Mental Preparation Secrets of Top Athletes, Entertainers, and Surgeons

An interview with Daniel McGinn

by Sarah Green Carmichael

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael. To get psyched up for the big game, sports teammates give each other pep talks, listen to an exciting song during warm-ups, or follow a particular pregame routine. Then there’s a locker room speech, often dramatized in popular movies, where the coach inspires individuals to greatness.

But what’s the business equivalent of the pep talk? When you have a big presentation, job interview, quarter-ending sales meeting, or situation where you really need to be on, how do you prepare for it? If you’re like a lot of people, you probably think about what you’re going to say and what you’re going to wear, and then you just kind of, well, show up.

HBR’s senior editor Dan McGinn thinks we can all do better than that by taking a cue from how the best athletes and performers prepare. He’s the author of the article “The Science of Pep Talks” in the July–August 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review, and he is also the author of the book Psyched Up: How the Science of Mental Preparation Can Help You Succeed. Dan, thank you for joining us today.

Daniel McGinn: Thank you, Sarah.

So did you have to get psyched up to write this book?

I did actually. Writing this book did change the way I get ready to perform my job as a writer every morning or many mornings. If you watch sports, you become pretty accustomed to seeing the athletes and what they do when they warm up. They tend to have headphones on, and you know that they’re listening to a certain set of songs. It’s not just up to chance. You’re used to seeing locker room speeches. You’re used to seeing that gaze, that locked-in look that they have, and that focus.

And they’re taught to do that. There are sports psychologists who teach them exactly what they should be thinking about before a game. The argument I have is that more of our jobs are like that these days. It’s less like factory work where you’re doing the same thing every day and more about the big pitch, the presentation, the sales call, and that we should learn to do what these athletes do to try to lock ourselves in.

I think about coming into my job every day and that maybe we should run through the halls and give every editor a high five and then chew a pen and then put the pen back in the bin or other crazy things. How feasible is it to do some of these things on a daily basis?

Yeah, obviously if our boss Adi Ignatius gave us a speech like Knute Rockne did before we sat down to edit articles, we would all think it was kind of crazy. If you don’t know who that is, Rockne was the legendary Notre Dame football coach from the 1920s.

So why do people have rituals? And why is there a lot of research that suggests that they work? Well, one theory is that they help us remember how much practice we’ve done. They help get our bodies and our minds into the groove. The other is that they give us something to focus on other than being nervous and anxious. Think of a funeral. Funerals are very awkward occasions, and there’s this whole set of rituals about what we do when we go through it. That’s because it’s awkward, and we want something to do to not think about the nervousness.

So there’s a distractive element to rituals. They just help your body get into the groove. I’m not suggesting that we should run out and chest bump every day before we go to our desks. But I am saying that if you have some quiet, maybe private, thing that you do to get your day started, you might be a little bit better at it.

So a lot of what athletes and performers do is about reducing their pregame jitters. But isn’t some amount of anxiety supposed to help you amp up for a big moment?

Yeah, no question. I was not a very good high school athlete. And when I started this reporting, I thought a lot of this was about adrenaline and about getting yourself psyched up, amped up, highly energized. The more research I did, the more I found out that that’s really a simplistic view.

Adrenaline is a physiological response. But it’s much more about what you’re feeling, and it’s about reducing your anxiety, trying to boost your confidence, and trying to manage your energy level so that it’s appropriate to what you’re trying to do. If you’re a WWE wrestler, that’s a little bit different than giving a commencement address. So you need to calibrate the energy level to make sure it’s right for what you’re doing.

What about trying to increase your confidence, though? I mean, can these rituals and things really help with that? Or is it like the movie Dumbo, where little Dumbo had that silly feather and thought that’s how he could fly? Is it just that this helps me because I believe it helps me?

Yeah, so the feather would be an example of a superstitious ritual because clearly the feather doesn’t really help him fly. It’s just a placebo effect. What can help you gain confidence is controlling your thought patterns and thinking about what I’d call your greatest hits. So, Sarah, for the show, if you were going to get yourself psyched up, you should think about the best podcast interviews you’ve done. You might actually want to go back for five minutes at your desk and listen to a couple of them.

Before I walked in the room with you today, I went back and listened to the best interview I’ve had with you because it made me think, gosh, you’re good at this. And that’s what you want to be thinking before you go into these environments. It sounds cheesy. You may remember the Stuart Smalley self-affirmations from Saturday Night Live in the ’90s: “I’m special … People like me.” But it does work. The messages there are to be relentlessly upbeat and positive. Be confident. Remember your greatest hits. And basically talk yourself up and psych yourself up with the idea that you’ve done this before, and you can do it again.

Was there any organization you came across where they really do make you go back and actually listen or watch your greatest hits?

At the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, I spent a day in what they call the Center for Enhanced Performance, which is a team of psychologists that work at West Point. And one of the things they do is take their athletes and their cadets and put them in these enclosed, almost egg-shaped chairs. And they play audio tracks that they’ve created for each cadet that talk about how great they are.

