Do you believe in yin and yang, the concept of dualism? In this Expert Insight Interview, Brian Levenson discusses his new book Shift Your Mind: 9 Mental Shifts to Thrive in Preparation and Performance. Brian Levenson is a founder, executive coach, and mental performance coach at Strong Skills.
This interview discusses:
- Mindsets during preparation and performance
- Balancing dualities
Preparation vs Performance
When we are learning, improving, growing in something, we are in the preparation stage. When we are executing some action and getting evaluated based on the results, we are in the performance stage. For these two different stages, we need two different mindsets. In sales, for example, everything that includes learning about your client is preparation. Performance comes into play only when you start to propose an offer. We prepare way more than we think. The preparation stage is reading, listening to a podcast, being humble, focused on the future, analytical, and experimental. One the other side, when we get into a performance mind, we should become more arrogant, adaptable, and presently focused. These two mindsets should not be mutually exclusive but well balanced. Only the best performers are humble enough to spend life learning from people they know and do not know in order to shine during a performance stage. We consider arrogance as bad behavior but being arrogant in terms of believing that you are the right person for the job due to humble preparation is okay.
Dualities Can Balance
Nowadays, we have access to too much information that we all became data analytical. There is data for almost everything. So, analysis is beneficial in the preparation stage. But when it comes to performance, we should focus more on our instincts because sometimes there are circumstances in which data points to one way while our gut feeling shows towards another. One thing in which modern technology cannot compete with humans is our intuition. Also, in a preparation mindset, it is good to be fearful because that shows that we care how we will do our job. But then, in performance, we get to be fearless because we know that because of that fear earlier, we have practiced enough. And lastly, for every selfish, there is a balance of selfless. We need a level of selfishness to succeed, and the level of selflessness to excel. The key to being able to act a certain way in performance is to work hard enough in the preparation to earn the right for it. In conclusion, too many times in life, we think that we have to do things one way, but actually, we can hold two things at once as long as we know when is the right time to use which one.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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