How are you playing your inner game as a recruitment manager, leader or director? Are you playing to win or have you just rolled over? It’s a lovely jargon word isn’t it? “The inner game” a term coined and made famous by the author and Harvard graduate Timothy Gallwey way back in 1986.
He launched his first book twenty seven years ago and it is still a best seller. He even has the DVD set and e-learning programme that goes with it; plus Inner game books in more fields than I have time to mention.
So how did his inner game methodology come about? Tim was a tennis player of some skill. He even captained his Harvard University team. In a sabbatical year he worked as a tennis instructor. Initially with pretty average results. Wanting to do the best for his students he started dabbling with different techniques. Specifically getting his students to focus on their strokes as they were. Telling them to ignore the negative self talk and to just; go with the flow. In other words to ‘quieten down’ the self interference. By doing this they were more able to tap into their natural abilities with greater ease. The evidence was clear and the volume of books sold over the last twenty odd years validates the truth of his discovery.
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I sense for a concept to be commercially successful like this, there is a grain of truth in it? We all know that our inner game influences our results. My own study of popular content on my website validates this. It is also a major focus of many of my coaching sessions with recruitment managers.
It isn’t the current recruitment market, or the fact that in-house recruitment is increasing that holds managers back. It is their own thoughts. It can happen to any manager by the way so don’t feel too bad. There is a well known saying in the coaching world that the thoughts we tell ourselves predict our results. Great when they are positive self affirming thoughts. You remember those don’t you? You probably used to have them when you were a lot younger. Then something changed. The good news is that you can get them back and it is easier than you realise.
All you need to do is replace the negative chatter with positive chatter. It can start with just a simple phrase. Cut yourself some slack here and take it step by step. So where could you start.
1. Neutral thoughts first
Say you are an expert at ‘beating yourself up’ or you are a typical ‘pot half empty’ person. How about thinking about a neutral response or thoughts. ‘The team missed billings this month’ becomes I want to hit billings in the next three months and I know the steps I need to take’. A much better response and in reality the truth.
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2. Spin that thought!
Simple twists in words can make a huge difference and most people don’t even realise the impact it could have. Imagine changing around; “I am a terrible recruitment manager, I’ll never get any results from this team!”; to “ I am having a thought that it might take me some time to get this team performing.” Same context and yet thought two is much closer to the truth.
Relax, stand back and get a strategy for dealing with this. I think you will be totally surprised at what becomes possible.
If you want to learn how to set up your business, so that it stops under-performance once and for all, then join my free webinar: The 5 Secrets Our Clients Use to Build 7 & 8 Figure Recruitment Businesses
‘Til next time,
