Translator: Queenie Lee
Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
Thank you very much, Lee.
I'm going to talk to you about you,
and how you can be brilliant
every single day.
So, a big ask!
I spent the last 15 years working
with some of the best CEOs
and executives around the world.
One of my observations
is some of them are absolutely fantastic,
but the problem is they can't
be fantastic every single day,
which reminds me of a story.
I was sat on the couch at home,
watching the TV about five years ago.
Not that I'm a golfer, but I
was watching the British Open.
A very good golfer,
Sergio Garcia was playing,
and he'd been brilliant all week,
dominating the field.
It came to the last round,
and he was fantastic.
On Sunday morning,
in the front nine, he scored 39 shots.
The previous day, on the Saturday,
he'd scored 29 shots
on exactly the same holes.
So overnight, he'd lost
ten shots on the same hole.
What happened was Padraig Harrington
came past him and won the British Open,
and the Claret Jug.
Very interestingly, exactly a year later,
Padraig Harrington beat Sergio Garcia.
I think it was in the US Masters,
Sergio played brilliantly all week.
He got to the Sunday,
and something went wrong,
he was leading the field by six shots,
and on the Sunday again,
Padraig Harrington came past him.
So that was really interesting to me.
And Peter Alliss,
the famous golf commentator,
is watching this, and says,
"It's a funny old game, golf."
(Laughter)
As though, it's a complete mystery
why these things happen.
As though there's a complete loss of form.
So I'm shouting at the television.
It's no mystery to me.
Actually, I know why that happened,
and I know why Sergio Garcia basically
between 2007 and 2008
really didn't learn that much,
because he made exactly the same mistake
in 2008 as he'd made in 2007.
So I'm going to share with you
the secret about that -
some of the things that we've been
teaching the executives,
bringing in some neuroscience,
which is my background;
and going to reveal some secrets
as to how your system works.
When I go through that,
and I'm going to break
with TED tradition at the end of the talk.
We're going to have a bit
of live demonstration of something.
But I want to just give you model
that we work to that starts to explain
why Sergio or anybody or why you
may lose performance,
and what you need to do to maintain
your brilliance every single day.
If we're all after the same goal,
we're after improving
our performance in some way,
or the results in some way.
It doesn't really matter
what kind of results we're talking about.
Whether they were talking
about sporting results,
whether we're talking
about business results,
academic performance,
relationship performance,
sexual performance.
Don't know why I'm looking
at Simon when I say that!
(Laughter)
But whatever we're talking about ...
(Laughter)
What is going to improve our performance?
First and foremost,
in order to change the result,
you've got to focus on people's behavior.
So we've got to do things differently
in order to get a different result.
Most performance appraisals in industry
focus on what you've been doing.
You go to see your boss,
and he said, "Oh, I've got some 360 data.
You've been doing these kind
of things, that's really good;
these other things; not so good.
So a bit less of that please,
and a bit more of that,
I want you to do that and less of that."
Sometimes that actually works,
and you get a different result.
But an awful lot of times,
it doesn't make much difference.
It will only make a difference
if the leaders stood over that employee
cracking the whip
and making sure they do this.
So it's necessary but insufficient.
And the reason being is that even when
people know what to do,
sometimes they just don't do it.
I know I ought to make another
thousand calls to a thousand customers,
but do you know what?
It's Friday afternoon.
Mmm, I'm not going to do that.
So it's not enough just to focus
on what you can see
on the surface, on the behaviors.
You've got to get to grips
with what's on the inside of individuals.
Why do people do what they do.
If you really want to change
performance permanently,
and be brilliant every single day,
you've got to get
to grips with the inside.
First and foremost, what's
driving behavior is how people think.
How you think determines what you do.
When I'm coaching a CEO,
if he thinks I'm an idiot,
he's not going to do what I say.
Why would he?
Or if he thinks
what I'm saying is rubbish,
he won't do it.
So I've got to get a grip
of what he thinks about,
in fact, that requires me
to ask him some questions,
which is a lot more complicated
than just observing the behaviour.
