Virgil’s “They can because they think they can” works for high performers. But clutch-time winners “Must because they believe they must.” High performers and clutch-time winners share focus, discipline, adaptability, and presence. All engage. The differentiating factor for clutch-time winner is fear and desire. They care more.
We see this over and over again in sporting events like the NCAA basketball tournament. Time after time, including this past weekend, amazing teams like St. John’s come into March Madness with amazing records only to get upset by teams with far less successful seasons to that point. It’s not that those amazing teams didn’t have great strengths, great coaching, and great preparation. It’s that they just didn’t deliver on that day, in that game, at that moment, in the clutch.
We see this over and over again in other endeavors. Amazing individuals and teams assemble amazing records only to fall short when we least expect it. While they may have had great strengths, great leadership, and great preparation, they didn’t deliver on that project, that accountability, at that moment, in the clutch.
Factors driving all high performers including clutch-time winners
Focus
All high-performers, including clutch-time winners, stay focused on their goals, especially during high-pressure situations.
Discipline
High-performers are disciplined, nesting their actions in tactical plans nested in strategic choices nested in the organization’s culture. They practice disciplined delegation with inspiring direction, enabling resources, empowering authority, and credible accountability.
Adaptability
High performers are adaptable. As Darwin popularized Herbert Spencer’s idea, “”It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the most adaptable to change.” Species and organizations adapt over time. High performers adapt all the time.
Being Present
High performers put past failures behind them, carrying forward only what they learned and how those failures made them stronger. They fully engage with the most current challenge or opportunity.
The differentiating factor for clutch-time winners
Fear and Desire
Where all high-performers engage, clutch-time winners are more committed because of their balance of fear of failure and desire for success. They must because they know they must. At that moment, in the clutch, they simply care more.
Of course, I’m oversimplifying. Of course, every situation is different. Of course, clutch-time winners get distracted. Of course, they miss shots. But, more often than not, all else being equal, clutch-time winners care more and win more.
Implications for you
This is why you need to inspire, enable, empower, and charge your team before clutch moments.
Inspiring is about aligning all behind a shared purpose. This starts with the mission – why what you’re doing matters. It includes a vision – picturing success in which all can see themselves. And it includes values – fleshed out in guiding principles that inform how “your” people think, relate, and act – the core of a BRAVE culture.
Enabling requires resources, training, and development building on innate talent with learned knowledge, practiced skills and consistent routines, hard-won experience under pressure, and craft-level caring and sensibilities where appropriate.
Empowering is the hand-over. The members of the team individually and collectively have to own their own self-control and mental toughness, with the freedom to adapt as appropriate and needed.
Charging is the last piece, helping them tap into their fears and desires so they care. You can’t make them care. But you can hold a mirror up to them to help them realize why they care at clutch moments.
This is why coaches give teams final pep talks before big games and big moments. Those are about bringing an immediacy to all the work that’s gone before. Ted Lasso’s “BELIEVE” sign was not about his believing in the team. It was about the team believing in itself. And it didn’t work until they cared enough to put it back together after it had been ripped apart. Then it became their sign.
The people on your work teams are professionals. Right? They should show up. They should engage. And they will. But, if you want more than high-performing professionals, if you want clutch-time winners, they have to care.
So, do inspire, enable, and empower them over time. And give them pep talks before clutch moments like launching a new design project, initiating a production change, starting up a new collaboration, opening a new customer, or kicking off a new program or project or important event.
John Hall
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