I'm going to talk to you about you,

and how you can be brilliant every single day.

So, a big ask!

I spent the last 15 years working

with some of the best CEOs and executives around the world.

One of my observations is some of them are absolutely fantastic,

but the problem is they can't be fantastic every single day,

which reminds me of a story.

I was sat on the couch at home, watching the TV about five years ago.

Not that I'm a golfer, but I was watching the British Open.

A very good golfer, Sergio Garcia was playing,

and he'd been brilliant all week, dominating the field.

It came to the last round, and he was fantastic.

On Sunday morning, in the front nine, he scored 39 shots.

The previous day, on the Saturday,

he'd scored 29 shots on exactly the same holes.

So overnight, he'd lost ten shots on the same hole.

What happened was Padraig Harrington came past him and won the British Open,

and the Claret Jug.

Very interestingly, exactly a year later,

Padraig Harrington beat Sergio Garcia.

I think it was in the US Masters, Sergio played brilliantly all week.

He got to the Sunday, and something went wrong,

he was leading the field by six shots,

and on the Sunday again, Padraig Harrington came past him.

So that was really interesting to me.

And Peter Alliss, the famous golf commentator,

is watching this, and says, "It's a funny old game, golf."

(Laughter)

As though, it's a complete mystery why these things happen.

As though there's a complete loss of form. So I'm shouting at the television.

It's no mystery to me.

Actually, I know why that happened, and I know why Sergio Garcia basically

between 2007 and 2008 really didn't learn that much,

because he made exactly the same mistake in 2008 as he'd made in 2007.

So I'm going to share with you the secret about that -

some of the things that we've been teaching the executives,

bringing in some neuroscience, which is my background;

and going to reveal some secrets as to how your system works.

When I go through that,

and I'm going to break with TED tradition at the end of the talk.

We're going to have a bit of live demonstration of something.

But I want to just give you model that we work to that starts to explain

why Sergio or anybody or why you may lose performance,

and what you need to do to maintain your brilliance every single day.

If we're all after the same goal,

we're after improving our performance in some way,

or the results in some way.

It doesn't really matter what kind of results we're talking about.

Whether they were talking about sporting results,

whether we're talking about business results,

academic performance,

relationship performance, sexual performance.

Don't know why I'm looking at Simon when I say that!

(Laughter)

But whatever we're talking about ...

(Laughter)

What is going to improve our performance?

First and foremost,

in order to change the result, you've got to focus on people's behavior.

So we've got to do things differently in order to get a different result.

Most performance appraisals in industry focus on what you've been doing.

You go to see your boss, and he said, "Oh, I've got some 360 data.

You've been doing these kind of things, that's really good;

these other things; not so good.

So a bit less of that please, and a bit more of that,

I want you to do that and less of that."

Sometimes that actually works, and you get a different result.

But an awful lot of times, it doesn't make much difference.

It will only make a difference if the leaders stood over that employee

cracking the whip and making sure they do this.

So it's necessary but insufficient.

And the reason being is that even when people know what to do,

sometimes they just don't do it.

I know I ought to make another thousand calls to a thousand customers,

but do you know what? It's Friday afternoon.

Mmm, I'm not going to do that.

So it's not enough just to focus on what you can see

on the surface, on the behaviors.

You've got to get to grips with what's on the inside of individuals.

Why do people do what they do.

If you really want to change performance permanently,

and be brilliant every single day,

you've got to get to grips with the inside.

First and foremost, what's driving behavior is how people think.

How you think determines what you do.

When I'm coaching a CEO,

if he thinks I'm an idiot, he's not going to do what I say.

Why would he?

Or if he thinks what I'm saying is rubbish,

he won't do it.

So I've got to get a grip of what he thinks about,

in fact, that requires me to ask him some questions,

which is a lot more complicated than just observing the behaviour.

But our view is if you don't get to grips,

and start to ask some more detailed questions,

you won't get a sustainable change in the results, it won't last.

You'll get this variance in performance, this form loss.

So you've got to get to grips with how people think about you,

about what you're saying, about the world.

But even if you did, it's not enough.

Because there's something more fundamental driving how people think.

So how you think is really hugely influenced by how you feel.

In fact, these two things affect each other -

thinking affects feeling, and feeling affects thinking,

it goes back and forward in a loop.

But the dominant factor really is feeling.

So for a whole bunch of neuro-scientific reasons

we haven't got time to explain,

if you want to change what people do, you've got to change their thinking.

If you want to change their thinking, you have to change how they feel.

This is a much more significant impact on that than the other way around.

So if you feel anxious, for example,

it's no good me saying to you, "Don't worry."

You all have experienced that doesn't work.

"I'm doing this exam." "Don't worry."