But our view is if you don't get to grips,
and start to ask some
more detailed questions,
you won't get a sustainable change
in the results, it won't last.
You'll get this variance
in performance, this form loss.
So you've got to get to grips
with how people think about you,
about what you're saying, about the world.
But even if you did, it's not enough.
Because there's something
more fundamental driving how people think.
So how you think is really hugely
influenced by how you feel.
In fact, these two things
affect each other -
thinking affects feeling,
and feeling affects thinking,
it goes back and forward in a loop.
But the dominant factor really is feeling.
So for a whole bunch
of neuro-scientific reasons
we haven't got time to explain,
if you want to change what people do,
you've got to change their thinking.
If you want to change their thinking,
you have to change how they feel.
This is a much more significant impact
on that than the other way around.
So if you feel anxious, for example,
it's no good me saying
to you, "Don't worry."
You all have experienced
that doesn't work.
"I'm doing this exam." "Don't worry."
"Oh, do you know what? I hadn't thought
not to worry, that's the answer then."
(Laughter)
"I'll not worry! Oh, good!
How much was that?"
"There's the check."
It doesn't work like that.
You've all experienced 
if you feel anxious, you feel anxious,
and no amount of,
"Don't worry," is going to help.
Often makes it worse.
You'd say, "It's OK for you to say,
'Don't worry,' I'm worried."
So the real active ingredient
is you've got to change this.
It's still not enough.
There's something more fundamental
driving how you feel,
and that is your raw emotion.
So you've got to change the emotion
in order to change the feeling
in order to change the thinking.
You may be sat there wondering,
"Wait a minute. Feelings - emotions
are the same stuff, isn't it?"
It is not, right?
So many people don't realize,
in particular, many of my own friends
in science and medicine
don't realize that feelings emotions
are not the same thing.
Many people don't even realize feelings
and thinking are not the same thing.
Particularly men, right?
(Laughter)
So you ask many men
to tell you how they feel,
and they tell you how they think,
because they don't understand
the question, right?
You can see most of the women
in the room nodding.
"That's true. That's been my experience."
Most of the men sat there going,
"What, what's he talking about?"
(Laughter)
These are not the same phenomenon:
thinking and feelings, feelings
and emotions are not the same thing.
If you want to change the result
by changing the behaviour,
there are multiple levels ...
Even if you've got to grips
with the emotion, still not enough.
There is something even more fundamental
down in the basement of the human system
is your physiology.
So the reason you get variance
like Sergio did in his performance
is there are multiple levels
that Sergio Garcia
hasn't got control over.
He's just concentrating
on his technical putting performance
or the way that he drives the ball.
He hasn't got a grip
of any of this other stuff.
Even if he's telling himself
and rehearsing mentally,
"I'm a good golfer ... " It's not enough.
Because there's still three levels
that he hasn't got a grip off.
So if you want to be brilliant
every single day,
you've got to get a grip
of every single level.
And that's how you crank
out your A-game every single day.
Let's just work from the back to the top.
If we start with physiology, what is that?
That are just simply streams of data.
That's all physiology is.
It's data streams.
So as I'm talking to you right now,
most of you are getting streams
of data coming into your brain
about what's going on in your body.
So some of you
had the cupcake at the break,
and you'll be getting a signal
from your gut saying,
"Oh, sugar. We got sugar."
It's coming into your brain
tell your brain what's going on
in your gut, right?
Some of you are getting contractions
around that cupcake,
so you've got pressure
waves being created,
telling your brain about
what's going on in your gut.
These are just bits of physiology.
They're just data streams.
As some of you might write or type,
you've got joint position sense going up
the nerve channels into your brain
telling your brain
about where your fingers are.
They're just bits of physiology,
just streams of data, if you will
So what's an emotion?
If you take all the streams of data
whether it's coming from your gut,
or your joints,
or your heart, or your lungs.
If you take the data from all the streams,
all the bodily systems
and it comes into your brain
is are electrical signals,
electromagnetic signals;
chemical waves, pressure waves,
take all of those signals,
all of those systems,
that's what an emotion is.
