.
That’s because without having any purpose, a career can feel meaningless and after a while, without focus, complacency and boredom can easily set in. We can’t always step into our dream job overnight, but by focussing regularly on what motivates you, what you want to achieve and how you will help others, finding and maintaining a suitable career path can become simpler.
2. Get a mentor
One of the best ways of cultivating better performance is to get a mentor. A mentor should be someone who can lend an impartial ear, who will listen to you without judgment and who will allow you through listening, observation and conversation to help you to make your own assessment of how you can develop your performance skills.
Being able to make your own assessment is ultimately key here. If you can’t make an over-all assessment of your performance skills on a regular basis, then working on fine tuning and developing them may prove difficult.
3. Be self-disciplined
Attaining high levels of performance requires both strength of character and self-discipline.
The really great virtuoso performers only attain their performance skills through hours and hours of focused work in the practice room, which continues to form part of their daily routine throughout their performing lives.
There is a dangerous assumption, particularly in more specialised areas of work that you can only ever know or achieve so much, because it is a ‘niche area’. The reality is that none of us are perfect and therefore, whilst we can strive for perfection, none of us will reach it.
However, understanding this allows room for continued performance growth and by learning, practicing and trying new things throughout our careers, we can become more flexible, more resourceful, more adaptable and through greater all round experience, become better performers.
4. Use criticism to improve performance skills
It’s human nature not to like being subject to criticism, but recognising helpful, constructive criticism and acting on it is absolutely vital in being able to improve performance.
When criticism is used as a tool for assessing how to improve and develop work and life skills, major self-improvement and character building can flow from it. However, if criticism is ignored (because you never thought that you made a mistake) or taken too personally (because you think making a mistake means you are worthless), it can be damaging to performance. That’s because good, constructive criticism should never be perceived as a ‘personal attack’ under which you either put up your defences or come away feeling mortally wounded.
Recognising constructive criticism is a life skill that has to be developed and requires careful listening and understanding. It should not be mistaken for being belittled or berated because you haven’t lived up to another person’s own standards (where that person then fails to provide any constructive ideas for improvement and takes no interest in helping you to improve at your own natural pace), nor should it be mistaken for the hideousness of bullying.
To ignore the importance of constructive criticism cannot be understated. Without understanding it, unhealthy assumptions about our true abilities can develop which if unchecked, may de-rail us from our optimum career path.
5. Always understand the message you want to get across first
Unless you are performing a solely automated task, you will have interaction with other humans. In making the most of our human interactions, we need to understand what key message or information we want to get across.
In the theatre or at a concert, where words, music and drama convey a number of messages to an audience, how well those messages are conveyed depends on the communication skills of the performer/actor. Similarly in any other walk of life, the words that we communicate and how we communicate them are vitally important. An actor who fails to understand how to prepare every aspect of his performance will most probably fail to give a really convincing performance.
In non-theatrical walks of life, we sometimes take for granted the way that we communicate is convincing enough. However, the only way to become really convincing is to take all aspects of performance apart, understand how they truly knit together and practice. You don’t necessarily need to tread the boards to understand how to do that, but to become a really great performer, you do need to develop and maintain a curious mindset and be prepared to constantly work on yourself, not only in relation to your career, but as a person too.
