198: Shift Your Mind – How to Elevate Your Preparation and Performance with Brian Levenson on the TalentGrow Show with Halelly Azulay

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Ep198 Brian Levenson shift your mind how to elevate your preparation and performance TalentGrow Show with Halelly Azulay

We have two different but complementary mindsets, according to Brian Levenson--- one for preparing effectively, and one for performing. Brian is the author of Shift Your Mind and the founder of Strong Skills, an organization that provides coaching, speaking, and consulting to elite organizations, performers, and leaders.

We have two different but complementary mindsets, according to Brian Levenson--- one for preparing effectively, and one for performing. Brian is the author of Shift Your Mind and the founder of Strong Skills, an organization that provides coaching, speaking, and consulting to elite organizations, performers, and leaders. On this episode of The TalentGrow Show, Brian joins me to discuss nine mental shifts that will allow you to thrive in preparation and in performance. Discover why we don’t have to be -- and in fact shouldn’t be -- the same person in preparation and in performance, why authenticity is “elastic, not rigid,” and what strategies you can use to develop your two complementary mindsets and achieve maximum results. Brian shares actionable tips you won’t want to miss, including what he calls “having a grandma in your back pocket,” so be sure to tune in and share this episode with others!

ABOUT BRIAN:

Brian Levenson is the founder of Strong Skills, which provides executive coaching and mental performance coaching, speaking and consulting to elite organizations, performers and leaders. He has been fortunate to work with CEO’s, professional athletes and with teams in the NBA, NHL, and MLS, Division 1 athletic departments, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Homeland Security, Hilton, Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and many other organizations. He also has a weekly podcast, Intentional Performers, where he interviews a diverse group of elite high performers. His new book, Shift Your Mind, was published in October 2020. Brian currently lives in Bethesda, MD, with his wife and two kids.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

  • Halelly shares an exciting personal announcement-- you heard it here first! (7:08)

  • In his new book Shift Your Mind, Brian writes: “Authenticity is elastic, not rigid.” What does this mean? Why does Brian say that we don’t have to -- and in fact shouldn’t -- be the same person in preparation and in performance? (9:21)

  • Halelly shares a brief overview of the nine mental shifts in Brian’s framework, and Brian follows up with a discussion of two of the pairs: ‘discomfort and comfort,’ and ‘selfish and selfless’ (13:16)

  • Taking the ‘humble and arrogant’ pair as an example, Brian and Halelly discuss exercises and examples that will help you shift your mindset (20:22)

  • “Having a grandma in your back pocket”-- a useful tip to help you practice your performance mind! (24:18)

  • Other strategies to develop your performance mind-- and why it seems many leaders tend to focus on developing their performance mind over their preparation mind (25:06)

  • What’s new and exciting on Brian’s horizon? (27:54)

  • One specific action you can take to upgrade your leadership effectiveness (30:30)

RESOURCES:

Episode 198 Brian Levenson

TEASER CLIP: I might miss my first five shots and logic would tell me that I’m having an off day or I’m not going to make the next one. But if you really listen to lead performers, they believe that the next one is going in, and they believe that they’re absolutely the best person to make that shot or shoot that next shot. So to me, arrogance isn’t necessarily external. It’s not flexing your muscles or even like Muhammad Ali saying, “I’m the greatest,” or Kanye West saying, “I’m the greatest.” It can show up that way, but it also can show up in a much more inner world. So it’s just an exaggerated belief in yourself. I think that people who change the world often have an exaggerated belief that they can, when the world often suggests that they can’t or they’re getting feedback that they can’t. I think a lot of people get stuck in their humility when they’re performing and they think of all the reasons why they can’t do something or all their weaknesses, and in those moments they really need to dream big, exaggerate, be unwavering in their belief, and go back to that humble preparation that they have cultivated to remind themselves that they’re ready to roll.

[MUSIC] Welcome to the TalentGrow Show, where you can get actionable results-oriented insight and advice on how to take your leadership, communication and people skills to the next level and become the kind of leader people want to follow. And now, your host and leadership development strategist, Halelly Azulay.

