Episode 288: Sustained High Performance in the Workplace: Insights from 50 Leading C-Suite Executives
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Welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. This week's episode is all about performance. As you already know, we discuss the topic of performance every week on this podcast. However, in this particular episode, we will mainly focus on ways to enhance your ability to perform better, both in your work and in other areas of life.
No matter what aspect of life you are looking to excel in, establishing a robust physical ready-state is crucial to achieving sustained high performance.
Whether you're an elite athlete, a time-starved amateur, a parent striving to be the best version of yourself for your children, an executive aiming for stronger leadership skills, or a team looking to achieve business objectives, maintaining excellent health, optimal cognitive function, and stable energy levels are key factors for outstanding performance.
When combined with effective strategies and practices, it can lead to exponential results for individuals and teams.
This is supported by peer-reviewed research and our observations from assisting individuals and teams to enhance their performance and outcomes.
To validate our observations, we surveyed 50 leading C-Level executives to get their perspectives. The results were interesting and insightful. Matt discusses the results in detail.
You don't need to be a world-class athlete or a high-level executive to apply these principles to your own performance journey, but we hope that you will feel energized, inspired, and ready to prioritize fitness and health in your pursuit of high performance.
Sustained High Performance: A Proven Methodology for Building High-Performing Executive Teams
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 04:58 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
05:06 - 08:32 - Matt's News-ings
08:40 - 52:57 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 287: Nutrition & Body Composition - 1 on 1 with Scott Tindal of FuelIn
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
I'm Matt Dixon and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 00:22
A strong physical ready state. To excel in any area in life. This is a non-negotiable. You want to have a platform of health, consistent energy, optimal cognitive function, improved capacity to meet additional demands when they happen, other stressors, and even things like pandemics. To establish this, you need to invest in yourself, you need to adopt some simple habits and strategies. But there is a path that we like to utilize here at Purple Patch to supercharge the results of these strategies and gain measurable improvements. We leverage InsideTracker. By assessing your biometrics and combining it with peer-reviewed research and recommendations from the team at InsideTracker, you can work on improving your health parameters, reducing stress levels, and the accumulation of too much stress, build your ability to focus function and the ability to show up across all arenas in life firing on all cylinders. It's incredibly simple, but it's powerful. And it's now easier than ever to build an action plan from the insights and results. If you head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch and use the code Purple Patch Pro 20, that's Purple Patch Pro two zero, you get 20% off everything at the store. Now of course, we are also happy to help support you with a coaching consultation to enable you to filter your focus and establish the 3, 4, 5 no more than seven habits that are going to deliver your best returns for health, life, and of course sports performance. All you need to do to set up that consultation in accompaniment with the InsideTracker results is email us at info@PurplePatchfitness.com. Either way now is the perfect time for you to set your baseline and develop your action plan. Insidetracker.com/purplepatch. Purple Patch Pro 20 Or two zero to get 20% off everything at the store. Kickstart your performance journey with focus and measurable results, and enjoy the show.
Matt Dixon 02:29
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast, as ever, your host, Matt Dixon. Today we've got a goodie. But just before we get into this, I'm gonna deliver a little note for you. Because we've always talked about a Purple Patch, evolve or die. That's one of our mantras, well, we're taking steps to evolve this show a little bit. Over the coming months, you're gonna get to enjoy two different types of shows. Now, we don't intend to run away from triathlon or endurance sports. That's our DNA. And we will continue with many sports-focused shows. But we're going to add some shows that are going to be specifically designated to what we might call Purple Patch leadership and life performance. So not just trying to get faster, but really what we've been doing over the last 15 years by taking on a sporting journey, applying the lessons, principles, and habits so that you can amplify how you show up as your best version of yourself, whether you're an executive, whether you're a mom, whatever arena you're hoping to thrive in. Now these shows, we're going to explicitly focus on performance for folks that are just looking to improve health, life, and performance in the workplace. So this might be employees, executives, parents, and folks interested in investing in their future selves to live better, for longer. And so to reduce the confusion, what we thought we'd do is designate the show, so that it can help you find the education and the insights that are most relevant to you. And we'll kick this off today, this is going to be our first episode of this sort. So it's a little bit straying now into life, work performance, and we're gonna get pretty darn corporate today. And so I hope you enjoy it, kick it off. Here comes the Purple Patch podcast.
