Do you "choke" under pressure?
August 3rd 2011 22:04
We’ve all heard of, or experienced ourselves, the mental or physical freeze that’s often described as “choking” under pressure. While this is frequently described as a result of anxiety or nervousness, new research points to a type of “log-jam” in the brain.
University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock’s research on this issue, published in her new book, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, describes how a star athlete can collapse in a competition or student fail a critical test, or a professional botch a presentation.
“Choking is suboptimal performance, not just poor performance. It’s a performance that is inferior to what you can do and have done in the past and occurs when you feel pressure to get everything right,” argues Beilock. By studying how the brain works when we are doing our best – and when we choke – Beilock has formulated practical ideas about how to overcome performance lapses at critical moments.
Thinking too much about what you are doing, because you are worried about losing a competition or worrying about failing in general, can lead to over-analyzing the situation. This “paralysis-by-analysis” occurs when people try to control every aspect of what they are doing in an attempt to guarantee success. However, this increased attempt at control can backfire, disrupting what was once a fluid or flawless performance.
The brain also can work to sabotage performance in ways. Pressure-filled situations can deplete a part of the brain’s processing power known as working memory, which is critical to many everyday activities. Beilock contends that working memory helps people perform at their best in physical, intellectual and applied situations, including business. Very talented and able people have larger working memories, but this is where the problem arises. When anxiety or fear creeps in, the working memory becomes overtaxed, and you lose the brainpower to succeed.
Stress can lead to choking and undermine performance in the world of business, where competition for sales, giving high-stakes presentations or even meeting your boss in the elevator are occasions when choking can squander opportunities.
Paying too much attention to well-learned skill execution may be detrimental to performance. For example, many aspects of public speaking may ordinarily be automatic. However, lawyers giving a closing argument to a jury may feel pressure to perform, and as a result, think too much about what they are doing –and stutter or lose their train of thought. Training under conditions that have individuals attend to their performance, or, conversely, purposely taking one’s mind off well-learned skill performance under pressure, can help. For example, repeating a key word, singing a song, seeing a favorite image, recalling a pleasurable event, can help prevent choking.
I tell my clients who have a habit of choking: “Think about the journey, not the outcome,” Beilock advised. “Remind yourself that you have the background to succeed and that you are in control of the situation. This can be the confidence boost you need to ace your pitch, presentation, and meeting or to succeed in other ways when facing life’s challenges.”
Ray Williams is president of Ray Williams Associates, a leadership training and executive mentoring company in Vancouver. He can be reached at ray@raywilliams.ca
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