Phil Parker Peak Performance (P4) Training
Many of the stories in this book recount the inspirational tales of how individuals used the Lightning Process to overcome massive difficulties against all odds. This has naturally led to people who don’t have any ‘issues’ or health problems wanting to know if the Lightning Process could enhance their performance in other fields. The standard Lightning Process seminar is particularly focused on health and wellbeing and, although it can also enhance your personal performance, I have designed a specifically tailored programme for use in business called Phil Parker Peak Performance, or P4 for short. Although it isn’t the same as the Lightning Process, it earns a brief place in this book as it was designed by adapting its powerful elements to suit business environments. What follows are some intriguing stories and thoughts from this new and exciting field.
Gavin was one of our earliest business clients. Working with him and others helped me develop P4. He wanted to make his successful stock market trading business even more successful. Before I saw him, his business was doing very well, but he did notice that on days when, through no fault of his own, the markets had gone against him he had started to get into bad trading habits. This had resulted in reckless trading, where he ditched his usual sound method for effective trading for more of a gambling mentality, trying to recapture his losses with more risky trades. This strategy, more often than not, meant he made further losses, which he again tried to reverse by more and more risky trades.
As soon as he learned and applied the training, these bad trading losses became a thing of the past. As a result of being able to manage his state of mind to stay calm and focused when he really needed it, he was able to avoid certain kinds of behaviour that compelled him to take unnecessary risks and hence reduce his losses. His business success improved dramatically, and now he’s one of the most respected traders in his field.
If you’re reading this book from the perspective of a peak performer, chief executive or business manager, then ask yourself, ‘What are the core issues that cause the most problems in business?’
Write them down.
My experience is that many of the issues that arise in business are ones of either poor communication between departments, customers and clients or, even more importantly, through poor levels of self-management.
We can verify that by asking the question: ‘If you think of a problem in your business at the moment, how much simpler would it be if there was excellent communication between all parties involved?’
Also ask, ‘And what if the people who are part of your organization were excellent at managing their “own stuff” rather than avoiding dealing with the issues and problems, passing the buck or blaming other people?’
Looking at the core actions of a successful business, in order to get a job done effectively there needs to be:
Most businesses already have, can buy in or develop knowledge bases and skills – but that doesn’t necessarily make them successful.
All businesses have to create opportunities to be successful. This could mean anything from going to a meeting to pitch or cold calling through telesales. But no matter how many calls you make or opportunities you open up, the time will be wasted if you don’t know one of the key tools of the P4 – how to get into the correct state of mind
Emotional intelligence and the ideas of the value of your workforce (intellectual capital) have been highlighted a great deal recently as the keys to success. But no matter how good your workforce is, the most important question has to be, ‘Can they get into the right state of mind to do the job effectively, at precisely the time that they need to, all of the time?’
This is exactly what P4 delivers, as it trains people to be able to make conscious decisions as to what state of mind they are in. On a very simple level, this could mean knowing how to get into a state of confidence before a presentation, how to get into a creative frame of mind when needed and, equally, how to be able to switch off from work and get into a relaxed/non-work state of mind at the end of the day.
Most people recognize that this is an ideal way to operate. In fact, people who are very successful in all areas of life are able to do this already, but most people just don’t know how to do it. P4 teaches you how to do exactly that.
In spite of their success, many successful business people, in a similar way to the peak athletes we discussed in chapter 7, aren’t consciously aware of what they do to consistently generate their success. If they were, then they would be excellent teachers of their success strategy, and their teams would be as successful as they are. Some, but not many, successful business people are able to do this.
So, one of the things that we look at in P4 is for peak performers to discover exactly how they have maintained their success, so they can either personally disseminate it throughout their organization, or employ someone else, skilled in P4, to do it for them.
Successful business people have huge levels of effectiveness, competence and success in key areas of their lives. But they can often seem to fail to reproduce that consistency of performance in other equally key areas. These include making time for themselves or their family, switching off from work, losing weight, eating and drinking more reasonably, etc. P4 can use your success strategies from one area and teach you how to apply your strategy for success (i.e. where you are already an expert) to an area where you’d like to be more successful.
This naturally leads us on to a core area that P4 is applied to – burnout and pre-burnout. In the tough economic climate, the drive to work longer and harder is ever present and stress at work is a constant for many. By looking at how to switch off the PER, P4 addresses how you can be effective and stay healthy. This is important for you on a personal level and, equally important, for the bottom line of your employer or company. Having a member of the team off on long-term sick leave is damaging to finances and morale. Instead, P4 trains you in how to master stress, encourages healthy ways of working and helps prevent burnout, which is good news for everyone.
Much like the Lightning Process P4 is more than just a training programme. How many team-building courses make a real difference when everyone comes back to the office? The Lightning Process and P4 are designed to be instantly transferable from the training seminar to the real world. So, once you have mastered how to apply it in one situation, you can translate those skills to any other area of your life or business, with a minimal amount of support from your trainer. You can get full current details from the website www.p4training.com