Matt Dixon 04:18
Yes, folks, welcome back. And yes, indeed, as I just told you, we're going to be talking about performance today. And that's unsurprising because this podcast is focused on just that performance. But our focus today is going to be mostly on your ability to perform in the workplace and in broader life. In any arena. If you are chasing high sustained performance, you want to show up firing on all cylinders. It's so important that you establish a robust physical ready state. Whether you're a world-class athlete, or time-starved, amateur, a parent trying to shore up the best version of themselves for your partner and of course for your kids, an executive seeking optimal leadership and the ability to meet the crazy demands of your role, or even a team, a leadership team in any organization that is eager to drive the outcomes of the business. If every participant shows up with a great platform of health, optimal cognitive function, stable energy, and firing on all cylinders, it's going to drive towards your best outcomes. Now, if we add to this, this little baseline of great physical ready state, a set of practices and strategies that facilitate effectiveness, what I might label a high-performance mindset, then we can anticipate outsized exponential results, both individually and across teams. Now we know this, because of peer-reviewed research that tells us that, but equal to that I and the rest of the Purple Patch team have observed this further trenches helping individuals and teams improve their outcomes and performance for more than 15 years. But quite recently, we thought it might be interesting, and a good idea to validate those observations. And so what we did is we asked 50 leading C-level executives for their perceptions around the topic. And the results were well, interesting. insightful, validating. So what I thought I would do today is share those results, but also join the dots and dig into some of my conclusions from the observations. Now, as we dive into this, I think it's important to realize you don't need to be a world-class athlete. And you certainly don't need to be a C-suite executive, to apply the lessons that we get to today, to your performance journey. No matter what you care about. The key is that we're looking to improve. And by the end of today's show, I think that you're going to feel energized, inspired, and probably ready to prioritize fitness, and performance habits into your journey. If you care about performance, and showing results, if you have a desire a will to win, I'm going to tell you today, that you're going to need a strong platform of a physically ready state. And so we did the performance survey. And today we're going to dig into the results and the insights. It is all in today's show. But first, folks, let's do Matt's News-ings.
Matt Dixon 07:32
Yes, indeed, Matt's News-ings. And two quick things. Firstly, a lot of what we talk about in today's show is summarized and we dig into more depth in a white paper that we've produced. And so if you listen to the show, and you're interested, drop us an email info@Purple Patch fitness.com. And we are going to send you a white paper. Now you can also get to it directly, I'm going to put the link in the show notes. But you can head to the website, go and find the white paper and we will be sure to send it to you. It's packed full of interesting insights and the story behind the summary. And so if you're interested in that, feel free. It's free, no strings attached. But it might be interesting, particularly if you're the leader of an organization. The second thing I want to talk about, let's talk about investing in your best self, whether that's athletically or in broader life, we have got five spots, folks, five spots that are available for the 2024 season. And we are open for business right now. Our team of coaches and it's a small team because we care about quality, and we want to work as a team. But our team of coaches delivers more than a set of workouts or a training plan. In fact, by becoming a Purple Patch athlete under the one-to-one coaching banner, you're partnering with us, and that partnership is going to drive your performance forward. Every component of the program is tailored and made exactly for you, your work with your coach, and the entire Purple Patch team to ensure that you are improving across the movement that's your endurance training, strength, habits in nutrition, recovery, sleep, and developing and educating the learnable skills around great effectiveness, building that high-performance mindset. And that becomes important because you can apply those strategies across any arena in life. And so if you're seeking a great partnership, highly tailored and customized programming approach to you in partnership with a Purple Patch coach, then reach out for a chat. It's free. It's complimentary. We're not a fit for everyone, we realize that, but those who do get involved well, usually stick around. We're pretty bold and brash about our ability to deliver performance for you. info@purplepatchfitness.com. Let them know you're interested in coaching. We'll set up a complimentary call and at least try and set you off in the right direction. And folks before you think about oh, I'll push it to the holidays. Now is the right time before the holidays, and I promise you, there will be no space by the time you hit January. And so drive it in, it's just going to get busy. Let's lock it in. And with that, I'm ready. It's my favorite. Let's do this, ladies and gentlemen, it is time for the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 10:26
Yes,
Matt Dixon 10:26
it is the meat and potatoes. Now what I want us to do is I want us to feel something, I want you to experience something, what we're going to be talking about today.
Matt Dixon 10:42
Let's start with this and you can close your eyes. However, if you're driving while you listen, please don't do that. But let's do this. I want you to think of a time when you were just overwhelmed, fatigued, and overstretched. Perhaps it was just because of too many competing demands from work and maybe family, or it's an accumulation of too many nights in a row of poor sleep, or too much travel for work, or even a hangover. Whatever the root cause, I want you to think back about how you felt there - systemic tiredness. These feelings that you're feeling right now are hardly setting you up for great productivity. That doesn't smell of performance.
Matt Dixon 11:32
But I don't want to be negative here. So let's switch gears a little bit. Now what I want you to do is I want you to think about that time when you were last in the zone, as you might say, a great period of high productivity, where you couldn't put a foot wrong, you're in a state of flow, everything fell into place, any meetings you're in, you're highly engaged, you're energetic, you're highly productive. This is it, bottle it. This is why I am a high-performance machine. You know what that is. And in the States, you might refer to that as being on a great streak or in the zone. But in England, we call that a Purple Patch. Now we all know that feeling.
