Gail Golden on Peak Performance in the Workplace

Are you a corporate athlete?  According to Gail Golden, Principal at Gail Golden Consulting LLC, a corporate athlete is an executive in a high-level role who faces many of the challenges, stresses and constraints similar to what celebrity professional athletes also face.  In a recent interview for the Alter NOW Podcasts.  Golden says corporate athletes are not low-energy people, but ones who know how to focus on an idea, direct it and deploy it to reach their maximum effectiveness.

Much of Golden’s research came from studying athletes who had fallen off their game.  Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, authors of the book “Power of Full Engagement”, were coaches who worked with world-class athletes who were no longer at peak performance.  Loehr and Schwartz observed the athletes to determine where they had gone wrong and how they could help them return to peak performance.  In the process, Loehr and Schwartz discovered that some of these concepts also applied to corporate athletes.  By concentrating on returning to high energy levels and getting a sense of meaning and significance in their lives, corporate athletes can once again deliver consistent peak performance.

Golden also addresses effective work habits.  In terms of multi-tasking, research suggests that it is not very effective – whether the individual is 25 or 75.  According to Golden, people can successfully perform two tasks at once if they are different from each other.  People are far more effective when they work on one task for five or 10 minutes and then switch to another for an equal period of time.

They are also slightly delusional.  “Highly effective and happy people are often more optimistic than reason should allow,” she says.  Although a completely rational person knows that the road ahead often is bumpy, the most effective corporate leaders grasp that these things are a part of life and take them as they come.

To listen to Gail Golden’s full interview on achieving peak performance in the workplace, click here.