Bite Size: The Two Steps That Stop a Player Throwing a Punch | Gilbert Enoka

0:00Welcome to Performance Intelligence, the show that unlocks potential for everyday life. Picture the moment something happens that makes you furious. A decision you disagree with, a comment that lands wrong, or a call that goes against you. In that second, no amount of positive thinking is going to talk you down. One of Gilbert and Okas players told him exactly that. From the field, when a referee made a call that he absolutely disagreed with, he felt furious. He felt like throwing a punch and telling him in that moment to shift his mindset wasn't going to stop him. Gilbert spent 23 years as the all-black mental skills coach across 304 test matches. And he's back there all over again. Instead of arguing with the player, Gilbert gave him something physical to do instead and the player's own frustration rating dropped almost instantly. It's the example Gilbert now uses to explain why he thinks structure beats mindset every time the motion is running hard.

1:03What that structure is and why it works in seconds is what he shares in this episode. Let's get into it. We're going to open up to the audience. We've got a couple of roving mics. I think we'll do this in the old school format, yet your hand has gone up. Even before I said to politely put your hand up, so you can ask first question. Can you tell us your name and then ask the question? Sure. My name's Lou. I now want to read your book, so thank you very much. I'm an executive coach. Is it good that you didn't say my name's Lou and I don't want to read your book? So I'm a clinical psychologist and executive coach and I'm loving hearing a lot about vulnerability and so forth. I'm wondering, and I also specialize in acceptance and commitment therapy or training. I'm not sure if that's something that you've come across. I'm wondering about how you actually work around emotions that might show up even during the match or just before. So whether it is kind of like an acceptance base willingness or whether it's kind of just doing breathing exercise, I'm really curious what you do around that.

2:05Yeah, look, there's no script in Ali's sport. That's what I've found. You know, like it's just self-awareness. You can read as many boxes you like. You can listen to as many podcasts as you like and all this, but if you can't read yourself, then it's an issue. And you'll find in the book as I talk about and I call it a performance triangle sort of, we have your mindset, your skill set, and your structure. You know, you have the three parts. And when things go really well, there's alignment between those three. What I found is that one of those, though, is a superpower. When I'm working with an athlete, I, and something's not going right and I often say, there's a mindset issue, skill set issue, or a structure issue. And it helps me navigate their way. But I found one of them to be a superpower, more important than all the others. Who thinks it's skill set, but you hand up? Wow. This is the same. Who thinks it's mindset, but you hand up?

3:07It's a full most of the hands. Who thinks it's structure? There's two. I found it's structure. That structure is because everyone comes into the all blacks and they, nothing wrong with their mindset, they want to be 100 test all black, they want to be there, 10 years, they want to be great. And that becomes a real focus for them. And their skill sets are awesome. They can do wonderful things, but when things break down, it's because they can't manage the competing demands that enable them to execute either in the moment or the bigger picture. Rehab, rehab, analysis, maintain my relationships to all these sort of things. So like that game of Jenga, where you pull pieces of wood out of the Jenga and you pick one or two in it wobbles, all of a sudden you do three. And I was speaking to a young one of the players and he said, that's bullshit, he says, I'm on the field. And the referee makes a decision that I don't agree with. And I want to punch him in the head. And as I shift my mindset, I'm in trouble. And I says, correct.

4:09And he says, I said on a scale of zero to 10, where are you in terms of frustration? And he said, I'm going to live on out of 10. And I said, what about if you're on the field and the referee makes a decision you don't agree with, which is going to happen more often than not? What if you take two paces away from where you are? One, two. And then basically when you're there, ask the first person, what are you seeing? What are you seeing? Listen to the response, repeat one back, take a breath, then come back and connect with the next moment. And he said, I'll try it. So he tried it and I said, how did it go? He said, it went from 11 out of 10 to a six or seven out of 10. Hadn't taken it away. What have we given him? Structure. Once we understand that we can shift mindsets by giving people structure, but if you keep going through the mindset window, you'll keep hitting a brick wall. So coming back to your question, so what we tend to do is when you get things that happen that may emerge like the emotional challenges, what's the structure you have to deal with

5:09it. And sometimes you need a structure for when you haven't got a structure. And that's how you, I'm not sure whether I'm totally right, but boy, I've helped more people than I haven't by driving down that path. And that's why I call it in the book, the lethal cocktail. And the land of high performance structure is king. And every king needs a queen and its queen is disciplined. And with those two things, you navigate your way through most things in life. Long way to answer your question, but. Hi, this is Angela Poon. And at Performance Intelligence, we embed simple science-backed habits that burst physical and psychological wellbeing, improve engagement and create lasting cultural change. Over the past four years, we've partnered with the Australian Defence Force on a social mastery program that has reached over 7,000 staff across the country. This program has included engaging half-day masterclasses, quarterly webinars, and all powered

6:13by a digital platform, PQ Academy. 94% of participants indicated an improvement in their physical and psychological wellbeing, and 78% felt more connected to their leadership team. Just listen to Commander Dean Thompson, commanding officer at HMAS Harmon for his feedback on the program. This is a fantastic program. How do we propagate this out and get maximum reach? Because regardless of whether you're a public servant, you're in the Army, Air Force, Navy, non-service group, the joint domain, cyber space, there's something there for everyone. And so that was the idea around what the program looks like now, so the integrated mindset, social mastery journey with the masterclasses being held at AdFa, and then supported by the social mastery program, which is the online component across four weeks. If you'd like to talk about how we can tailor a program to achieve similar results for your team, visit performanceintelligence.com to book a complimentary strategy session.

7:19I just ran out one other thing. What's different between working in a clinical setting, which is often one on one or maybe one to small groups, in a squad you have up to 36 or 38 players. So sometimes you'll have a player, it's got to be a mindfulness-based technique or something that is very quick and sharp. Right through to you might have seen your players at Gilbert talks about that have understood purpose and values and really connected and you can get deeper. It's like having a toolkit and then you pull out and you've got five, six different hammers, you don't always hit the same now with the same hammer. That's what someone very skilled like Gilbert does, is the right conversation with the right person at the right time. Yeah, but I mean, I've checked that too because there's a lot of times people come to me and I say, I don't know. I don't know. But I say, give me some time to think. That honestly has been really good and then we talk to people and somebody has the first or, you know, most coaches came to me and come into my room and they quite often say,

8:19we were gone with this bit and I say, I don't know, but I know I'm eating in the right direction. And they learned to understand and accept that. So just being honest and boy, I tell you there's a lot of times I didn't know but once I sat and reflected, I found the first step, you know, that we could take. Hi again, it's Andrew and I hope you really enjoyed that episode. We would appreciate if you helped to amplify the performance intelligence podcast by sharing episodes with your friends and with your colleagues by going to iTunes and leaving a rating and review. This really does help get the message out to a wider audience and I love reading the comments as well. If you'd like to know more about booking me as a speaker at your next annual conference or company off site or purchasing one of the books I've written, including Matt's Fit, or if you'd just like to receive my monthly e newsletter, the performance pots that has stacks of information specific to all things human performance, go to performanceintelligence.com

9:19and we'll see you on the next edition of Performance Intelligence.