The Secret to High Performance

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. Each week I'll publish a solo cast where I'll share my top high performance habits and methodologies to supercharge your life and career. If you enjoy the show, please take a short moment to subscribe and leave a rating and review. I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

What is the secret to high performance for you that could be on field? It could be in the office of the boardroom, it could be at home, as a parent, it could be in a relationship, it could be with your health. We don't all need to be Olympians to strive for high performance because when we're not high performers, we're low performers. It's one or the other. It's black or white. You're either in high performance mode or you're in low performance mode. Now we can beat ourselves up, feel sorry for ourselves, justify shoulda, woulda, coulda. But actually, let's just get clear on, you know, what is the secret to high performance. I get asked all the time and I work with some of the high performers in sport, in business, you know, people that are the very top of their game internationally, people that are doing multimillion dollar deals day in, day out, day traders, people who are dealing with stressful situations.

It's the same thing no matter what. High performance to me is defined by one thing and I'm going to share that definition for you and I want you to really think about this definition. This is something I share a lot at my events, something I share a lot, one to one with my clients. And I'm writing about this quite a bit now as well in terms of how I define high performance. Now, before I share that definition with you, I want to just remind you that we have opened the doors for the HPL 2023 live event. I do one large public live event every year. Tickets are limited. We just launched today and the doors are open. So if you'd like to come and join us, our former Prime Minister Sir John Key will be there. They the amazing Amy Carter, CEO of the Christchurch foundation will be there and also the inimitable Matt Brown will be there. There are three special guests this year. The participants are ranging in all ages and stages and industries and backgrounds, but people who want to grow personally and professionally, people who want to lead themselves on purpose. HPL is for you. So if you want to go and grab one of those tickets before it sells out, which it does every year, we hold it, head over to jjlochlan.com HPL2023 and the HPL is in uppercase jjlochlin.com HPL2023 Go check it out. You'll be able to see a highlight video from the last year or two to see what it's all about and see if HPL is for you. Now let's get back to that definition. What is high performance?

Well, I always believe when you're trying to find out answers to what you do want, start with what you don't want. So what is high performance? What's the opposite of high performance? What isn't high performance? Well.

Hundred hour weeks, week on week on week, that's not high performance.

Succeeding on field or with your chosen sport or business. Business. But having awful relationships, that's not high performance.

Winning all the gold medals, but being a mental wreck, it's not high performance.

I really feel that you need to define what is happening in your life that's high performance and what is low performance. Here's the definition. Please write this down. If you can think about this definition and everything that you do around relationships, career contribution, whether you're in sport, whatever it might be, if you can apply this definition, this will allow you to go, oh yeah, I'm heading as an upward trajectory as a high performer or no, I'm going to burn out. I'm not doing everything right. We look at people that are just incredible what they do. Anthony Bourdain, Robin Williams, incredible people, but in the end took their own lives. They killed themselves.

To me, nothing is worth pushing ourselves or sacrificing key things. And we'll talk about it in this definition in a moment. Nothing is worth that. We want to work on our mental well being, right? There's so much mental sickness out there. Let's focus on how do we nurture our mental well being whilst being a high performer. Being a high performer in one specific area of our life whilst everything else suffers, to me that's just failure. And I've been there, like I'm not preaching here, I've been there. You know, back in my younger days when I was a competitive drummer and very fortunate to win world titles, so many other aspects of my life were suffering. I was drinking a lot of alcohol, traveling the world on planes, staying in hotels, alcohol was a huge part of my life. You know, sitting in the sun, day in, day out, topping my tan up, yes, I was very vain.