TalentGrowers, welcome back to another episode of the TalentGrow Show. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist here at TalentGrow, the company that I founded in 2006 to develop leaders that people actually want to follow. And this week we have another juicy, full, interesting episode for you. I can’t wait for you to hear my new friend Brian Levenson, who is going to talk to us about how you can leverage insights that he has gained from the world of coaching elite performance in sports and as he does also in the world of executive coaching and working with corporations and corporate leaders. We talk about this idea where you need to have a variety of mindsets and skills that you need to be able to shift into and out of, very similar to the concept of polarities that I discussed with Laura Mendalow on a previous episode. He’s going to help you see things like humility and arrogance both have a place in your leadership toolbox. We’ll also talk about this concept of being selfless or selfish as well as how to move in and out of comfort and discomfort. He gives us some stories, some examples, and of course actionable tips as we always have here on the TalentGrow Show. So I hope you enjoy this episode and if you’re listening to this episode when it first is published, then join me in congratulating Brian on the publication of his new book, Shift Your Mind, which was published just last week. I hope that you grab a copy of it. It’s really great and I’ll link to that in the show notes as well.

Let’s listen in to my conversation with Brian Levenson.

Hey there TalentGrowers. So glad to be back with Brian Levenson. He’s the founder of Strong Skills, which provides executive coaching and mental performance coaching, speaking and consulting, to elite organizations, performers and leaders. He’s worked with CEOs, professional athletes and with teams in the NBA, NHL and MLS, Division I athletic departments, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Homeland Security, Hilton, Young Presidents organization and many other organizations. He also has an excellent weekly podcast, Intentional Performers. I hope you’ll go check it out. In fact, I was a guest on his podcast where he interviews a diverse group of elite, high performers. I’m nice to be in that category. His new book, exciting new book, is called Shift Your Mind. It is scheduled to be released when this podcast is released in October of 2020, and I will link to it in the show notes of course. Brian lives in my old stomping ground in Montgomery County, Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife and two kids. Brian, welcome to the TalentGrow Show.

Halelly, it’s always weird hearing your bio but I appreciate you having me and you were a great guest on my podcast so hopefully I can live up to your expectations and standards and we can have some fun today.

Thank you. It’s great to have you on. By the way, I don’t know if it’s obvious to people, but I don’t to these sort of tit-for-tat. If I’m a guest on your podcast, then I’ll be a guest on your podcast. It doesn’t work that way. I think that every person should identify guests that align with their purpose and that provide value directly to their audience and that’s not necessarily always the case, but in our case, and with your new book, it is a no-brainer. I’m very glad that you’ll be sharing with us today. Before we get into and dig into what you’ve written, I think that the TalentGrowers are going to love learning from you, I always ask my guests to introduce themselves briefly. Tell us about your professional journey. Where did you start and how did you end up where you are today?

I was a lost, wondering soul out of college. I majored in sociology. I minored in African American studies and political studies and that basically means that when you graduate, you should go back to school I guess. It’s not the type of major or minors that people are wanting to hire you out of college. So I was wandering. I got rejected from a couple of job opportunities that just left me in sales. I liked working in sales and was pretty good at it, but I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for a living. I met with a woman named Julie Elion and Julie worked in sports psychology for a living and worked with some of the top athletes in the world. Publicly she worked with Phil Mickelson, who is one of the best golfers in the last 30 years. Julie and I had this amazing conversation. She told me about sports psychology. At the time I thought, “I could work in sports and work in psychology? So that means I can help people.” I love sports so it was an easy decision to go to grad school and study sports psychology. Then I moved back to Washington, D.C., after grad school and worked alongside Julie for a little bit and then broke off on my own. Then along the way, started to work with people outside of sports as well. I started to get phone calls from people who were either former athletes or played golf or tennis and they said, “Hey, Brian, I think of myself as a head coach in sports or as a star athlete in my business,” and so I started doing executive coaching and then went back to school for that. Today, about half of my business is working with executives and companies and the other half is working with athletes and sports teams. I live at that intersection and I’m really fortunate to love what I do every single day.

I think that this would be a lot of people’s dream career. Wow. The two things that you love and you can merge them together and is that real? Can you actually get paid for that? Sounds cool. I would admit that I’m not a sports fanatic of any kind. I actually never got into playing any sports or watching any sports, so a lot of times when people use sports metaphors and sports stories I know it hooks the people that are into that, but it never does hook me. If I didn’t know you – actually my brother introduced us which was a funny story in and of itself – I probably wouldn’t be like, “Oh, I’d love to read a book where there’s a lot of stories about athletes. But, I know for a fact that this is something for so many people is so intensely meaningful and I appreciate athletes very much. Now I’m sort of an athlete because in my late 30s I started doing CrossFit and I started competing in my 40s and I’m actually planning to be in a major competition when I turn 50 at the end of this year – we’ll see if corona does allow me to do that, but that’s a different story!

