Applying The 7 Skills to impress™: A Case Study
This chapter is the first time I show you The 7 Skills to impress™ being used under real pressure. My aim is simple: to show you how these Skills can help you perform, and even inspire, when your mind is trying to pull you in the opposite direction.
To do that, I’ll take you into a personal challenge from my work in elite sport. It’s a useful example because it hit several of my blind spots at once. You’ll see the whole process: what happened, how I felt, and how I used the 7 Skills to turn anxiety into strength.
England Rugby
One of my favourite roles in elite sport was working with coaches from England Rugby. My job focused on helping them shape the kind of language that could inspire players and prepare them mentally so they could cross the white line with clarity and confidence.
One of the Sevens coaches also supported a semi-professional 15s team in his spare time. He believed deeply in my work and often invited me into his projects.
One day, during a Sevens tournament in New Zealand, he called me. His semi-pro side was trapped in a miserable losing streak, confidence drained, morale low. Stuck on the other side of the world, he couldn’t do anything for them himself.
So he asked me to step in and deliver an inspirational talk.
A Request I Didn’t Want
Let me be honest: I didn’t want to do it.
Being sent in to “inspire” a bunch of semi-professional rugby players is an invitation to stand in front of fifty sceptical faces radiating a silent challenge:
Go on then… inspire me.
I adored this coach. He had opened the door to England Rugby for me and trusted me long before I trusted myself. I still feel huge gratitude for the belief he showed.
But I wasn’t seeing his request as the privilege it was. I was seeing it as a threat, as a test I might fail.
At that point in my life, my PTSD hadn’t been diagnosed, but I knew the pattern well: before I could rise to any challenge, I first had to beat back the inner demons whispering that I didn’t belong, that I wasn’t wanted, that I wasn’t good enough.
Requests like this hit that nerve hard.
I wanted to say “no.”
Instead, I heard myself say, “Sure, no problem.”
Why I Needed the 7 Skills Most
This moment, this uncomfortable, tightening, throat-drying moment, was exactly why I developed The 7 Skills to impress™ in the first place.
Not to help other people: to help me.
I needed to break through the limits I had carefully built around myself, what I now understand as my Theory of Control. I wanted to perform even when my thinking was frazzled, to be at my best, and to use pressure rather than be undone by it.
And with only a few days until the training night where the talk would take place, I had to put the 7 Skills into action immediately.
How I Prepared to Perform at My Best
In the chapters that follow, one for each Skill, I’ll show you exactly how I used The 7 Skills to impress™ to:
- overcome my doubts,
- manage my nerves,
- connect deeply with the squad,
- craft a message that genuinely inspired them, and
- ultimately help them turn their season around.
But before anything else, I had to start in the only place that made sense:
Skill 1: Working Out My Outcomes
Your subconscious follows the direction you set, so I had to set mine clearly.
→ Click here to continue to: Skill 1: Working Out My Outcomes