Nick HutchisonFounder and CEO, BookThinkers

What are some common qualities that you’ll find in high performers?

20 Apr 2023 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:01

In this short talk, the speaker reflects on patterns observed across high‑performing individuals they have coached. They note that many young high performers exhibit a strong need for external validation, constantly seeking feedback from coaches or mentors. Modern training environments, especially in athletics, are highly scripted and involve multiple specialists, which reinforces an external locus of control and extrinsic motivation. The speaker argues that to sustain performance, high performers must develop the ability to generate their own feedback, solve problems independently, and cultivate an internal sense of how they are doing. This includes developing emotional proprioception—being aware of one’s emotional state in relation to performance—so they are not perpetually dependent on external cues.

Chapters

Is there anything that's just this commonality that every single high performer that you've coached and worked with, like, they have in common? There are a few similarities. One that I saw a lot in younger high performers who excelled very early in their careers was this validation need. So they would look to me or look to the other sideline for validation of what they were doing. Nowadays, it's like we're scripted down to the minute in our lives with our athletes. They've got this, and then at 9 o'clock they have this, and then they have that, and they're working with this coach, and they're working with this specialist. And but what it's created is this external locus of control and this external motivation, this extrinsic motivation in our athletes. So what I saw pop up a lot, even in high performers, was this: they would do something and they would immediately look for feedback. They need to be able to create feedback on their own. They need to be able to solve the puzzles on their own, because someday I won't be there. The big thing with a lot of the high performers I worked with was you have to figure out how to solve the problem. You can't always look to other people for the answer. Or you also have to understand how you're doing. You need to be able to emotionally propriocept your performance