7 Things You Can Do to Become a High Performer

Despite what some people might think, the world’s high performers weren’t born the way they are now. Whether it’s top employees, athletes, or any other field, their elite status is always the result of dedication and a commitment to personal development.

Everyone has the power to become a high performer in their work. Hard work will help, but it’s about more than just that.

Being a high performer requires a specific approach to your work - being self confident, having resilience in the face of failure and bringing a growth mindset every day.

The benefits of being a high performer can be significant:

• Greater job satisfaction
• Improved career prospects
• Higher pay
• Further learning and development opportunities
• More recognition within the workplace

At Clearhead, we spoke with world renowned human performance expert Dr. Nate Zinsser about how to become a high performer. Dr. Zinsser has been at the forefront of global applied sport psychology for more than 30 years, consulting with a variety of the world’s highest performing individuals and organisations.

We’ve pulled out seven of his actionable tips that you can use to become a high performer.

You can listen to the full episode on the Clear The Air podcast - available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1. Start thinking like a high performer.

The World Economic Forum considers high performers to be roughly the top 20% of the average workforce. McKinsey says high performers can be up to 400% more productive than average performing staff.

Importantly, high performers do this on a regular basis. Average workers may have bursts of peak performance, but they don’t last. One of the hallmarks of a high performer is having an inner self-confidence that helps to ensure that consistency.

The challenge is, how do you develop the confidence of a high performer if you don’t think you are one yet?

Dr. Zinsser says confidence is a long haul process. There will always be the opportunity for self doubt or worry about some aspect of your performance, and the key is to repeatedly practise the right habits every day - especially during the worst days of your life.

“There is no magic secret - there is just the consistent application of things we all know deep down, work,” he says.

Mindset is a key enabler for performance. If you start thinking and acting like a high performer, the performance itself will follow.

2. Quieten the inner critic

Most people will struggle to build self confidence without anything to base it on. Instead, we often focus on all the things that have gone wrong in the day.

If you’re trying to grow your own confidence, Dr. Zinsser recommends one very simple reflection exercise to gradually build a sense of achievement and confidence in yourself.

At the end of each day, spend five minutes looking back over what you did and ask yourself three questions:

1. Where did I put in quality effort today? Think about where you did something you weren’t looking forward to, or was hard, or where you overcame procrastination. No matter how small it seems, acknowledge one time where your effort was good.
   
2. What am I making progress in? Acknowledge one area that you’re developing - it can be a skill, a relationship or anything else.
   
3. What small success did I achieve today? Recognise something you got right. It only needs to be a small contribution you made to something.
   

These things don’t need to be about work - they can be anything. By doing this consistently, you will give yourself a sense of how you’re progressing as a person, and grow more confident as a result.

3. Practise positive affirmation

In Dr. Zinsser’s words, “the story you tell yourself about yourself is huge."

Positive affirmation is another way to grow your confidence, and it can also allow you to manifest words into reality.

An important technique is to habitually tell yourself that you have the attributes you want. “Think about how you want to be as if you are, even if you’re not at the moment,” Dr. Zinsser says.

He says the trick is to do it in the present tense. Talk about what you want as if you already have it. Don’t just look in the mirror and tell yourself you’re amazing - be specific about a certain quality.

Use phrases such as:

• “I am very good at empathising with other people.”
• “I can get through a lot of work in a short time.”
• “I have excellent data analysis skills.”

It may sound simple, but saying this out loud and repeating it to yourself is a great way to enable real improvement.

4. Recognise the attribution bias to maintain confidence through failures

One of the big obstacles to building self confidence is failure. Setbacks are inevitable in life - more on that shortly - so you need to be able to encounter it and move forward positively.

The way you reflect on failures makes a huge difference. Often, the brain’s natural attribution bias is to blame ourselves for a failure, even when it was due to something (or someone) else. This only serves to knock your confidence.

