The Winning Factor: Inspire Gold-Medal Performance in Your Employees

The Winning Factor – hardcover flap copy

The best Olympic coaches inspire, focus, and drive their athletes past mental and physical discomfort, fierce and unwavering competition, and a constantly ticking clock, enabling them to reach heights they may never have thought themselves capable of. Similarly, great managers draw out exceptional performance from their people. In either arena, the key to success lies in igniting a personal desire to push past barriers, never give up, and continually soar above and beyond the expected.

Throughout his twenty-five years of involvement within the Olympic movement and the corporate world, working with top-tier athletes and Fortune 500 executives, Peter Jensen has seen firsthand the tremendous results that superior coaching can produce. And what he’s found is that serious, sustained achievement is never merely the result of inborn talent or external, environmental factors. What ultimately makes the difference between an occasionally strong performer and a truly remarkable one is a third, winning factor . . . a personal desire to succeed—an inner fire that, as a manager, it’s your job to ignite.

In The Winning Factor, Jensen shows you how to translate the best practices of world-class Olympic coaches into the everyday business realm. The book reveals the five key behaviors of medal-winning coaches, including the ability to:

Manage Yourself

As a manager and a mentor, you’re also human. This book gives you the tools you need to become attuned to your own beliefs and aware of your impact on others.

Build Trust

Establish a sense of trust, safety, and security in your performers to encourage the kind of full disclosure and engagement necessary for them to develop as high achievers.

Encourage and Use Imagery

People can’t do things they can’t imagine. This book shows you how to use the language of imagery to create vivid—and prophetic—pictures of achievement for your people.

Uncover and Work Through Blocks

Learn how to uncover the hidden obstacles your employees face, and encourage the commitment your people need to face them.

Embrace Adversity

Today’s business climate is filled with fast-paced changes, including mergers, downsizings, and unexpected setbacks. Show your people how to turn adversity into an advantage.

Filled with engaging stories and enlightening examples, The Winning Factor does more than give you the Olympic-level strategies you need to develop your people. It provides you with the championship guidance you need to make them passionate about developing themselves.

PETER JENSEN, Ph.D., is founder of Performance Coaching Inc., one of Canada’s premiere management training companies. He has attended seven Olympic Games as a member of the Canadian team and worked with over 60 medal-winning athletes and their coaches as a sports psychology consultant. He is also a top-rated instructor at Queen’s School of Business. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Passion. Fire. Dedication. Commitment. Imagine what your employees could accomplish if they exhibited the traits shared by world-class Olympic athletes. As their manager, it’s your job to light the spark that rockets your people off to accomplish great things. Over decades spent as a high-performance psychology consultant in the corporate world and the arena of Olympic and international sports, Peter Jensen knows that great performance—whether it’s on the track or in the office—depends not on great genes or even on external nurturing, but on a third, winning factor that ultimately comes from within.

Filled with insights on leadership from Olympic coaches, along with guidelines for applying these lessons to the workplace, The Winning Factor shows you how to coach your people for Olympic-level success.

When it comes to winning the gold or providing extraordinary benefit to one’s organization, what is it that separates the “igniters” from the “extinguishers” those who inspire their employees to rise to tremendous accomplishment, and those whose employees seemingly just fizzle out? The difference lies in tapping into the Third Factor, a winning sense of self-direction, self-awareness, and self-responsibility shared by winners the world over. Your job isn’t to push your performers to greatness . . . but to pull it from them, releasing the inner resources lying dormant within them.

Based on five key practices of medal-winning coaches—managing yourself, building trust, using imagery, overcoming blocks, and embracing adversity—The Winning Factor reveals a wealth of strategies you can use to “plug into” the Third Factor in any employee and unlock incredible potential. The book reveals the secrets behind great communication and truly effective feedback. You’ll learn how to build competence, commitment, capacity, and passion in your people, and take on a more profound role than simply supervising, directing, or managing. The book provides real-world, practical insight on how to develop others, even in the face of pressure, time constraints, internal blocks, and the most intimidating competition the corporate world can dish out.

Your own performance is judged by the results you’re able to consistently inspire from your people. Packed with engaging stories and eye-opening examples and based on the best practices of world-class Olympic coaches, The Winning Factor is a practical playbook you can use to untap your own potential for developing others.