The 7 Skills to impress™
The 7 Skills to impress™
What the language of two finalists revealed about pressure and performance In the fourth set of this year’s Roland Garros final, Alexander Zverev started cramping. A TV commentator suggested it was nerves expressing themselves through the body. Zverev received medication, was handed a time violation, and the match tilted briefly towards Flavio Cobolli, who took…
What the language of tennis’s biggest stage reveals about confidence, pressure and performance. Carlos Alcaraz wasn’t at Roland Garros this year. He pulled out injured before the draw was made. But the quote that has come back to mind across these two weeks came from him, said months ago after the longest semi-final in Australian…
Thanks once again for your marvellous support for my work. The open rates are sitting above 75%, and I can see people exploring the site, reading different posts, and following the threads of the work. I am genuinely grateful for that. I suspect quite a few of you are reading quietly in the background. I…
When winning starts to feel like survival, even the most extraordinary talent needs safe hands around him. Victor Wembanyama is twenty-two years old and has just dragged the Spurs to the NBA Finals in only his third season. He was crying on the floor after the Game 7 win over Oklahoma City, and when the…
How world-class athletes and coaches tune mental strength for victory João Fonseca Didn’t Believe He Could Win. He Just Played. In the immediate aftermath of an intense challenge, when the athlete is at their most authentic, the raw truth comes out. João Fonseca had just beaten Novak Djokovic at Roland Garros, coming back from two…
A study into the secrets of Jensen Huang’s incredible success. In 2016, Jensen Huang sat across from his board of directors and asked them to bet the company, and he meant it literally. NVIDIA would abandon its existing roadmap, redirect its engineering towards a market that did not yet properly exist, and spend billions doing…
Back in the groove, building towards 1,000 subscribers, with Phil Parkinson and Jensen Huang on the way I’m genuinely delighted with my small and growing subscriber list, and even more delighted by the way people are engaging with it. The open rates are high, and the readership is already reaching well beyond the number of…
A regular note on confidence, composure and charisma under pressure, from 7 Skills to impress™ From the Doldrums to On Top of the World A week in the doldrums. My girlfriend was away, there was a neighbour’s garden party on Saturday that I absolutely did not feel like going to, and I could sense myself beginning…
What Peter Kaufman taught me about trust, leadership and being the one who reaches out first Go Positive and Go First I’m writing this from the Malvern Bakehouse, on a morning that has the good sense to be sunny, and things feel, genuinely, fine. Given what the last few weeks have looked like, fine is…
A regular note on confidence, composure and charisma under pressure, from 7 Skills to impress™ Friday Morning I talked to my girlfriend’s foster son. He’s 12, and he’s just been moved out of a school that was supposed to be supporting him, yet had placed a ceiling on what anyone expected of him. My girlfriend…