Emotional Control
I'm still ruminating on an excellent Australian Open Tennis a couple of weeks ago. In particular the women's final between the exhuberant Anna Ivanovic and Maria Sharapova, who at the age of 20, already has a steely reputation for her emotional control and focus under pressure.
This was vividly displayed in the first set, when Ivanovic had stormed back with some excellent aggressive play from being 2-4 down to being 5-4 up, and 0-30 up on Sharapova's serve - 2 points from winning the set. Ivanovic's fist pumping celebrations reached new heights, almost as if she had already won the match. IN contrast , Sharapova's routine and focus never changed. What happened next? Well Ivanovic simply started making errors that had not previously been there, including a strange drop shot at 15-30 that had very little chance of success. The momentum had changed, and Ivanovic never regained it, going on to lose 5-7,3-6.
Emotional control was never more vividly acted out - both in Shapova's ability to be completely focused on "the here and now" and Ivanovic's bubbling over when the match was no where near over. This is a constant theme in my work with athletes preparing for the Olympics: the ability to keep in mind "this is what I need to do now", and executing it with full focus. Kiplings words from 'If' also come back to me - often used to deride Britain's traditional amateur code of trying hard - "If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same" - yet in any high performance activity, when thoughts of winning or losing take our focus away from simple focus on what we need to do to execute successfully, then lose we most certainly will.
This is a central part of the emotional intelligence we work with at P1, with business leaders, coaches, and athletes. - Whilst the ideal is never to lose this mental and emotional focus, as human beings we inevitably fray at times - and the key skill is to be able to catch the slip before it gets damaging.