Matt Dixon 12:17
But most of us stumble into periods like that, or Purple Patches through random events, we just rely on luck. The Purple Patch methodology is designed to deliver more Purple Patches predictably and consistently. That's really what we try and do. Whether you're an executive or a great athlete, it doesn't matter what your arena of life is, our goal is to deliver you into persistent and predictable purple patches. Now the methodology emerged from my desire to ensure that the Purple Patch professional triathletes could build world-class performance on a platform of health. But from the long history of great results with our pros, we utilize the same methodology to support time-starved athletes, folks trying to show up the best version of themselves across the life C-suite executives, and even now leadership teams that are looking to drive business outcomes for their organizations. And so today, we're gonna dive into two performance-minded topics. The first is how a collection of C-suite executives that we surveyed viewed the impact of prioritizing personal well-being in their capacity to consistently perform as leaders. So what is the role of prioritizing fitness and health when it comes to being a great leader? Secondly, we're also going to investigate how the same C-suite executives view the role of the team when it comes to high performance in the workplace. Really interesting topics. Now, all of the insights and lessons are directly drawn from the responses that we had with 50 leading executives who participated in a recent Purple Patch performance-focused survey. And we surveyed on exactly these two topics. And what has emerged out of here are some interesting insights.
Matt Dixon 14:20
So let's dig in. And let's first talk about the methodology. So before we just dig into the results of the survey, built around individual and team performance, let's first take a step back to put some context and help you understand why we wanted to start and go through the survey in the first place. And I think the safest or smartest place to start is probably the methodology. Okay, so I want to frame this with the alignment of what we mean by adopting the Purple Patch methodology and having a focus on personal well-being because a lot of people can hear that and maybe draw different conclusions from it. So, let me dig in. Let's first say that in any arena, for a methodology to be effective, it's very important that that methodology must be clear, understandable, and actionable. Now, the Purple Patch methodology is, while it is based on a whole bunch of science, and deep complexity, it's very, very simple. Whether you're chasing world-class athletes or performance or the ability to show up firing on all cylinders in the workplace, it's important to have a cohesive approach to four main pillars, as we call them.
Matt Dixon 15:41
The first is what we label endurance training. Now put it another way, if you're not thinking about athletics, that is moving the body daily in a structured manner, it's very simple, okay, we all need to circulate the blood at an elevated rate, hence, we start to sweat a little bit, that is movement. So the first pillar is movement or endurance. The second is integrated strength training. Now, that's not about going to Gold's Gym which is functional living, amplified through resistance training, we are all designed to lift heavy things, whatever that means for us at that time. So those are the first two pillars. The third is very simple habits under the banner of nutrition, and that includes eating habits, maybe fueling your workouts, and daily hydration. Very, very simple. And then finally, the fourth pillar is an ongoing prioritization of rejuvenation and sleep. And that's what we labeled the recovery pillar. Okay, so endurance, strength, nutrition, recovery, those are the Purple Patch pillars of performance adaptable for any arena, wherever you're chasing performance. The outcome of when you successfully adopt these, prioritize them, and integrate them into your life, is that you show up ready to do whatever you're looking to chase performance in with a great platform of physical ready-state. Important.
Matt Dixon 17:09
Okay, now consider this, no matter what your goals are, you will perform better if you have a foundation of great physical ready-state. What do I mean by that? Well, in the workplace, the way that this concept translates is, that you're going to have stable higher levels of energy, you're going to have an improved ability to focus, you've got optimal functions. So things like information processing, long and short-term memory, and decision-making, are going to be crisper, and more effective. You're going to be able to lower your systemic baseline stress levels, and you're gonna have improved physical resiliency. And that includes a stronger immune system. What's not to like about that? But there's another important part of the Purple Patch methodology that we really should discuss. And that is the set of practices and habits that facilitate the optimal application of that methodology. We call that a high-performance mindset. In athletics, I often call it the athlete's mindset or the athletic mindset. But when we come broader level, I'm going to label it the high-performance mindset. Now there are a set of practices and habits over the last 15 years that I've consistently observed, the highest level of performance in sport and boardrooms consistently shared. These practices traits, and habits, ensure the greatest effectiveness possible, and the optimal application of the methodology into meaningful results.
