Developing Mental Toughness: Gold Medal Strategies for Transforming Your Business Performance

207 Pages·2010·0.86 MB·English

by  Graham Jones

Developing
Mental
Toughness
This page intentionally left blank
Developing
Mental
Toughness
Gold Medal Strategies
for Transforming Your
Business Performance
GRAHAM JONES
Professor
and
ADRIAN MOORHOUSE
MBE
SPRING HILL
Published by How To Content,
A division of How To Books Ltd,
Spring Hill House, Spring Hill Road
Begbroke, Oxford OX5 1RX
Tel: [phone]. Fax: [phone]
[email protected]
www.howtobooks.co.uk

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All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or stored
in an information retrieval system (other than for purposes of review)
without the express permission of the publisher in writing.

The right of Graham Jones and Adrain Moorhouse to be identified as
authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

© 2008 Graham Jones and Adrian Moorhouse

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 13: 978-1-84803-308-5

First edition 2007
Second edition 2008
First published in electronic form 2008

Cover design by Mousemat Design
Produced for How To Books by Deer Park Productions, Tavistock
Typeset by Pantek Arts Ltd, Maidstone

NOTE: The material contained in this book is set out in good faith
for general guidance and no liability can be accepted
for loss or expense incurred as a result of relying in particular
circumstances on statements made in the book. The laws and
regulations are complex and liable to change, and readers should
check the current position with the relevant authorited before making
personal arrangements.
Contents
List of Illustrations viii
About the authors ix
Aknowledgements xi
1 Introduction 1
Adrian’s story 2
Graham’s story 5
Content and layout of the book 8
2 Why Mental Toughness Is Important 11
What is so pressured about sport and business? 12
The pressures on leaders 17
Business pressures 19
What is pressure? 21
Do only the tough survive? 24
In a nutshell 28
3 What Mental Toughness Is 29
‘I need to be mentally tough, but what is it’? 29
What mental toughness is not 31
What mental toughness is 34
ChrisAndyScottEmma Studies 39
In a nutshell 40
4 Keeping Your Head Under Stress 41
Stress: the dark side of pressure 41
What do you do with your stress? 44
Stress: what is it and what are its effects? 46
Stress: how to control it and keep your head 54
Controlling the effects of stress: symptom-focused strategies 55
Challenging the thinking that causes you stress: appraisal-focused
strategies 59
Tackling the situations and circumstances that cause you stress:
situation-focused strategies 67
DEVELOPING MENTAL TOUGHNESS
ChrisAndyScottEmma Studies 76
In a nutshell 76
What next? 78
5 Staying Strong In Your Self-Belief 79
What does self-belief look and sound like? 80
What is self-belief? 82
Developing self-esteem 84
Developing self-confidence 97
ChrisAndyScottEmma Studies 106
In a nutshell 108
What next? 108
6 Making Your Motivation Work for You 109
How far are you prepared to go to achieve your ambitions? 109
So what’s next? 110
Some key questions about motivation 112
Acloser look at internal and external motivation 121
So what is optimal motivation? 129
Self-determining your motivation through setting goals 131
ChrisAndyScottEmma Studies 139
In a nutshell 141
What next? 142
7 Maintaining Your Focus on the Things that Matter 143
Are you focused on your focus? 144
Focus and mental toughness 148
Switching focus 162
ChrisAndyScottEmma Studies 168
In a nutshell 170
What next? 170
8 Frequently-Asked Questions About Mental Toughness 171
What difference will it reallymake if I improve my mental toughness? 172
Can you betoomentally tough? 173
Just how easy is it to develop mental toughness? 174
What about mental toughness in teams? 175
How is mental toughness different from emotional intelligence? 177
In a nutshell 179
Wrap-up 179
vi
CONTENTS
Appendix A Meditative Relaxation 181
Appendix B Imagery-Based Relaxation 185
Appendix C Progressive Muscular Relaxation (PMR) 186
Appendix D Abdominal Breathing 190
Index 191
vii
List of illustrations
2.1 No hiding place for leaders 17
2.2 Where does pressure come from? 22
3.1 The four pillars of mental toughness 35
4.1 The two faces of pressure 42
4.2 The stress process 46
4.3 Stress and coping strategies 54
4.4 Phoebe‘s thoughts, emotions and behaviours in the Parent, Adult and
Child states 65
4.5 Peter’s demands, supports and constraints 72
4.6 Freya’s demands, supports and constraints 73
5.1 The relationship between self-esteem and self-confidence 83
5.2 How do you attribute success and failure? 86
5.3 Liz’s and Evie’s initial list of achievements 89
5.4 Liz’s and Evie’s deeper reflections on their achievements 90
5.5(a) What Liz’s tangible achievements provide evidence of and what her
non-tangible achievements are underpinned by 91
5.5(b) What Evie’s tangible achievements provide evidence of and what her
non-tangible achievements are underpinned by 92
6.1 To what extent do you determine your motivation and behaviour? 126
6.2 Aligning outcome, performance and process goals 136
6.3 Aligning outcome, performance and process goals: an example 137
7.1 Gaining control over your thoughts 149
7.2 Focusing on making the perfect pass 164
7.3 Focusing on making a great presentation 165
8.1 The key steps to developing mental toughness 175
About the Authors
Professor Graham Jones is a founding Director of Lane4 Management
Group Ltd. He was formerly a Reader in Sport Psychology at
Loughborough University for 11 years before becoming Professor of Elite
Performance Psychology at the University of Wales, Bangor. He has over
100 publications in the area of high level performance, including books
on stress and performance and the psychology of elite performance and a
recent article in Harvard Business Review. He is also a former Editor of the
international journal, The Sport Psychologist. Graham is a Chartered
Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and a Registered
Sport Psychologist with the British Olympic Association. His applied
work includes consulting with numerous elite performers, including
World Champions and Olympic medal winners, professional golfers on
the European Tour, the 1996 GB Olympic team, the Wales rugby union
team, the British Bobsleigh Association, the Great Britain hockey team
and the Royal Marines. He has also worked with individual world-
ranked performers from a variety of sports, including squash,
swimming, football, judo, ice skating, track and field athletics, rugby
league, motor racing, cricket, snooker and trampolining. Graham’s expe-
rience of working with business executives spans over ten years, and
includes working closely with company boards as well as on large scale
initiatives around culture change, mergers and global roll-outs of people
development programmes. Some of the organisations he has worked
with include Ericsson, Fujitsu, Coca-Cola Enterprises, The Coca Cola
Company, Safeway, Lloyds TSB, Bourne Leisure, JP Morgan, HSBC,
Deutsche Bank, Roche Pharmaceuticals, Daimler Chrysler, CRH,
Woolworths, Capita Symonds, 3M, the UK Atomic Energy Authority,
Sainsburys, easyJet, Accenture, Invesco, Dyson, St. Mary’s Hospital,
Paddington, Merrill Lynch, UBS, National Grid, Honda, Linklaters and
Goldman Sachs.
Adrian Moorhouse MBE retired in 1992 from a career unparalleled in
British swimming, with twelve years at international level highlighted by
an Olympic gold medal at the Seoul Olympic Games and sustaining his
World Number One ranking for 6 years. Adrian was also the European
ix