Halelly, what major competition? You can’t leave us with that, what’s the competition?

Because I have not announced this yet to the world, and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this now with the slow down because the gym is closed, but I plan to be in a weightlifting competition.

How cool is that?

When I turn 50, I move into a new bracket where I’m the kid of the group and there’s not that many people that compete at age 50 in weightlifting, so I actually might … how much I can lift right now already qualifies for me for the state competition. I can already enter it as is. Is that funny?

I think it’s awesome. There’s a woman I talk about in the book who is out in your world, in L.A., Diana Nyad who is still competing in swimming, crazy races, but she swam from Cuba to Miami and she was in her 60s.

I remember the story, actually.

Just a beast of a woman. I think it’s cool that as you’re getting older you’re becoming more of an athlete and I’m finding as I get older I’m becoming less of an athlete. So you’re inspiring me and it’s cool to hear that.

It’s never too late. I only started at age 37. We’re not here to talk about me – he’s a podcast host, can you tell? He’s asking me questions! Okay, in your book which you’ve titled Shift Your Mind, I’m going to quote you. You say, “Authenticity is elastic, not rigid. What’s most important to recognize is that you don’t have to be the same person in preparation and performance and in fact you really shouldn’t be. The goal is to be intentional about the shift.” In the book, which we’ll link to in the show notes and I hope that everybody will get a copy, you make this distinction between these two mindsets and everything flows from there. Talk to us more about that. What are these two mindsets and why are they important to separate?

As you eluded to, my background started in sports. There’s a great book by a head football coach named Tom Coughlin, and it was called Earn the Right to Win. In that book, he said we need to be humble enough to prepare and confident enough to perform. That just struck me as I was working with elite athletes and so I went down this rabbit hole of having conversations with my clients about what their mindset was in preparation, what their mindset needed to be in performance, and the differences between the two. What I found and what I noticed was that we often say to our people, “Be humble,” or, “Don’t try to be perfect,” or, “Trust the process,” or, “Be comfortable with the uncomfortable.” We have these sayings that we use inside of sports and outside of sports that help us perform better or are supposed to. And as I started to dive deep with my clients, I realized that actually, there needs to be a shift that occurs from the mindset for preparation to mindset for performance. Back to authenticity and the quote that you mentioned, we are not one person. We carry multiple things within us and many of us are polarities and we have different sides to us. Hopefully none of us are humble all the time, just like none of us are arrogant all the time. But, we need to be humble in preparation and we need to step into our arrogance in performance.

I had like 30 of these shifts that I had discovered with my clients, working with them on it, and I drilled it down to nine and then nine are really in place. Not to say that you have to be all nine of these, but these were the nine we really wanted to focus on for the book, because they were the most clean, clear, lack of redundancy in them, and those were the ones we focused on. Arrogance, for example, people think of as a negative word, but I sort of define it as meeting an unwavering, even exaggerated belief, that you are the absolute best person for the job in that moment. As leaders, we often need to have this inner arrogance sometimes to make really hard decisions. I’m sure the listeners know, if you are arrogant in performance but you actually didn’t humbly prepare, that can be a recipe for disaster. So the book not only believes – and I believe – that the preparation mind can fuel the performance mind, but we also need to leverage both of these shifts at different times. So I really believe that greatness is about when, and understanding when you need to be one way and when you need to be another way. Both of those can be your authentic self. That’s why I believe it’s elastic.

I like that. It’s an interesting distinction, because I know that a lot of people do struggle with this idea of authenticity, because it comes up so much. How do I be true to myself? And especially if you have to step outside your comfort zone and to learn anything and to get better at anything, you’re already outside of your authentic self, in a sense that you’re doing something that is not your modus operandi. That’s not how you typically do things. You’re doing something new, so it feels inauthentic, and a lot of times people recoil from that. So for you to distinguish these mindsets and for people to recognize that you’re still being you, you’re just being the you that’s needed in that moment, it allows you so much more room for flexibility. By the way, we talked about polarity thinking with Laura Mendalow on episode 73, so that will be a nice pairing with this one, that you can check out next.