Matt Dixon 18:41
What are these? Well, we won't spend today digging into the finer details, but I am going to just rattle off a few of them. Number one, driven by purpose and an absolute passion for the journey over strict outcomes. Number two is a consistent quest to try and reduce complex situations and challenges into simple and actionable components. The very best performers that I've worked with love repeatable habits that are simple to action. Number three is a high degree of coachability. This is an incredibly consistent theme. Think about the very best athlete in any sport, the market-making C-level executives that we read about in magazines. The theme is, the better the athlete, the more coachable they are. The higher that folks tend to rise in organizations, the more likelihood is that they reach out to external help and support coachability is important. And married with that is a never-ending thirst for learning and growth. You might have heard this called the growth mindset. And that's very much the case. But it's undeniable. This quest for learning self-improvement goes along with that. And the final thing, components, that I'll highlight here, what I call big picture thinking or T-shaped thinking, very, very good at dialing in details, but also adept at coming up pausing and seeing the big picture. Ultimately, perhaps the most important in many ways, developing a positive relationship with the discomfort of stress, and the inevitable struggles and setbacks, even failures that are going to occur along a performance journey. In other words, they're adaptable, they've got great resilience, and they're able to course-correct no matter what is thrown at them. You put this together, and all of those are learnable by the way. We can teach these skills but when you build those traits out, and you apply a smart methodology, it drives that methodology to greater success, and it leads to outcomes. So when we put those together, you have a platform of great physical ready-state with practices and habits that help you become effective, that drive sustained high performance. And that's what we're after.
Matt Dixon 21:08
Now, our observations have seen this across populations for more than 15 years of support, education, and coaching. Now, in each performance area, there is an oil tanker's worth of peer-reviewed research that supports the observations I talked about here. It's unequivocal, that to show up for a better physically ready state, you must embrace these habits. But there's an equal amount of peer-reviewed research that shows the colossal performance and health costs of ignoring these principles. However, we decided that we wanted to validate our observations. We wanted to put a real-world spin on the copious amount of peer-reviewed research, as well as our observations from coaching. And so we decided to do a survey. And not just any survey, we scraped our Rolodex and we asked 50 leading C-suite executives for their own experiences and perspectives around performance.
Matt Dixon 22:07
Now, a note, when we talk about this, I think it's important that as we dig into the results, the intention of our survey is not peer-reviewed research. This isn't an empirical study that we built out here. And in fact, I need to highlight as we go through this, that the results of this survey have a very heavy and obvious bias. So let's call out the elephant in the room. The majority of the participants of this survey already embrace fitness and performance habits. So in some way, they're engaged with the methodology that we're studying. And we're going to ask them about it. But they are already sort of forming a part of the the converted, if you want to call it that. Ultimately, despite this obvious bias, it doesn't dilute the impact and the results that we hope to validate from our observations, because we just thought, Look, what better way than to ask the actual folk who have utilized this methodology, while also at the same time under the highest work demands possible in their roles that they take on in the workplace. So let's dig in and first, let's peel back the curtain a little bit on who were the participants. So who did we ask? Let's first talk about the demographics here, because this is a pretty unique and special crew here. First, highlight that 80% of them were founders or in the C-suite. These are very high-level executives, and more than two-thirds of the participants were leading organizations that had a market cap of over a billion dollars. So these are real companies, okay? Then the tendency overall was more than 80% of their company's focus was long-term growth. So there tend to be more mature businesses that are less inclined to look at the more reactive aspects such as stock price, and are more about building long-term growth and profit. As an age breakdown, well, it sort of parlayed right into typical Purple Patch athlete, demographics, 50% of them were ages 45 to 59. A third of them were over 60. And about a third of them were under 44. So there's a nice spread there. Highlight 75%, and I think this is important, 75% of the survey respondents fell into an age category, where we see physiological or cognitive declines can become major barriers to high performance, not just in the workplace, but in life. And I want to consider that because we're starting to march on as you hit 45 You start to hit my age. I'm 49 right now, and you start to think about Hang on. Here. We Come, we need to start to build and invest for the future so that I'm not experiencing physical decline, a lack of quality of life, cognitive decline, and I'll tell you something when you get to my age or beyond, it becomes a big feature of your life. So those are the broad demographics we had about 25% Female, 75% Male, that was the broad demographics of these very high achieving people.
Matt Dixon 25:25
So far a survey structure, it was divided into two main sections. And the same as what I talked about before: number one, individual performance, number two team performance. So let me break down that a little bit for you. Individual Performance, that section asked respondents to gauge their relationship with fitness training, and performance habits such as eating, sleep quality, etc, and how it impacted their performance at work. That's what we're looking for. Now, this included their current relationships, as far as coaching, how they prioritize their fitness and health, some of the challenges and roadblocks that may be impeding their performance, their perceived levels of stress, and their capacity to perform under stress, their ability to navigate change, and handle adversity, and other factors surrounding and contributing to their motivation levels. So you can start to appreciate what we were looking to dig into, really overall at the way our summary is, I wanted to dig into their ability to show up and perform as well as their capacity, their perceived capacity to adapt to shifting conditions and external forces, because that's a huge part of being a high performing executive in any organization. The second section, the team performance section, focused on the respondent's experiences being a part of a company in a leadership team, and how it would impact their work performance.
