When Under Pressure, Reduce The Stakes Of Failure

Understanding the burden of status requires understanding what creates pressure.

Dane Jensen, author of the book “The Power of Pressure” has, for the past three years, conducted research into pressure with hundreds of high performers in sports, business, medicine, and the ...

In short, players who have the skill but not yet the status that comes with winning a major award performed far better than those who had both the skill and the status. Status, it turns out, can be a burden.

So, if you’re the coach, you want your superstars taking these shots, right? Not necessarily. Researcher Geir Jordet studied 366 kicks from 37 penalty shootouts held at the world’s largest soccer tournaments. His counterintuitive

Following her decision to withdraw from the Olympics’ team final in gymnastics, Simone Biles laid bare exactly how high the stakes were for her: “We hope America still loves us,”

As success and visibility accumulate, the stakes in high pressure situations expand from tangible things like medals or compensation and begin to encompass existential things like identity and self-worth. Leading or coaching highly successful performers t...

When Norwegian speed-skater Johann Koss found himself overwhelmed by pressure in the lead-up to his first Olympic Games in 1994, his sports psychologist did just that. The psychologist methodically worked through with him all of what wasn’t at stake: his future career as a doctor, Norway...

If something is hurting performance, is detached from growth, and is not linked to regret, it’s a source of pressure that likely should be eliminated or redirected from your stars to other team members.

Few of us will ever know the pressure of carrying the expectat...

Even the greatest performers feel pressure more than you might think. Consider the penalty kick in soccer. The stakes for each shot are immense, and players are expected to score; a miss is considered a failure. Beyond losing the game, players who miss high-profile shots often fa...

Jensen has found that pressure is a function of three things:

1. The importance of a situation’s outcome
2. The uncertainty of the outcome
3. The volume of tasks, decisions, and distractions su...

On May 26, 2021, tennis phenom Naomi Osaka

As you work through the stakes with someone, play the role of challenger. For example, at a key moment Koss’ sport psychologist asked, “Do you think the Norwegian people care whether you or another Norwegian win a medal?” This push caused Johann to admit that, no, the Norwegian p...

• Is this helping or hurting mperformance on what matters most? This is the key filter for sources of pressure that are ancillary to the core matter at hand (like winning a tennis tournament).
• Will this help you grow in a way that matters ...

It is generally accepted that success breeds confidence, and confidence increases the ability to handle pressure. And yet, as the experiences of Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka have shown this year, the story is not so simple. While success can indeed breed confidence, it ca...