In the event of a failure, it’s important to look at the situation more rationally by saying things such as:

• “Something happened beyond my control. I did a great job, but the failure occurred due to something that I couldn’t do anything about.”
• “The failure happened once, and it won’t happen again.”
• “The failure is not the definitive statement about how good I am but about the circumstances of the event. It doesn’t tell the truth about me, and it doesn’t mean I’m a bad person.”
• “There were many different things that led to the failure, and my role in that was not the defining factor.”

To some, this may feel like avoiding taking the blame for something. That’s not what it’s about - in fact, if something was your fault then you should acknowledge it. But recognise what your role was in that failure - don’t take responsibility for other factors that compounded what happened, and commit to learning and being better next time.

On the other hand, if something genuinely wasn’t your fault, then recognise that too. Dr Zinsser says it’s a form of mental toughness to refuse to take the blame for something you couldn’t control. If you can do this, you’ll develop resilience that allows you to maintain confidence through failures.

5. Learn from your performance and move on

Analysing your own performance is a great way to learn and do better next time around. But again, the way you do this is important in order to maintain self confidence and allow yourself to continue to be a high performer.

Dr. Zinsser says a large part of this comes down to timing.

To use a sport analogy, if you play a game on a Saturday, analyse your performance on Sunday and Monday. Once you’ve done that, spend the rest of the week focusing on preparing for the next game the following Saturday.

In a work sense, because we are always engaging in a series of micro-performances, that means reflecting on your performance soon after a task, presentation, email, or whatever it is.

You can do this by allowing yourself five minutes to analyse your performance. Think about how you did, what you could do better, how you should attribute any problems, and then carry on with the next task. You can even do this multiple times a day if you’re working on multiple projects.

This way, you can get those learnings that allow you to constantly improve, you don’t dwell on it in a way that knocks your confidence, and you also have plenty of time to prepare for the next task.

6. Choose resilience

Everything you encounter is fallible. Humans are imperfect, technology breaks down, systems fail - everything is prone to error. The sooner you accept that, and commit to staying whole and happy despite it, the more resilient you will be.

Resilience is a choice.

Dr. Zinsser uses a metaphor of a rubber ball being dropped on the floor and bouncing back up higher than where it was dropped from. The ball is resilient. What if it could encounter failure and get better as a result? That is an anti-fragile mindset.

You can take it to the next level still, and expect to encounter fallibility, and see it as an integral part of your growth. This way, when you’re dealing with a setback, you’re already prepared for it and have primed yourself to use it as an opportunity to get better.

Author Charlie Mackesy wrote, “One of our great freedoms is how we react to things.” Dr. Zinsser mirrors this: “You have this freedom and you can determine your state of mind, independent of circumstance,” he says.

Recommended reading: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is a case study in resilience and psychology based on the experiences of survivors of Nazi death camps, including Frankl himself. At its core is a message about how suffering is unavoidable, but we can all choose to cope with it and move forward with purpose.

Recommended reading: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is a powerful series of reflections from the Roman Emperor through a variety of huge personal challenges. Centuries after it was written, it’s still considered one of the great works of philosophy.

7. Get in the zone

“The zone” is a state that can be hard to identify or define. It’s also known as a state of flow.

When you’re in the zone you’re able to work quickly and to a high quality without being distracted by other thoughts. The more time you can spend in this state, the better. But it’s not that easy to do.

Dr. Zinsser says one of the great myths about high performers is that they have the ability to think about what they’re doing in more detail than others. In fact, the opposite is true - they’re able to spend more time in the zone, where their brains are relatively quiet and it feels like they’re acting instinctively.

Often, our brains distract us with unhelpful thoughts that suck up our energy. Dr. Zinsser says many people have spent years being constantly analytical, self conscious, self critical or judgemental, and these are the very types of thoughts that prevent us from getting into the zone and staying there.

Only by letting go of these tendencies can we give our full ability and concentration to a task.

Summary

The best way to become a high performer is to start acting like one. Analyse what you do and how you think, and look for ways to elevate yourself and behave in a way that an elite performer would.

Whether it’s at work, school, in sport or anything else, if you adopt an elite mindset and commit to setting good habits then your performance will follow naturally.

Listen to the full episode of Clear The Air with Dr. Nate Zinsser on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.