But that, you know, that's not high performance. I was suffering. My relationships were fleeting. In my younger years, things weren't good, I wasn't working out, I was just relying on the fact that I was young and hey, my body still is fine, I can eat and drink what I want. But we all know that can't last forever. So I want to share with you the definition of high performance. And I know I've kept you waiting and I know I've dragged it out, but I wanted to add context and frame it so you can think, am I a high performer or am I the opposite? So here it is. The definition of high performance is performing above the standard norms over the long term whilst maintaining positive relationships and well being. I'm going to repeat that and I'm going to explain that high performance is performing above the standard norms over the long term whilst maintaining positive relationships and well being. Now, to be a high performer, you can't just perform at the norm, you know, at the average level, that's not high performance, that's okay, medium performance, that's what everyone does. But if you're 1% above the standard norm, then you're a high performer. If the standard in a test, the average is 80 out of 100 and you get 81, you're a high performer. If you get 80, you're average. 81, you're above average. Now doing something above the norms once, yeah, that's maybe luck, that's maybe just good fortune. But to do it consistently over the long term, that's a sign that you're a high performer. High performers don't do things once. They do them again and again and again consistently, they're a behavioral trait that comes out in a high performer. There's that behavioral trait of excellence, of consistency, of persistency. So performing above the standard norms over the long term, next bit, whilst maintaining positive relationships, Right, So the people around you, the people you work, with, the people you coach, the people in your family, maybe if you've got an intimate partner, maybe if you've got kids, your parents, your siblings, your aunties, your uncles. When you're performing above the standard norms, are you maintaining positive relationships with the people you want to maintain those relationships with? And lastly, whilst maintaining positive well being, so being the world's best or being the richest person in the zoo, like that's great. But if you're a mess mentally and emotionally, surely that's not success. To me, it's definitely not high performance. It's not sustainable. You will burn out, you will implode. So I want you to write that definition down and go, am I a high performer? And you get to decide where you perform. So if you're a parent, high performance would be performing above the standard norms. So you have to decide what is the norm as a parent and what would I do if I was performing a bit above that? If you were an investor, okay, what would the norm be for an investor? Maybe that's a percentage of a return. Okay. The average investor would get 6.7%. Okay, well if I get 9%, I'm a high performer. You need to define what area you want to be a high performer in. You need to define what the norm is and then decide what would above the standard norm look like. Then ask yourself, okay, what would positive relationships look like? It doesn't mean that you need to have 150 positive relationships. You need to have a small handful of meaningful.

Trust centered relationships. It could be 3, 1, 5, 10. It doesn't need to be hundreds, right? But a small number of really positive relationships with people that you trust and respect and love. And then you need to define, well, what does positive well being look like? Well, just ask yourself, when was I not in a good place mentally and you know, emotionally? What, when was that? What did it look like? What did it feel like? What were the things I was doing, thinking, saying, how was I carrying myself with my body language? The opposite of that is positive, right? So I want you to really think about that. And to me what you've just done is you've taken out 10 minutes of your day to really define the secret to high performance. The secret to high performance is not winning at all costs. The secret to high performance is not burning every bridge to get to the destination.

So I'm going to reiterate it. The definition of high performance is performing above the standard norms over the long term whilst maintaining positive relationships and well being. I really hope that this has served you. And before I go, I just want to Remind you that recently I've decided to remove all ads, advertising promotions here on lead on purpose to really enhance your listening experience. But for me to continue running the show, I've got a whole team that helped me put this show out and we have three episodes a week that go out. So there's quite a lot involved in it. So for it to continue to thrive, I'm going to ask you for a favor. Can you please share this podcast with three people today? Please think about three people that could benefit. People that want to grow, people that want to listen to incredible guests. I bring in some of the world's top performers, top leaders, top parenting experts. If you can share this with three people, that allows me to get into the ears of new listeners, which allows me to continue to chart on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Recently we got top 10 in Canada on Apple Podcasts. We're top one to five in New Zealand and Australia often and in the UK. But that all comes down to you, you helping, you listening, you engaging and you really appreciating the great guest. So I just want to say thank you. But please, if you'd like to continue having an ad free experience, I would love you just to help me by just sharing this with three people right now. Copy the link for the podcast and send it to them lead on purpose. They can listen to it on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, whatever way they want to listen to it. But I want to thank you for taking the time to invest in yourself, leveling up your mindset, your skill set and your heart set. But for now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose. Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.