Unleashing Our Superhuman Potential

Humans at Work with Michael Glazer

How can you achieve more with the capabilities you already have? Learn how to balance high performance and well-being with practical advice for tapping into three sources of inner power: potential, mindset, and physiology.

Jim Steel is an award-winning author, strategist, and consultant who has spent the past two decades helping clients in the UK, Europe and Middle East reach their potential and improve their mental, physical, and emotional well-being. He is also author of new book Unashamedly Superhuman, which is an incisive and eye-opening guide that combines two critical areas: high performance and well-being, and offers practical advice for unlocking our hidden potential.

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Episode Highlights

3:25 Authenticity, humility, and well-being as conduits to performance.

6:17 Three internal sources of power: potential, mindset and physiology

11:00 How to tap into inner potential to become stronger

14:03 The EDGE model of performance

20:09 How much time should we spend in high-performance mode?

22:14 Adopting habits for recovery to maintain motivation and avoid burnout

26:26 Using micro-recoveries during the workday vs back-to-back meetings

42:40 Performance = potential - interference

49:11 How self-talk and identity affect performance

54:25 The benefits of cold-water exposure

Jim’s view on the greatest unmet wellbeing need at work today

"The greatest area of development is building the mindset in the team that says recovery is part of your High Performance Strategy. Creating a culture where [leaders] support it, encourage it, [and] even incentivize it or reward it is something we should be making a priority."

What “working with humans” means to Jim

“Two things come to mind here. The first one is a bit deep. I mean, if you zoom out and look at that question, it's like the essence of life. Is anything more important than working with humans?

It's where everything happens, you know, by working with humans: how we set our benchmarks for success, where we learn and hone our skills, where we develop emotional intelligence. So I don't know that there's anything more important than working with humans in life.

There's something else that comes to mind too. And it's the fact that you use the word “with” specifically. I do this exercise with where [clients are] put into the teams and we create a challenge in the room. And the obvious answer is to collaborate, right? That's the end goal of the exercise. And I've run this particular one when we make it really clear that the obvious answer is to collaborate. [But] people don't collaborate, they go into their silos.

And when I unpack the exercise, the one fundamental thing that got in the way was I said to the room, “let's see who can get there first.” And I create this competition, or at least the illusion of competition. And I'm all for competition. It can drive innovation and creativity. But it depends how you define competition.

So what does competition mean? To conspire against or to conspire with the opposition? I want you to be at your absolute best, because that's going to cause me to play at my best. And I can conspire with you, not against you, in order for us all to win. And, so I like the fact that you asked a question using “with” humans, because that I think is a critical element of what creates high performance within teams.”

Resources

Follow: Jim on LinkedIn

Read: Unashamedly Superhuman