Perform Under Pressure: Change the Way You Feel, Think and Act Under Pressure

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Section Two – The Pressure Pump stresses the need for individuals and teams to be well supported by their organization that has a strong culture and ethos and which maintains an appropriate level of pressure to ensure performance flow. Cultures of excellence explores how psychologically safe organisations like the Royal Marines and the Sky Cycling Team use rigorous selection, standards, competencies and continuous performance monitoring to maintain high standards of performance. The very best athletes manage to channel the anxiety they feel positively, especially if they have high self-confidence. Athletes with low confidence view anxiety as detrimental to performance, but those with high confidence tend to perceive anxiety as a sign of being ready for the challenge ahead. This makes them less likely to choke under pressure.

In fact, this idea of internal distraction fits nicely with a model of pressure that includes the stress response, and we now have evidence from another non-human primate species that the stress response impacts responses to pressure not just in a physical task, but a cognitive one as well. Many animals show evidence of working memory or working-memory-like systems, but there is considerable variability in their ability to complete working memory-based tasks (Matzel and Kolata 2010). Although much of this variability can be attributed to individual differences in working memory capacity, or the innate ability to monitor and work with information as we are holding it in memory, the potential for pressure effects to add to that capacity load is worth exploring in animals, given that humans are known to choke on working memory tasks specifically. In addition, because we expect there to be variation in stress responses as a result of that pressure, we expect the individual variation in biomarkers of stress to interact with variation in working memory capacity. However, before exploring such an interaction, it is important to establish whether there is such variation related to how individuals perform under pressure in any species other than humans.

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To further help you start to practise and understand some of the techniques in this Guide, you could watch the ‘Passengers on the Bus’ (2013) YouTube video by Joe Oliver and ‘The Unwelcome Party Guest’ (2011) video, also by Oliver – both are great. If you add to this an ‘Emotional Wheel’ (a Google search brings up lots of nice versions), you will find some easily printable sheets listing more than 100 emotion words to help you increase your emotional vocabulary. These sections have a strong resonance with the Centre for Army Leadership’s Leading Through Crisis: A Practitioner’s Guide where Army leaders are asked to communicate honestly and encourage challenge. Tools of the Trade explores the need for high performance teams to be matched with the right equipment and be proficient in operating such equipment. Pressure Testing

When you’re under pressure, you might feel overwhelmed by your feelings and notice aggressive, unforgiving language bouncing around your mind, such as ‘I’m furious’ or ‘I’m terrified’. It’s as if the passengers on your bus are using very emotive language as they try to get your attention. Interpreting your feelings in this way can trigger your automatic fight-or-flight response, which evolved to help you survive danger, but is highly unhelpful to performance in many situations in modern life. Overly rigid thinking and routines can all increase feelings of pressure. Increasing your mental flexibility is the antidote, and one way to do that is by deliberately challenging your usual way of doing things. This sounds super-simple, but if you like rigid routines and have come to rely upon them, you will find it difficult.

Develop your ‘mental flexibility’ instead. This way, you’ll be better able to think on your feet and cope with the unexpected.