The one I watched was a lacrosse goalie, and there’s a professional actor narrating along with music: “John, you’re the best lacrosse goalie ever. Remember the game against Shrewsbury High when you did this.” So it really is a greatest-hits kind of thing. That’s probably the most tangible, visceral example I have found of that.

Could it ever work so well that you’d get to a point where you were insanely overconfident and then that would actually lead you to perform worse?

Sure, I think in a sports setting or in a business setting, we certainly see examples of organizations that become overconfident, too convinced of their dominance, too complacent. But I think for your average, everyday business performers thinking about a job interview, a pitch scenario, a big presentation, or a negotiation, probably the average person suffers a little bit too much from a lack of confidence or an imposter syndrome. On the whole, most people are going to benefit from trying to dial it up a little bit.

One of the things in the book that really surprised me was the part where you explain that golfers who used Tiger Woods’s clubs or clubs they were told were Tiger Woods’s clubs—I’m not sure he participated in the study—actually golfed better than players who were just using any old random club. How does something like that work?

They call that process “social contagion,” and it’s the theory that knowing that someone celebrated or highly accomplished has touched an object physically imbues some magical powers. I tried to test that out in the book. I reached out to Malcolm Gladwell, who’s a very well-known and acclaimed nonfiction writer. I asked him if I could write the book on a keyboard that he had used. Knowing that such a great writer has typed on these same keys and struggled through it absolutely helped me. I don’t know if Tiger Woods’s club would help my golf game though. My golf game is really beyond help. [Laughter]

Yes, I’ve actually read about similar studies—I’m not sure how good they are—that show that when women wear heels, they feel more confident. I think in my case, the opposite is true, because I have a really hard time walking in heels. But that’s something where if you are Stephen Colbert or David Ortiz or one of these big stars you talk about in the book, you can really control your environment so that you can perform the ritual. But I think for most of us in offices, it feels like we’re not in control of our space. So how can those of us who are not David Ortiz or Stephen Colbert really carve out time for these rituals that are so powerful?

They don’t have to be super-elaborate, and they don’t have to be something that anyone else can even recognize you’re doing. So I don’t do this every day, but I’ll put on a pair of noise-canceling headphones. That has a functional purpose because it blocks out noise, but also the feel of it on my head is a signal to myself that it’s time to get to work here. Some of it is just this Pavlovian signal to our bodies that, OK, it’s time for me to get to work. So it doesn’t need to be throwing chalk dust in the air or crazy hand gestures. It can be something as simple as putting something on.

That reminds me of the podcast interview that you did with Jerry Seinfeld. I actually think we have a little bit of him talking about that.

Seinfeld is a great example of how these rituals don’t need to be super-elaborate or obvious. These rituals can be fairly simple, but they can still be effective.

One of the people you profile in the book I thought was really interesting was the surgeon who has a whole routine. Tell us a little bit about that guy.

His name is Mark McLaughlin, and he’s a brain and spinal surgeon who operates in New Jersey. In high school, he was a very good wrestler. Part of the reason he was so successful as a wrestler was he worked with a sports psychologist to come up with a routine for what he did in the last few minutes before he wrestled. It involved visualization and a lot of the other kind of techniques we’ve been talking about.

He ended his wrestling career and went to med school. He began to specialize in neurosurgery. As he got into the operating room, he realized this is a lot like wrestling in the sense that it’s very high pressure. If things go wrong, they can go very wrong. So he incorporated this same process; he has a set of rituals he does; he has certain kinds of music he listens to. He’s very intentional about how much caffeine he has to keep himself alert and to maintain the right level of energy. And he’s a great example of the kind of person who says, I need a process the same way I did back when I was an athlete, and if I do these four or five things before I perform every day, I’m going to be better at it.

How did that fit into his workplace?

I’ve watched him operate. Before he operates, he pushes a chair into a corner of the locker room, puts his iPhone on his chest, listens to Bach, and takes three or four minutes. The nurse comes and gets him as soon as the patient’s ready to go, and he’s quiet when he scrubs.

Another thing he does is keep an old set of operating equipment, surgical tools, on the tray that he never uses because they belonged to the person who trained him, and he just feels better knowing that he has this piece. It’s sort of like the Malcolm Gladwell keyboard. It’s this superstition that if it’s there, it’s like my mentor’s in the room with me. So a lot of the stuff is not as obtrusive as you might think it is.

Was there any other time when you were a human guinea pig, testing out these theories on yourself as you worked on the book?

One of the chapters in the book, which is the focus of the HBR article, is on pep talks. While I was reporting that, I was also coaching a Little League team. I definitely didn’t go crazy giving Rockne-style speeches to a group of 10-year-olds. But I did become a little bit more intentional and had more of a plan about what I was going to say before and after a game.

When it comes to pep talks, one of the big takeaways is that someone should be very intentional about whether they’re trying to give strategy and information or trying to evoke emotion. And so I did. I tried to come up with something that I would say to these Little Leaguers that would boost their confidence before a game. So that’s one area where there was a little bit of a guinea pig action.

Did they at any point realize that you were experimenting on them? Or did they just see this as the pep talk that coach always gives us?