Matt Dixon 26:56
Now, the topic that we dug into here was the impact of team performance on their performance. So depending on the team conditions, what it did to them as their performance, and the perceived value and benefits of shared team experiences outside of work, we're very interested in that. Engaging, and can take on many different forms their views on the link between a high-performing team and company outcomes. So in their current role, or a prior role, when they've been a part of how they perceived to be a great performance-focused team, and the link between that and business outcomes. We also wanted to consider and ask their perspective on the challenges and roadblocks that tend to impede company performance globally. Current company programs that they take on are initiatives that are aimed at improving team performance, and ultimately insights around times when they were part of a great team or operating at peak. That was the qualitative part of the survey. Very interesting. Now, once again, I want to highlight this group, we knew Jim embraced and valued the role of fitness and performance habits. So we weren't trying to ascertain if there was a link to performance because the research on that is bountiful. We were seeking validation insights into how these people who were recipients of the methodology perceive the impacts. Okay.
Matt Dixon 28:25
So what we should do is dig into the two main sections of the survey. And we'll try and do two things to report the results, then draw the thread of aha, these are the moments that we had out of those results and put them in context. So let's start with the individual section. And I think it's worth of starting with stress, the dirty word of stress, we're going to talk about demands and stress.
Matt Dixon 28:52
Now, this is where we started to pick apart the results a little bit. And things started to emerge from even greater clarity here. What we wanted to do as a part of these results, is wanted to investigate the perceptions relative to those who do decide to prioritize their fitness and performance habits. And those that simply don't. Now, the majority do prioritize, 88%. But we wanted to look at that other 12% and compare the two groups. Well, it turns out interesting. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those who successfully prioritize fitness and performance habits, or said another way, adopt consistently the habits under the Purple Patch pillars of performance that we talked about before, had some stunning differences in their ability to perform in the workplace, four times the level of motivation and excitement for work. More than twice as likely to have the ability to reach their goals, and significantly higher reported levels of productivity and daily energy.
Matt Dixon 28:52
Now, stress is an interesting word. Because when you say high stress to someone, most people think of cowering and shrinking, trying to reduce stress. However, in my experience, high performers understand that high stress is necessary for growth. While it's not comfortable, it is the conditions that enable growth. Now there is great stress, there is too much stress that is negative. And so I wanted to investigate this from this group of C-suite executives to see how they perceived it. The vast majority of the respondents reported high or very high levels of daily stress. Think about that. These are folks who already embrace the principles of fitness and health. They're asked, to give us your reported daily level of stress. And the vast majority were high-stress or very high-stress. Well, it turns out Guess what? Being a C-suite executive is not easy. In addition to that, the vast majority of respondents reported that too many competing demands or insufficient time were their primary challenges. And that's not surprising either. Being a C-suite executive, you have a whole host of responsibilities in your work, let alone of course, outside with things like family, friends, travel, and everything else. So these folks are time-starved. They have massive competing demands, and every single day they face high or very high daily stress. You might wonder when I tell you and report on those results, that doesn't sound very nice, isn't it a negative? Well, that's actually where it starts to get interesting through my lens. Because guess what, high performance is not easy. I can't reduce demands. I'm unable to add more hours to the day. We can't eliminate stressful situations. And in fact, that's not the mission. Because ultimately, the goal is to equip every single person to improve their capacity to meet the demands, to still be effective. And so this is where we start to dig into the survey a little bit more. 90% of the individual respondents report working with a coach. This is very interesting, because that reflects my observation with high performers, whether it's pro athlete, whether it's C-suite, the better you become, or the higher in the organization that you rise, the more likely that you are to reach out to external support and guidance, the very best people I tend to see that be able to create sustained high performance are highly coachable, and almost demand external support and help. But this is where we start to get interested in stress as well. Almost 90% of those respondents also said that they prioritize their fitness and performance habits across any given week. So on the one hand, they're saying I've got too many demands, and I don't have enough time. And yet, the vast majority, nine out of 10 of them still commit to scheduling their fitness, proper eating habits, sleep, and downtime. And this is where things keep getting interesting, because that same percentage, also reports 88%, that they have great daily energy. It sounds like a paradox here. I'm under daily stress. And yet I have great daily energy and on top of it a great ability to meet the demands of my role. So they're time-starved. They've got too many competing demands, but they've been successful. 9 out of 10 of these 50 respondents.
Matt Dixon 32:50
Well, none of that is that surprising. But I ask you this, if you have a challenging set of demands, and you aspire to meet those demands and excel, to knock it out of the park, how could you ever, across your life, no matter who you are, deprioritize fitness and performance habits based on what we've just learned? Do you think that you're doing everything you can to show up to your life if you're relegating sleep as a priority, proper eating habits, and consistent exercise, including resistance training and cardiovascular movement? In other words, endurance training. If you want to perform, how could you ever deprioritize this? Look, we already know that fitness, strength training, habits in nutrition, and proper sleep is the greatest investment that you can make in yourself for long-term health and the prevention of all major diseases. But what our survey pinpoints is the fact that these same habits, play a critical role in your daily performance and whatever that role is. And so simply put, you are not going to be the best version of yourself, nor performing your role without these pillars. Critically important.