You mentioned that you have nine different kind of mindset shifts in the book. By the way, so many stories. It’s so well researched and you have personal stories, you have stories about athletes and leaders and they really help to breathe life into the distinctions and teachings you are sharing. In the book, you have humble and arrogant, which you mentioned. Another one of these sort of mindset shifts between preparation and performance is work and play. A third one is perfectionistic versus adaptable, analysis and instinct, experimenting and trusting process, uncomfortable and comfortable, future and present, fear and fearlessness and then selfish and selfless, which TalentGrowers, if you’ve listened to my show for a while now you know that that’s a topic that comes up a lot too. I wonder if it’ll come up today. But I know we can’t unfortunately cover them all in our half hour show here, so which one should we dig in a little bit more that you think leaders really struggle with a lot?

We’re going to go into selfish and selfless in a minute, but before we do, you mentioned discomfort earlier, so I’ll just give a shout out to discomfort. With discomfort often comes growth. Preparation is all about growth. It’s all about learning. It’s all about getting better. It’s a process to really make yourself ready and competent so that when you’re in the arena and you’re performing, you can be comfortable. You mentioned discomfort, so I think it’s an important one and for weightlifters, you have to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. But when you do get that opportunity to go perform and you’re going to be competing, that’s going to be much more about execution. It’s going to be about getting yourself into a routine, a pre-performance routine, that gets you as comfortable as possible. If you study elite performance, you’ll see this polarity that exists between discomfort and comfort, and I think it’ll probably be helpful for you and your listeners. Same thing for a leader. Uncomfortable before you have a big meeting. Go over everything. Then when you step into the meeting room you need to step into comfort and get yourself as comfortable as possible.

Selfish and selfless though is one that we actually talked about when I had you on my podcast and I thought you were really enlightening and you have sent me more content to think about selfishness as maybe not a bad thing. When I was writing the book I sort of had this same instinct or the same thought. So for me, I see selfish as an opportunity to be almost self-full, like how can I fulfill myself and how can I do everything I need to do to prepare, so that when I am performing I can serve other people? For leaders, we talk about servant leadership and you actually called me on servant leadership and we made a distinction between servant versus service, and this idea of a win-win and how do you create a win-win for people? I believe that preparation, if you’re not doing all of those little things to take care of yourself, you’re not going to be in a place to ever be able to serve others and be selfless and I love the analogy of fill your cup up and then give the reserves and the overflow to your people.

I think high performance is the same way. Let’s just use a college athlete for example. They have to make decisions between whether they go out at night and party, what they eat, how much they sleep, whether they want to get extra reps in. They need to make selfish decisions to get to where they want to go. But when they are competing and it’s time to execute, I think really being in service to something bigger than yourself or your team is a really great way to go and someone might be thinking, “How am I going to be arrogant in performance and selfless?” I really think that’s what the best performers do. They have this unshakeable belief in themselves. It’s unwavering, it’s exaggerated and they are instilling that same sense of self with their team. Sort of instilling this confidence in their people by being selfless.

Yeah. This is why I reject the word selfless and altruism – we’re not going to get into this too much here, but I’ll link to a couple of other shows that I did about this topic. The idea, because it causes people confusion right? It makes you feel like it’s oxymoronic or it makes you feel like you’re not genuine, because how can you possibly serve yourself and serve others if you’re supposed to believe that selflessness means you take yourself out of the equation? Which is why I was so glad to see in your book and in talking to you, I can see that you understand that that’s impossible and it’s unnecessary. Because why should there be a distinction between being good to yourself while also thinking of others and being benevolent to others? You can be both. And you should be both. Why not? As a leader, taking care of yourself and preparing and finding a way to move yourself into new skills and believing in yourself when you’re serving others, your purpose is the success of the team. Your purpose is the success of the organization. So it’s beyond yourself. But you’re a part of that. You benefit from it. So that’s where that win-win comes in. You don’t remove yourself from the equation of benefiting. Everyone is lifted with high performance. Everyone benefits from you focusing on supporting your team and developing them. You’re not negating your own interests by doing that. If you don’t think about yourself when you’re serving your team, you’re not negating your interests by doing so, if that makes sense?

