Women's Leadership Improving Performance

Improving Performance

by Rayona Sharpnack

When I think of improving performance I reflect on my decades of training as an amateur and professional athlete.

Commitment

It starts with a commitment to be better at a goal, such as to win the Softball World Series or to increase my best performance by 50%. Learning and improving performance requires an uncompromising commitment to achieve a goal.

Learning

The next step is learning. Find information and resources that educate in how to improve performance.

Practice

Then comes practicing, not just a little bit but day after day, week after week, month after month. There is no replacement for practice.

Failing

The natural and INEVITABLE outcome of practice is failing. Failing is what teaches us success.

Coaching

After failing, comes the need for coaching. A coach partners with us in our commitment in many ways. Sometimes it is calling a ‘time out.’ Sometimes it is asking a question that enables us to see what couldn’t be seen a moment earlier.

Practice

After the coaching comes more practice, yes, MORE practice. The learning cycle continues until we take the ‘big nap’!

Inspiration

“The data show how important diversity is to the success of teams and decision making… We see this as vitally important for innovation, for competitiveness and for business success. Advancing women isn’t a corporate social responsibility imperative, it’s a competitive imperative.”

– Mark Bregman, CTO, Neustar

“If people think alike, then no matter how smart they are, they most likely will get stuck at the same locally optimal solutions. Finding new and better solutions, innovating, requires thinking differently. That’s why diversity powers innovation.”

– Scott Page, author of
The Difference, Princeton University Press

"We should not just be focusing on whether women are moving into men's professions; we need to be focusing on whether men are moving into traditional women's professions. I would like to see 50 percent of our teachers be men. I think that would be better for kids, and I think it would be better for the profession -- just as I would like to see 50 percent of our bankers be women, or our CEOs...

People have to be equally able to choose the kind of profession they want, and the combination of breadwinning and caregiving they want. If we can destroy male stereotypes in the next 20 years the way we've destroyed female stereotypes, we are going to see a whole lot more flow in and out of all professions."

– Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO
The New America Foundation

"As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others."

– Bill Gates