Matt Dixon 35:11
But what about the team? Well, let's talk about the team. And what I want to do before I dig into the results here I want to give you one of my observations. I'm going to tell you a little bit story. I'm going to talk about the Purple Patch pro squad. By the way, I want you to focus on that last word their squad. More of that in a little bit. From 2007, or so to 2010, I started to coach elite athletes. And over those first few years, I coached individuals. But by building my coaching approach around the Purple Patch four pillars that I formalized towards the end of 2008, I started to shift the mindset of both myself and the athletes themselves to say, we are not going to be individuals, we're going to be a team. And the way that I established that is I said, we are the Purple Patch pro squad. And what it means to be a member of the squad is I'm going to set the tone with a few non-negotiables. If you want to be a part of this program, these are things that are nonnegotiable for you to adhere to. Now, these were not overly complicated. The first is I wanted every athlete to attend the pro training camps. I also wanted them to adhere to some basic habits, we call nail the basics, those are all derived from the four pillars, very simple. You're going to sleep more than nine hours, you're going to go easy on the easy training days, you're going to consume calories after every workout, components that are incredibly simple, easy to action, but we could rally around. And then I also wanted every athlete to be really good and adhere to consistent check-ins where you could get that big-picture view and assessment of where we're at so that we could stay aligned in the cycle of the performance journey. And these were non-negotiable. These became the rallying call these establish what it meant to be a Purple Patch Pro. What I did there was set the conditions for an effective team, because in most individual sports, with athletes, there were different levels, different stages of development, and different goals, what we had was clarity. And by building a squad, in an individual team sport, we started to establish a sense of belonging, and appreciation of what it meant a little bit, to be honest, have us against them mentality, that can be all-powerful. But we also set up the conditions so that the athletes could have a good sense of accountability and support for each other. And this impact was critical for the next decade-plus of success. The reason that I think that that's the case is that adopting a team mindset with those conditions, absolutely drove individual success. Each of the individuals got better results, because of it. However, the impact was bi-directional because each of the individuals contributed to what I would label a performance culture. There started to exist a flywheel effect. How things are done. What it means to be a Purple Patch Pro. Habits were created, to support accountability, and it became bigger than myself. I could come back and retreat from some of the nitty gritty and enable the athletes themselves to own that culture. And of course, what occurred with that is that when we had a newcomer come into the squad, they were fast-tracked, because they quickly adopted habits because of the culture we created. And they too enjoyed quicker success. We also had an incredibly powerful retention. I'll never forget a couple of athletes saying to me, well, it's not even whether I like you or not, I can't leave. The reason that they would say that is because of what they observed whenever an athlete decided to leave and go it alone, their performance suffered, and it wasn't because I had Pixy dust. But what they were leaving was a performance culture with support, accountability, and all of the benefits that come out of a team even though they were chasing individual results. Ultimately though, and as these pro athletes were our most influential and aspirational component of the overall ecosystem at Purple Patch, they also ended up setting the tone for all of the other Purple Patch athletes. We had a performance imprint across all of the Purple Patch athletes, a population of athletes time-starved and beyond. And we started to create a huge flywheel effect. Yet it turns out that the team drove results, despite it being an individual result.
Matt Dixon 40:09
Well, it turns out that our C-suite executives and our founders report very similar insights into their organizations from their own experiences. So let's dig into what they observed and their perceptions as it relates to the team and our performance survey. Here are a few key points that I think are worthy of consideration. Okay, more than 80% of the respondents experience individuals achieving more and more and going above and beyond when they are a part of a highly effective team. So eight out of 10 of these respondents say, yes, it drives individual success, very similar to our pro story. Great, that's fantastic. And that's not surprising, because in any endeavor, we seldom Excel when we're tackling the challenge on an island. When we build a team approach, it always is gasoline on the performance, fire. And ultimately, effective teams do tend to drive individual performance habits and behaviors. It's just a known fact, all of the research, all the empirical research shows that. And though it's complex, the conditions of effective teams tend to be based on a few key elements here. When we talk about an effective team, I believe at the bedrock of this, the foundation of a great team is trust, a belief that everyone who is a participant or member of that team is engaged, in what's best for the team and prioritizes results and actions for the benefit of that team over their success. And when you do that, you'll get more individual success.