Yeah, and I think it also has to do with focus and a discipline. For me, when I wrote that chapter or what we call a shift, that shift is all about, “Hey, when I’m preparing, I need to make sure I do everything I need to do to make sure that when I am in a place to be a part of something bigger than myself, I’m ready to step into that roll.” So I think whether it’s the military or I’m in a band or I’m in a leadership team or sales team, at some point, we do need to work with others and collaborate with others and if we haven’t selfishly prepared, they’re going to know and they’re going to look at us in the eye and they’re not going to trust us. That is a recipe for disaster amongst a team or a band or a Broadway show or whatever you want, whatever area or arena you want to step into. I think that they actually work really nicely together and once again, I think we can hold two things to be truthful. I’m glad you brought up polarity thinking and have done some work there, because for me, when I learned about polarity thinking, it was actually after I started this book and I was kind of blow away that exists. I think it’s just a really nice compliment to the concept of the book. I’m a big fan of it and look forward to continuing to do a deeper dive into polarities.

I should introduce you to Laura, then. In your book you have a lot of exercises and suggestions for activities and things that you can do to make this actionable, because I think that it sounds like even if TalentGrowers are connecting with what you’re saying on an intellectual level, it sounds a little bit theoretical and woo-woo. How do I do that? For example, humble and arrogant. What’s a way to make that shift or how do you help yourself leverage that, practically?

I’ll just step into that one. I call it weakness, where that’s really humble preparation. What are my weaknesses. We all know about the strength movement, strength finder, focus on your strengths. I think there’s tremendous value in that and there is tremendous value in acknowledging what your weaknesses are. So weakness work, I talk about it in the book, there’s a really simple exercise that is, hey, what is my first weakness, and what are solutions to work on that? I think that’s really important. Whereas, in performance, maybe I leverage affirmations. “I am” statements and use our self thought to remind ourselves who we are and sort of define what we bring to a performance. So you could say, “I’m arrogant, focused and intelligent,” or you could use the shifts that we talk about in the book. You could go into, “I’m present, I play and I’m arrogant in performance.” I think affirmations are a great way to bring out your inner arrogance.

Okay. How do you define arrogant? What does that mean?

To me it’s this unwavering believe that you have in yourself and it’s unshakeable. Once again, I come from sports, so in sports, you fail all the time in real time. Let’s just use a basketball player as an example. I might miss my first five shots and logic would tell me that I’m having an off day or I’m not going to make the next one. But if you really listen to lead performers, they believe that the next one is going in, and they believe that they’re absolutely the best person to make that shot or shoot that next shot. So to me, arrogance isn’t necessarily external. It’s not flexing your muscles or even like Muhammad Ali saying, “I’m the greatest,” or Kanye West saying, “I’m the greatest.” It can show up that way, but it also can show up in a much more inner world. So it’s just an exaggerated belief in yourself. I think that people who change the world often have an exaggerated belief that they can, when the world often suggests that they can’t or they’re getting feedback that they can’t. I think a lot of people get stuck in their humility when they’re performing and they think of all the reasons why they can’t do something or all their weaknesses, and in those moments they really need to dream big, exaggerate, be unwavering in their belief, and go back to that humble preparation that they have cultivated to remind themselves that they’re ready to roll.

It is really hard to shift between those. I see that in myself. I’m thinking about examples of people that I know, so you have to practice it, it sounds like. The way to learn, for example, if you’re naturally more humble or self-deprecating or finding fault with what you’re doing or looking for things to fix, then the way to move into arrogance, you’re saying, is that self-talk, those affirmations, to help you hear yourself say that? Is that the best way?

It’s one way. I’m always hesitant to say it’s the best way. I think there are lots of ways you can visualize yourself before a performance and see yourself getting ready to perform. You can, I mean, self-talk is certainly a great space to start at, and I would also jump into this idea that it’s hard for everybody. I see a lot of near-elite performers who prepare, prepare, prepare, and they’ve done everything they can to get themselves to where they want to be, but they haven’t necessarily practiced that performance mindset enough. If you think about our society, we often over-index on preparation. We often spend more time preparing than we actually do performing. So what does that mean to step into the performance mind? As you said, it’s practicing. So I make a distinction between practice and preparation. Actually great practice involves both preparation mind and the performance mind. Practicing the performance mind, for example, let’s just use the arrogant one, is I call it having a grandma in your back pocket. Having somebody in your environment that is a cheerleader. For me, my grandma who passed away many years ago, used to come to my soccer games and would say, “Go Brian! You’re the best!” I could have been awful that day, but I come off the field and she tells me, “You’re the greatest.” So surrounding yourself with people that can help you bring out that exaggerated sense of self, making sure that you’re thinking about who you’re putting yourself around, whether that’s your spouse or your friends, if you surround yourself with people who are reminding you of that and then you go back to that dialogue you have with yourself – are you saying that to yourself as well? I think practicing the performance mind is really important.

