When Perdita Felicien smashed into a hurdle and fell to the ground at the 2004 Olympic Games, her dreams of a gold medal tumbled with her.
Later that evening, when her coach, Gary Winckler, returned to his quarters, roommate Peter Jensen expressed his sadness.
“Yes, but it will make us stronger,” Mr. Winckler replied.
A few hours after what seemed like a career-defining disappointment, Mr. Winckler was already reframing the situation from negative to positive and considering using it for further development of the athlete.
Igniting The Third Factor
, by Peter Jensen, Performance Coaching, 228 pages, $29.95
For Mr. Jensen – a psychologist, performance coach and instructor at Queen's School of Business – that is an example of the developmental impetus at the core of all great coaches and managers. Successful coaches recognize the importance of, and are passionate about, developing people.
But how to do that? In Igniting The Third Factor , he talks to leading coaches from various athletic endeavours and applies their experiences to the more conventional world of work.
He starts with a premise from his own mentor, Kazimierz Dabrowski, a distinguished psychiatrist who studied the lives of numerous exceptional human beings and highlighted something he called the third factor.
The first factor in our development potential is nature – the various elements that establish the physical and mental grounding of a human being. The second is nurture – the social and environmental elements that contribute to shaping us, such as parents, friends, school, financial status and culture.
But individuals have the potential to transcend those two factors through their own actions. That is the third factor, which Mr. Dabrowski had identified in the exceptional people he studied: Individuals can make a conscious choice to change and to achieve a higher level. The third factor is the role we as individuals play in our own growth.
“This self-development often happens in time of conflict, when the person becomes dissatisfied in some ways with themselves,” Mr. Jensen writes. “Initially there may be an external conflict, a failure, loss or disappointment, but the person internalizes it, and the dissatisfaction between ‘what is' and ‘what ought to be' is the impetus for the emergence of the third factor.”
In developing a staff member, the challenge, he says, is to ignite this third factor within them. Just as Mr. Winckler was starting to do with Perdita Felicien in the wake of her devastating spill, you need to help them develop themselves.
High performance involves pushing past boundaries. You can't push beyond those boundaries without disappointments
Mr. Jensen's own study of exceptional coaches reveals five approaches that let them ignite the third factor; he feels they're transferable to coaching performance at work:
Be self-aware Coaches need discipline so they assist, rather than inhibit, their charge's development. You need to understand your impact on others, and make sure your own temper or impatience or pickiness doesn't become a roadblock. As famed basketball coach John Wooden said, “Manage yourself, so others won't have to.”
Build trust You need to build trust so the other person is assured you are in their corner – and there for them, not for your own aggrandizement. “Olympic coaches understand that exceptional performance occurs only in a safe environment where athletes can develop confidence and self-awareness,” Mr. Jensen advises.
Use imagery You need to help the other person understand what is possible and encourage them to strive to achieve their potential. You need to paint pictures of the future that is possible, since individuals can't do what they can't imagine. That imagery is not purely visual; it can be stimulated through any of the senses.