Matt Dixon 41:52
The second component is a key alignment and commitment on a shared purpose, without clarity, and alignment on focus, and priority, and then the team cannot be effective, because conflict is going to occur. Although with that, a third element is that a great team has an environment where all team members are confident speaking up, and we're offering, can offer their opinions and perspectives without fear, or risk of retribution. And ultimately, as we talked about, with the Purple Patch team, we think about a strong system of support and accountability, because this is key to helping people adhere to the actions that they have committed to. And I'm going to add one more to this, that I think is important. And this one might surprise you a little bit, an absolute will to win, a desire to win. Let's not be shy about chasing results. Okay? Now, these results are fueled by the foundations of trust purpose and commitment support, and accountability. But you've got to be addicted to results. You have to love that feeling. That is what drives success. And that's the important X Factor, I think, in any great team.
Matt Dixon 43:13
So when we bring this back to the survey here, I think this is the point where insights became compelling and more interesting, because it's not rocket science to say, hey, as a part of an effective team that's going to drive individual results. But just like the Purple Patch pro squad, our survey respondents believe the positive direction is also bi-directional. 75% said that an effective team helps in various areas. Okay. 75%. Three-quarters of the respondents said it improved the ability of organizations to handle challenges, and setbacks, including things like pandemics and market forces, really, really important. So there is a greater capacity to withstand setbacks, challenges, and adversity. And guess what, in any performance arena, the linear line to performance is never that, it's always going to include those setbacks and adversity. So that's a key component.
Matt Dixon 44:16
Secondly, 75% of the respondents felt that the culture of a team is important, and set the tone for the performance culture that extends across the organization. So when you think about these executives, as a part of a leadership team, when you make that effective, it does have a knock-on effect in the tone and the culture of how the broader organization operates and ultimately performs. And these are executives at $1 billion cap companies, or more, so important.
Matt Dixon 44:49
The third element that they highlighted to 75% said an effective team fosters improved motivation and acts as a key retention tool for top talent. Isn't that Interesting, just as we talked about with the Purple Patch pro squad? So ultimately, the team is important and drives outcomes, at least according to our C-suite survey respondents. The question to this is why? And the results of our relative to the survey highlight even more interest here. Our respondents told us that being part of a great team enabled a few elements. Number one, massive improvements in understanding of other teammates, and therefore an increase in trust and accountability. Well, we talked about trust and accountability as key components of an effective team. So being a part of a team where you built that and fostered it, it becomes a flywheel effect. They also observed significant improvements in collaboration on key projects and goals. Well, that's great, because across any organization, if you're not a great team, everyone might be skilled in their role. But if you're not collaborating, you're not going to get exponential performance. And thirdly, they said, being a part of a great team fostered a greater sense of reward for efforts and retention of that key talent. So in other words, tremendously important, but also important, even more so in today's corporate climate, which is very strange if you want to just say one small piece of it.
Matt Dixon 46:20
So I wanted to, at this point, pop in one of the qualitative sample quotes from a response around the team and the impact of the broader part of the company. So I'll leave this anonymous, but this is a C-suite executive, as a part of a major organization. 'When our leadership team feels secure, motivated, and excited, it really (starred) ripples through the rest of the organization. And you can almost immediately see the change in the demeanor of the team and the results that that team produces.' All right. So what do I see with this? Well, every company, every organization, needs its most influential employees to be firing on all cylinders, and capable of meeting the high and shifting demands of a dynamic environment in corporate history. And the goal of any performance program must be to create a unified, adaptable, resilient, and highly effective team. Now we talk about the team quite a bit. But I want to come back to that Purple Patch pro squad because every organization has a team. It's your leadership team. It's your executive team, whatever it might be. But I asked you this, I think about it. Something else happens when you start to develop the elements of great effectiveness. And it's then that you start to become a squad. I'm going to borrow that phrase from Purple Patch, the Purple Patch pro squad was to be a part of our program, had meaning, developed pride, where they had a connection to the methodology, a connection to the other Purple Patch athletes, where they race, not just for themselves, but for each other. Even though they were competitors they drove each other on to greater success. And it was the reason I think we created multiple World Champions more than 400 wins and victories in professional races. And the average life expectancy of our coaching relationships was very different than the norm. The typical elite coach and athlete worked with each other for somewhere around 18 months to two years, the average coach-athlete relationship at Purple Patch is more than six years, and that's compelling. I also think it's why at the heart of it, we had parallel equal success with our male athletes and female athletes, very rare. Most coaches in my position tend to be designated as a guys coach, or a women's coach. But we had the squad. And so if you're a leader listening to this, do you have a desperate team, just members on a seat, or have you developed the conditions and invested to create a squad? That is how you get exponential results in any arena in life. Because when you do that, a virtuous circle starts to occur. individual members and individual leaders experience sustainable performance, and it raises the output of the team and spurs everyone on to drive to new levels. But also it becomes the foundation for a broader culture of high performance that ultimately unlocks the potential of your organization, and you can reach new heights.