Other types of strategies would be Amy Cuddy’s Ted Talk on power posing and her book Presence, certainly with body language, we can try to bring out our performance mind and our power and our strength or our arrogance, so being cognizant and aware of how we’re showing up from a body language standpoint. I’ve had clients create highlight reels that they’ll watch to see themselves performing at their best, so once again, I think practicing the performance mind and practicing the preparation mind is a great way to go. What I find is a lot of the clients I work with actually are pretty good on that preparation mind, and where they often struggle is actually bringing out their performance mind.

That’s very interesting. I wonder, sometimes it might sort of be by definition if they’re seeking you out, then that’s probably why they are the kind that are more struggling with performance, right? I don’t know. Just an assumption that there’s a correlation.

I think there’s two pieces. I think yes and no, so yes, I think it takes someone to have the preparation mind in order to seek help. They want to get better, they want to learn, they want to grow. I’m sure people that listen to this podcast are pretty good on the preparation mind. There are elements they could maybe work on and I’ve seen that happen. I will say that the clients I work with, typically, are performing at a very, very high level and they’re just trying to get a little bit better. So I’ve worked with some elite performers and there are a lot of them that are in great shape and they just are trying to continue to sharpen their ax. Then when I really studied a lot of the elite of the elite, the tip of the arrow, sort of edge of the envelope type of performers, those people really mix both of these. They practice and they focus on both the practice and the performance mind.

You’re right. Thank you for that. I was making an assumption, but you’re right. I can also see how of course it’s like anything else in life, there’s this balance and every one of us may have an imbalance where we focus on one or do one better than the other. Knowing how to learn both of these and practice both of these kinds of mindsets – and then shifting – allows us to be our best in both modes. You know, I just want to mention also of course there are people that have too much arrogance, right? And need to learn more humility. I had Bill Treasurer on the show, episode 118, where he talks about the leadership killer, he calls it, which is hubris – being overly arrogant. It’s this balance and practicing the shift. Cool, very interesting. Well, we are quickly running out of time and this is so fascinating. I’m glad that we had a chance to get some of your insights and I know TalentGrowers are going to want to read your book and learn more from you. Before we get one specific actionable tip from you, what’s new and exciting for you on your horizon?

I’ll dive into that, but just to put an exclamation point on what you said, hubris is a disaster. Enron had hubris. Too much arrogance is awful and you over-index on anything and it’s a bad thing. And for me, what I notice is that typically lacked humble preparation and they didn’t take the time to go back and humbly prepare. When it’s time to execute, that’s where I think you really need to step into a healthy dose of arrogance, but as I said, a lot of the time, we’re not actually executing. A lot of the time we’re being strategic, especially as leaders. A lot of our work is in that preparation mode, but there does come a time whether you have to fire someone, lay them off, make a tough decision on what you need to do as a company and a lot of times that requires an unwavering belief that, “I’m the right person to do this job.” Arrogance is a hard one to do and you need a long amount of time and a lot of context and depth, because we’ve all seen the arrogant, egotistical leader that leads to the downfall of a company, and I think often their issue is that they didn’t humbly prepare. Those are some of my thoughts on that.

As far as new things, certainly the book which we’ve talked about. I’m super excited about it, my first book. Poured my heart and soul into it and that’s coming out October 6. I’ve got a new website, so strong skills which you mentioned at the beginning, StrongSkills.co, and I’ve put together a team of executive coaches, mental performance coaches and then we also do a lot of speaking and training and facilitation which I know you are passionate about as well. Our mission is really to change how the world thinks about the inner skills that human performance and human development is all about. Soft skills is a term that most people in our world are aware of and coming from sports, if you’re soft, it’s usually a negative. It’s usually a bad thing. They fire and they cut soft players from a cut. I always struggled with that term, especially compared to hard skills, which sounded more important to me. Strong skills is really on a mission to transform and change how organizations develop their people, think about their people and even the words we use which is one of the things I love about you – you’re very intentional about the words you choose and the words you use, and the meaning behind them, so we’re really out there trying to transform how organizations are developing people to really think about strong skills instead of soft skills. Really jazzed. You can probably hear my passion and energy about that. I’m pretty excited about that. Feel free to check out our website and see what we’re up to.

Cool. I like that. I didn’t know the backstory and I like it even more now. I like strength and the word strong and being strong, so awesome! What’s one specific action that TalentGrowers can take today, tomorrow, this week, to upgrade their own leadership skills or their performance skills, whichever lens you want to use for this tip?