It's simply energy - "E" - in motion.
That's all emotion is.
So we all have that, even us fellas.
We've all got emotions
every second of every day.
There is an energetic state
going through us.
Because we're constantly digesting,
breathing in and out,
our hearts constantly beating.
It's happening all the time.
So we've got energy in motion
every single second of every single day.
But we may not all have feelings.
Feelings are the awareness
in our mind of that energy.
That's where the problem is.
The energy may be there,
but we just don't feel it.
For example, if you take
a very common experience of most people,
if we look at what
is the energetic signature,
if you will, of something like anxiety?
So what goes on physiologically
when we're in a state of anxiety?
We look at the heart rate, it's fast.
The heart is going boom, boom, boom.
What else is happening?
What's happening in the mouth?
The mouth's dry.
You're talking as though
you've got cotton wool and can't ...
That's happening.
What's happening the palms
of your hand? They're sweaty.
What's happening the gut?
It's churning.
These are the specific physiological
constituents of that thing
that you would know as 'anxiety.'
And then I ask you, "How did you feel?"
and you say, "Alright."
So all that data is there,
you're just not feeling it.
If you're not feeling it,
it's altering what you're thinking
and how well you're thinking it,
which is changing what you're doing.
But you don't realize that
because you feel alright.
You're not noticing any of that.
You're just thinking what you're thinking
and doing what you're doing.
So what we're saying
is that the brilliance every day
requires not only to tune in
to what's happening down here
at a physiological
and the emotional level,
and not only become aware of that,
but get control over it.
Because most of you
do not have the control at that level.
In fact, very few people have got control
of any of this stuff on the inside.
Even when people have been highly trained
on regulating their behavior,
even then got that much control over this,
so that's the source of your brilliance.
If you can get control
over the whole thing,
you can crank out your A-game
every single day.
So how do you get control?
To start, which bit of the physiology?
Given so many different signals,
where are we going to start?
We're going to start
with one specific signal,
which is the electrical
signal of your heart.
So your heart beat,
when your heart beats: ping, ping ...
If you watch the medical programs
before it goes (Beep)
As it always does, doesn't it?
So the "ping" is the heart
basically contracts,
and causes a spike of electricity.
You can measure the distance
between each heartbeat,
and I don't know if you know
but the distance between each
heartbeat varies over time.
If we look at your heart rate over time,
we'll see that your heart rate
will vary up and down like that.
If you go to the doctors,
he takes your pulse rate and says.
"The average is 70."
But in taking the average,
he's not ignoring all the variance.
It's the variance that really matters.
Taking the average,
you lose all the critical data.
That's like listening to Mozart
and say the average is "Da..."
(Laughter)
Was that Mozart or was it Pearl Jam?
OK, we don't know.
So it's the variance
or 'heart rate variability,' that's key.
Heart rate variability key
for three reasons:
First, it predicts your death.
By measuring
your variability for 24 hours,
I can tell you when you're going to die.
Now I have your attention.
(Laughter)
So we tell this to organisations.
Did you know what? They don't care.
So we can't sell them on that.
The other reason is it predicts ...
If we measure HRV for 24 hours,
it can tell you how much
energy you've got,
which is interesting to leaders
because leaders need lots of energy.
But the real reason that they buy
and they're interested in this
is because HRV alters brain function.
So when I put you under pressure,
what basically happens to your HRV
is it becomes super chaotic.
So basically, your brain receives a signal
from your heart up the nerve channels,
which when under pressure
becomes super chaos.
The consequence of the super chaos
is it shuts off your frontal lobes
and you have a DIY lobotomy.
(Laughter)
So under pressure,
you lobotomize yourself.
It's as though you've suddenly
taken the stupid pills,
and you are "Uh ... " like that.
So I thought we'd just show
that to you for a live demonstration
to show you how easy it is
to create chaos in your biology,
whether you want it to happen or not.
So we need a willing volunteer
for this moment.
Just come up and sit down.
I'm going to show you
how to be brilliant
by showing you your physiology.
We need a volunteer to come up.
All we're going to do
is just put a little clip on your earlobe.