Matt Dixon 49:57
Now you might think, hang on, who's this guy talking here, who's this coach from the side of London trying to educate me on corporate performance? That ain't his role. But I promise you these concepts are what we have consistently observed in action individually with C-suite executives and across teams, especially the Purple Patch pro team over the last 15 years. And so I'm not sitting here claiming to be a business executive coach. But what I do drive is performance to the highest level. Now I'm gonna highlight with a tiny example here. In the survey, we asked respondents about their perspective on engaging in team building and effective practices outside of their normal workplaces. And almost universally the C-suite executives that responded strongly endorsed such activities. So doing something outside of the regular workplace together as a team.
Matt Dixon 50:55
Now, one end of these types of activities, you've got the more industrial leadership programs consulting with team effectiveness, and many of those are helping in educating and actioning around communication, team effectiveness, building a positive relationship with stress, etc. And on the other end of the continuum, you've got more immersive experience, such as outward bound events, ropes courses, and things like that. And they both have their role. But at Purple Patch, we have a unique program here, that sits right in the middle of the continuum, drives behavior change, and is an embedded immersive experience that fosters a more effective team outcome. And we see this in action, actually, on a year-to-year and regular basis in the Purple Patch ecosystem. I'm going to give you a really small micro example of this. Many of you guys might know that we lead regular training camps, all these training camps bring in these types of folks that were respondents in the survey. And what we do is bring a group of attendees together, typically about a week, and we say this is going to be challenging. And we do stretch each individual to close to their grace capacity, sometimes beyond what they believe that they can do. But we do it throughout that training camp by making it a team experience. And what we observe over every single camp we've ever done, and we have done many of them now is throughout the camp, we start to see the development of the elements that our respondents talk about, understanding, trust, support, accountability, a shared purpose, great reward, individual and collective performance. We've never had anyone fail. We've always had people leave feeling like they've achieved and great pride in that. Now that all occurs in an immersive experience for a week. But just imagine now, what would happen if your team engaged in those types of immersive practices in parallel to the work demands over a year.
Matt Dixon 53:10
So I bring you the results of this survey today. Because I think those insights are valuable and interesting for your performance journey. But I also bring this today to in some ways, right a wrong, or at least break a myth. Because I see a very common perception out there, that to have a high-performing executive team or organization that's going to drive results, you can't feel collectively great as a group. High performance just emerges from tough work, toughness, and hard work. And you cannot expect to achieve optimal results. If you're wasting time, ladies and gentlemen, on individual and collective well-being. Well, guess what? I see something different, consistently, individually, and across teams, there is a more powerful truth to this. And that's a simple fact that the best performance emerges directly from a focus on personal well-being. If you get that part, right, and then whatever arena you are chasing, you are going to get the results. And so I don't believe that a focus on fitness or personal wellbeing should be an afterthought. It shouldn't be viewed as some corporate perk. It shouldn't be focused on if there's just any time leftover because it is a direct performance enhancer for individuals, teams, and ultimately whole organizations. Bluntly put, it is a means to an end for better results. Yes, folks, you are as a leader equipped to help individuals invest in their future selves. But also by doing so, you get benefits for the organizations for that investment. Now, you might think that I sound It's a little opinionated, maybe even a little bit cocky up here on my soapbox. And I've got to admit that sometimes I get a little bit like that. But I will say that I do have a history have being subtly contrarian. Because more than 15 years ago, I stood up on that same old wooden soapbox, and I shouted and yelled at the endurance world. The message that I sent was that world-class performance emerges when athletes embrace proper recovery and sleep, as well as a few other habits. And guess what I got for those yelling and shouting? I was abused. I was told that I was a quack snake oil salesman. Well, how things change. Does anyone question the impact and importance of sleep and rejuvenation nowadays? Look, I want to help people and teams get better. I've enjoyed doing it for 15 years, and I have observed consistent patterns. Peer-reviewed research backs up those observations. But as you heard today, 50 of the highest-performing executives, across major organizations endorse and report those very same beliefs and insights. Prioritize your fitness, build habits of performance and strategies of effectiveness, align as a team, no, align and become a squad, and develop a performance culture. That is a path to performance in any arena in life. Folks, thank you very much. I'll see you next time.
Matt Dixon 56:32
Guys, thanks so much for joining. Thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel on YouTube, and you will find it there. And you could subscribe, of course, I'd like to ask you, if you will subscribe also Share It With Your Friends and it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now questions that you have, let me know feel free to add a comment and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. As we commenced this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info at Purple Patch fitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show on the Purple Patch page and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset as we like to call it. And so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun, we're trying hard to make it a special experience. And we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, and do whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
performance, team, purple, patch, athlete, results, habits, survey, methodology, great, respondents, coach, organization, work, high performance, important, individual, build, peer-reviewed research, talk