Halelly, you said earlier that it’s hard to shift your mind. It’s hard to step into these different binaries or polarities. I think the first step is to create awareness around where you are a performer – maybe you’re a mom and you are raising two kids. When are you performing and when are you preparing? I know for me, as a parent – I’ve got two small kids at home – I’m really thoughtful about what messaging I’m giving to my kids and I screw up all the time and make mistakes. But it’s a performance. I need to be really thoughtful about what I’m saying to them and how I’m communicating to them when I’m with them and then there are all kinds of conversations I have with my wife outside of that to try to figure out how to be better and learn and grow in that regard. I think awareness is a really great place to think about when are you performing, when are you preparing? And from there, start to notice what works for you in preparation, what works for you in performance. There are some of the shifts that I write about in the book that don’t sit with you or don’t fit with your job or your craft or whatever you’re thinking about as a performer. It’s completely fine. I’m not here to say one size fits all. That’s not my modus operandi and it’s not how I operate, so just thinking about when are you preparing? When are you performing? And how are you showing up? And what do you look like when you’re at your best in both of those and when are you maybe bringing your preparation mind into the performance? When are you maybe bringing the performance mind into the preparation? And how can you create more intention and awareness around those? It’s just a great place to start.

I agree with you, awareness is the first step toward any kind of change and improvement. With this one, you’re asking people to learn, to distinguish modes that might be sort of instinctual or habitual or subconscious. What is a strategy that you give them for building this awareness? What is a thing they can do that specifically can help them get better awareness? Journaling or what?

I go to writing things down a lot. I had an executive client yesterday that I was working with and we were talking about exercising and when he’s exercising, what does his mindset need to be and what does his mindset need to be when he’s not and how can he use his preparation mind to get better at it? He’s somebody who is actually very good at the performance mind. He’s good at just playing and being present and being in the space. We started talking about maybe to take notes at times. Maybe you can journal and write your goals down. For him, learning how to shift those two minds is going to be big and actually for him, we’re working more on the preparation mind because he’s talented but given your podcast name, in order for him to grow, he needs to actually tap into that preparation mind and a lot of times that comes from reflecting, journaling, thinking about how you can do things better. So I’m a big fan of writing it down and sort of quantifying it and codifying it that way.

Okay, awesome. Thanks. You already shared your website which is a place I definitely encourage folks to go. We’ll link to your book. Any other places people should follow you to learn more from you and about you, on social media? Are you active? Where should they follow you?

Places I love to be on social are Twitter - @BrianLevenson and LinkedIn I’m @BrianLevenson again, so I always try post different content on both of those platforms, but once again, kind of the intersection for me. Twitter might be a little more sports-centric, and LinkedIn might be a little more corporate, but those are the places I love to be at and I’m very responsive on both of them.

Great. Well, listen Brian, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you. I think TalentGrowers are going to love learning from you and thanks for your time today.

Thank you so much for having me.

OUTRO There you have it, TalentGrowers, another episode of the TalentGrow Show is in the books and I hope that you enjoyed it. I would love to hear what you thought and I’m always open to your feedback, both in terms of what you thought about this particular episode as well as what you’d like to hear about in the future. And of course, I urge you to take action. Without action there is no change, so I hope that you will take Brian up on his suggestion and develop further self awareness about how you might be using your own mindset appropriately, where you can shift your mindset to leverage high performance tips from him to become an even better performer, and even better leader. And as a leader, your role is also as a coach to the people that are on your team, you can leverage everything we talked about here also into your own coaching role. So, that’s it for this episode of the TalentGrow Show. I hope that you’re staying in touch with me. I have a newsletter that I send out bi-weekly now and it’s free and we always have in there what’s upcoming on the podcast, some tips or learning opportunities from me and I make it short, brief, informal, fun and easy to consume and beneficial. So if you’re not already on there, go ahead and go to my website, TalentGrow.com/podcast and you can sign up there, plus you’ll get the downloadable PDF about “10 mistakes that leaders make and how to make them.” I look forward to staying in touch with you. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist here at TalentGrow and this is the TalentGrow Show. Thanks for listening. I really appreciate you and until the next time, make today great.

Thanks for listening to the TalentGrow Show, where we help you develop your talent to become the kind of leader that people want to follow. For more information, visit TalentGrow.com

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