No, they’re 10 years old. I think the challenge there, and I think it’s a good point, is you can get away with it with 10-year-olds. I also have a 16-year-old, and I wouldn’t get very far. The moment my older children see me going into anything resembling a pep talk, say, if I’m driving them to the driver’s test, they just tell me to shut up. It’s more of a challenge with a group like that.

You’ve mentioned that it was important to decide whether you’re trying to convey emotion or explain some kind of tactical strategic thing. What else do people really need to do when they’re trying to give a good pep talk?

Deciding between those two tactics is really important, and that research comes out of studies of athletic pep talks. There’s some research that looks at whether anger can be a useful motivating force. And there’s some that says that you can’t use it all the time, but if you’re usually fairly calm when you’re talking to your team or your subordinates, and every once in a while you do flare up a bit, that can actually have an effect. So that’s one tool that a manager or a coach might keep in their arsenal.

The other thing I did was go to Yelp, the online review organization. They have a very large sales force. They make their money by selling ads to local pizza parlors, beauty salons, mechanics, and the like. I went there on the last day of the month. They sell two or three times as many ads on the last day because they’re struggling to make their quota. I watched the sales chief give the pep talk in the morning.

She talked for about 20 minutes; I transcribed it and sent it off to some academics who study this. They said she did exactly what the theory suggests. She gave a lot of directions, was very specific about what they should be doing. She was very empathetic, which is another thing you’re supposed to do in pep talks. Acknowledge that what you’re asking your team to do is hard, and acknowledge that they’re doing a good job and that you’re thankful for it. And the third element is what I call meaning making, which is trying to connect the task that they’re doing every day to some larger purpose for the organization.

We actually recorded a little bit of that, so maybe we could listen to that right now.

So there she’s acknowledging the real star performers. She then goes on to connect what those stars did with what everybody could do. She makes the point that you wouldn’t have gotten hired here if you couldn’t do the same job that that person did. You’ve all been trained the same. You have the same resources. Just in the same way that Sarah did it, you can do it, too. It’s a very effective tactic that people can learn to do in these speeches.

So when you’re trying to give someone a pep talk, part of the reason it could be effective is because they would have faith in you. But it does seem like it could very easily become sort of a joke.

Absolutely, and The Office has parodied it very well. There’s all sorts of great parodies of pep talks online. The success of it comes back to this meaning-making element that the academics talk about. The reason that the pep talks on The Office are so ridiculous is that the people working there really don’t care about the overall mission of the organization. They don’t think the work they’re doing is making the world a better place. If you’re on a team where you really do care about what the organization or the team is trying to do and you do believe in the cause, then it’s a little bit easier to connect the tasks that you’re presenting to the team with this larger mission.

Right. Would it work even if the mission was just, we all want to make a lot of money? Would that be enough of a mission to make it work?

Clearly it does in the sense if you look at The Wolf of Wall Street; there’s a big pep talk in that movie. At the end of the day, all those people were doing was trying to make money, and they were doing it pretty unethically. One of the examples that the academics in the HBR article give is what if you were the assistant manager at a fast-food franchise trying to give a pep talk to a bunch of high school students who are working part-time there. Do they really believe in the work that they’re doing? No, they’re doing it to get a little bit of work experience, to have some pocket money.

In those cases, you really do have to make the case about where our interests are aligned, because by helping the company do well, you’ll make money, and your jobs will be more secure, and we can hire more people. It definitely does take some creativity. I mean, it’s one thing if you work for a company that’s trying to cure cancer. It’s another if you’re doing something that’s not quite as socially helpful as that.

Are there other things that, as a coach or manager, you could do if you feel there’s an employee on your team who’s just not focused or who isn’t bringing enough energy to work to try to psych them up a little bit?

Sure, when we think of pep talks or locker room speeches, partly because of movies, the image that comes up is one person speaking to a whole room full of people. At Yelp, the sales chief gave a 20-minute speech to 600 salespeople. But then she spent the whole rest of the day going around desk by desk, one on one, reinforcing and empathizing and talking about very specific things: “OK, Sarah, you’re about to call an auto mechanic and try to make a sale. Well, here are a couple of things to keep in mind with that space and how to sell.”

So what we think of as coaching is really just the one-on-one version of a pep talk, and I think the same things come to mind. Try to build confidence. Try to be empathetic. Try to do things that make people less anxious than they might be. Those are all things that good managers do every day. Just try to come up with a formula or a strategy to specifically accomplish that.

And maybe suggest that they perform a little ritual before they open their email inbox or something.

It definitely can’t hurt.

Dan, thank you so much for coming on today.

Thank you, Sarah. This is fun.

And go get ’em, and go sell some books. Sorry. [Laughter] That was awful.

That was great.

I won’t do any more pep talks. That’s Dan McGinn. He’s a senior editor at Harvard Business Review. He wrote the book Psyched Up, and his article “The Science of Pep Talks” is in the July–August 2017 of Harvard Business Review. You can find it at HBR.org. Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael.

Originally published as an HBR IdeaCast, June 29, 2017.