Managing star performers in high-pressure situations

IT is generally accepted that success breeds confidence, and confidence increases the ability to handle pressure. And yet, the story is not so simple. While success can indeed boost confidence, it can also increase visibility, multiply expectations and raise pressure to unhealthy levels over time. When you are leading star performers, you need to recognize the double-edged nature of success and help your employees do two things: keep the stakes of failure in perspective and manage the volume of demands for their time.

The burden of status

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 face vitriolic abuse from the audience, as did three Black members of England’s soccer team after it lost to Italy in the European Championship in July.

So, if you’re the coach, you want your superstars taking these shots, right? Not necessarily. Geir Jordet, a researcher, studied 366 kicks from 37 penalty shootouts held at the world’s three largest soccer tournaments. His counterintuitive finding was that superstar players who had won major international awards (like FIFA’S Player of the Year) performed worse than those who had not received those accolades. The superstars scored only 65% of the time versus the 74% overall average. Even more striking, they scored far less than players who would later go on to win the same awards. These “future stars”’ scored 89% of the time.

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.

Understanding the burden of status requires understanding what creates pressure. Over the past three years, I’ve conducted research into pressure with hundreds of high performers in sports, business, medicine and the military, including conducting in-depth interviews. I found that pressure is a function of three things:

n The importance of a situation’s outcome;

n The uncertainty of the outcome;

n The volume of tasks, decisions and distractions surrounding the outcome.

All three are affected by success and status, but two are particularly acute: a ratcheting up of the importance attached to the outcome, and a dramatic rise in the volume of tasks, decisions and distractions facing the performer.

When under pressure, reduce the stakes of failure

AS success and visibility accumulate, the stakes in high pressure situations like a gymnastics competition or a big sales pitch expand from tangible things like medals or compensation and begin to encompass existential things like identity and selfworth. Leading or coaching highly successful performers through a high-pressure event requires reducing the overwhelming baggage these individuals attach to failure. You can start to accomplish this by asking your superstar one key question: What are the things that are the most important to you—that are integral to your being—and won’t change regardless of the outcome?

When Norwegian speedskater

Johann Koss found himself overwhelmed by pressure in the leadup 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’s overall success at the Olympics, and so on. It helped Koss regain his perspective and deliver three all-time great performances in which he won three gold medals and established three world records in three events.

As you work through the stakes with someone, play the role of challenger. For example, at a key moment Koss’s 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 people would be fine either way—their happiness wasn’t at stake. The cost of failure dropped.

Reduce the volume of ancillary demands

ON May 26, 2021, tennis phenom Naomi Osaka announced on Twitter that for the sake of her mental health she would not do any press interviews at the French Open tennis championship. After a tone-deaf response from the organizers, she pulled out of the tournament.

The volume of tasks and distractions that surround performances can dramatically increase pressure. And as success and status build, so too does volume. The requests for Osaka’s time at the French Open in 2021 were vastly greater than they were in 2016 during her first Grand Slam event. In response to the increase in volume, Osaka— like all of us—had two choices: accommodate more or eliminate the volume that was creating the most pressure. She chose the latter, which is exactly the right response to pressure that comes from volume.

As leaders, we can aim higher than the French Open organizers and hold more productive discussions with our stars to help them manage the volume they face. If your star subordinates are feeling overwhelmed, consider sitting down and looking at each of the items demanding their time and asking:

Is this helping or hurting performance on what matters most?

n

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 to you?

n

Growth gives meaning to pressure. Preserving the pressure that is helping move us forward is vital, even if it is uncomfortable.

Will eliminating a particular source of pressure lead to regret?

n

There are some sources of pressure that don’t help us grow and hurt performance but ultimately must be endured in order to stave off regret down the line (for example, filing your taxes on time, maintaining a good relationship with your son-in-law, and so on).

If something is hurting performance, detached from growth and 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 expectations of 300 million people into a physically and mentally demanding environment. But, through thoughtful conversations that aim to keep importance in perspective and simplify volume, we can help our own stars carry the burden of success a little more lightly.