Thank you very much.
Give him a round of applause
by way of encouragement.
(Applause)
Thank you. What's your name?
Neil: Neil.
So Neil is very kind.
He has no idea what
we're going to be doing to him.
So this is really very brave.
First of all, we going
to make sure Neil is alive.
So is his heart beating?
You can see that every time
his heart contracts,
it squirts blood up into his ears
and his ears go red.
Between contractions, all the blood
drains out and his ears go white.
If you look at the person next to you,
you can see their ears flashing.
Red white ...
Actually, you can't see that
because your eyes aren't sensitive enough.
But what this little clip
on Neil's ear can see
is we can see the change in color,
- here's red, here's white ...
So this is a heartbeat.
It's a good news, you know.
You're alive, mate.
The heart's beating away. Boom...
So the heart's beating.
So what the software does,
it measures the distance
between each one of those beats,
and based on the distance
between this beat and this,
it calculates its heart rate says it's 76,
and calculates it again and again ...
You can see that his heart rate
boggling along about 75 beats per minute.
So pretty relaxed, sat in a chair,
your heart rate should be doing
about beats 75 per minute.
What we're going to do in a moment
is we're going to put him
under a bit of pressure,
and see how well he copes
with that kind of pressure.
Are you good under pressure, Neil?
Neil: Don't know.
We don't know.
We're about to find that out, aren't we?
Let's see how well he does under pressure.
So we haven't started yet,
and already his heart rate
sort of creeping up to about 90.
So he said well, 
what are we going to do here?
We're going to give you
some mathematics
How good are you at maths?
Neil: Quite good.
AW: He's quite good.
This will be no trouble, right?
He thinks he's quite good,
but his heart rate now ...
(Laughter)
I'm good. I'm quite good.
He's gone off the charts
and he's settling back down.
You can see there's a lot of chaos
going through his system right now.
So even though I'm good at this,
that is a natural physiological
response to a challenge.
You put someone under pressure,
whether he wants it to happen or not,
you see he might
look like he's in control.
He is not. In fact,
I am the puppet master, right?
(Laughter)
I'm pulling his strings whether
he wants me to do that or not.
At the moment, there's uncertainty.
The physiology is settled around 80,
higher than it was before,
because he doesn't know
what's going to happen.
Let's see how well his brain
functions under pressure,
how good at that math
he really was.
What needs to do is count out loud
back with subtracting threes.
I'm going to start with a certain number,
take away three, then give me the answer.
Keep going, serial subtractions,
odd threes without making a mistake.
If you make a mistake, it's 50 quid, OK?
So financial penalty for every error.
Is that alright with you?
No problem at all.
Count out loud, backwards, subtracting threes,
the mention of "50 quid",
look the heart rates crept up to 120,
just the tension in the system.
So again, I'm just talking to him
that's all happening.
Actually by me just talking to him,
a physiology chaos is kicking in.
That'll send a signal
from his heart to his brain;
that's going to be inhibiting
his brain function.
As fast as you can
without making mistakes.
subtraction of three,
starting off at 300, go come on.
(Snapping)
300, Go, come on. 300, Faster,
Neil: 300, 297, 294 ...
AW: 286, 270, 80, 75 ...
AW: 73, 86 ... What? Two?
(Laughter)
Well done. Give him a round
of applause everybody.
(Applause)
So what you can see is ...
When I started to feed
him the wrong answers -
"208 ... What? ... What?! ..."
It's called "cortical inhibition"
or frontal lobe shutdown.
So under pressure,
the frontal lobe shuts down
and the simplest of tasks -
subtract three from that number -
"Eh ... Ju ... Wha ... ?"
Can't do it.
That is happening to all of you
when you're under pressure, right?
Your brain is built this way.
So one of the things
you need to learn to do
is to get control
of that physiological level
and switch from a chaotic signal
to what's called "coherence."
So the thing that underpins brain function
is the ability to generate
a coherent signal.
So there's variance,
but it's stable variance,
as opposed to
wildly fluctuant variance.
That is the source of your brilliance.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