"Oh, do you know what? I hadn't thought not to worry, that's the answer then."

(Laughter)

"I'll not worry! Oh, good! How much was that?"

"There's the check."

It doesn't work like that.

You've all experienced if you feel anxious, you feel anxious,

and no amount of, "Don't worry," is going to help.

Often makes it worse.

You'd say, "It's OK for you to say, 'Don't worry,' I'm worried."

So the real active ingredient is you've got to change this.

It's still not enough.

There's something more fundamental driving how you feel,

and that is your raw emotion.

So you've got to change the emotion

in order to change the feeling in order to change the thinking.

You may be sat there wondering,

"Wait a minute. Feelings - emotions are the same stuff, isn't it?"

It is not, right?

So many people don't realize,

in particular, many of my own friends in science and medicine

don't realize that feelings emotions are not the same thing.

Many people don't even realize feelings and thinking are not the same thing.

Particularly men, right?

(Laughter)

So you ask many men to tell you how they feel,

and they tell you how they think,

because they don't understand the question, right?

You can see most of the women in the room nodding.

"That's true. That's been my experience."

Most of the men sat there going, "What, what's he talking about?"

(Laughter)

These are not the same phenomenon:

thinking and feelings, feelings and emotions are not the same thing.

If you want to change the result by changing the behaviour,

there are multiple levels ...

Even if you've got to grips with the emotion, still not enough.

There is something even more fundamental down in the basement of the human system

is your physiology.

So the reason you get variance like Sergio did in his performance

is there are multiple levels

that Sergio Garcia hasn't got control over.

He's just concentrating on his technical putting performance

or the way that he drives the ball.

He hasn't got a grip of any of this other stuff.

Even if he's telling himself and rehearsing mentally,

"I'm a good golfer ... " It's not enough.

Because there's still three levels that he hasn't got a grip off.

So if you want to be brilliant every single day,

you've got to get a grip of every single level.

And that's how you crank out your A-game every single day.

Let's just work from the back to the top.

If we start with physiology, what is that?

That are just simply streams of data.

That's all physiology is. It's data streams.

So as I'm talking to you right now,

most of you are getting streams of data coming into your brain

about what's going on in your body.

So some of you had the cupcake at the break,

and you'll be getting a signal from your gut saying,

"Oh, sugar. We got sugar."

It's coming into your brain

tell your brain what's going on in your gut, right?

Some of you are getting contractions around that cupcake,

so you've got pressure waves being created,

telling your brain about what's going on in your gut.

These are just bits of physiology. They're just data streams.

As some of you might write or type,

you've got joint position sense going up the nerve channels into your brain

telling your brain about where your fingers are.

They're just bits of physiology, just streams of data, if you will

So what's an emotion?

If you take all the streams of data whether it's coming from your gut,

or your joints, or your heart, or your lungs.

If you take the data from all the streams,

all the bodily systems and it comes into your brain

is are electrical signals, electromagnetic signals;

chemical waves, pressure waves,

take all of those signals, all of those systems,

that's what an emotion is.

It's simply energy - "E" - in motion.

That's all emotion is.

So we all have that, even us fellas.

We've all got emotions every second of every day.

There is an energetic state going through us.

Because we're constantly digesting, breathing in and out,

our hearts constantly beating.

It's happening all the time.

So we've got energy in motion every single second of every single day.

But we may not all have feelings.

Feelings are the awareness in our mind of that energy.

That's where the problem is.

The energy may be there, but we just don't feel it.

For example, if you take a very common experience of most people,

if we look at what is the energetic signature,

if you will, of something like anxiety?

So what goes on physiologically when we're in a state of anxiety?

We look at the heart rate, it's fast. The heart is going boom, boom, boom.

What else is happening?

What's happening in the mouth? The mouth's dry.

You're talking as though you've got cotton wool and can't ...

That's happening.

What's happening the palms of your hand? They're sweaty.

What's happening the gut? It's churning.

These are the specific physiological constituents of that thing

that you would know as 'anxiety.'

And then I ask you, "How did you feel?" and you say, "Alright."

So all that data is there, you're just not feeling it.

If you're not feeling it,

it's altering what you're thinking and how well you're thinking it,

which is changing what you're doing.

But you don't realize that because you feel alright.

You're not noticing any of that.

You're just thinking what you're thinking and doing what you're doing.

So what we're saying is that the brilliance every day

requires not only to tune in to what's happening down here

at a physiological and the emotional level,

and not only become aware of that, but get control over it.

Because most of you do not have the control at that level.

In fact, very few people have got control of any of this stuff on the inside.

Even when people have been highly trained on regulating their behavior,

even then got that much control over this,

so that's the source of your brilliance.

If you can get control over the whole thing,

you can crank out your A-game every single day.