Tune out external criticism, focus on process over outcomes, and embrace reflection and routine.
At one point in his career Brett Maher, a National Football League kicker who retired in 2024, boasted two records: most field goals made at 60 or more yards in single season and most missed extra points in a single game.
Over his decade as a professional athlete, he made 79.9% of the field goals he attempted and 95.5% of the extra points. And yet he was also released by 12 teams. What can we learn from someone who spent their career performing under intense pressure, who suffered ups and downs, who was both pilloried and celebrated, and who at various points was considered to be both the best and the worst at his job? As a researcher and educator, I investigate how leaders manage stress and respond to both success and failure, and that’s what drew me to Maher. Standing on an NFL field, with thousands of people, including your team and its ownership and fanbase, watching and waiting for you to play your role—and play it well—seemed like a great case study in how to stay calm, focused, and resilient. In interviewing Maher, I found that many of his strategies for doing so, some gleaned from coaches and sports psychologists, can be easily adapted for those of us trying to perform under pressure in different types of work settings. Ignore the noise. Early in his career, Maher found himself paying too much attention to the crowd and critics. Loud cheers for a made field goal or extra point as well as positive feedback on his overall performance gave him confidence. But disappointed groans or post-game criticisms left him defeated. Both caused his mind to linger on whatever his results had been rather than the practice and effort he’d put into them or his potential for improvement. With help from coaches, he learned to ignore the noise and stay focused—in the moment when kicking the ball and after it —on what he could do better next time. Author Sarah Lewis has described this type of purposeful silencing of critics as “blankness,” a practice where highly skilled performers detach from their surroundings to create “time away and time within” to work on their craft. Leaders can do the same, envisioning themselves in a private bubble so they can tune out unhelpful critics, doubters, and even voices in their own heads and center themselves on only what they need to do the work or make the decision at hand. Prioritize processes not results. Another practice of Maher’s is “punctuating the kick”—that is, putting a metaphorical period on it as the ball leaves the foot, not after it falls between or outside the goalposts. His performance—good or bad—ended with that release and created a hard reset to get ready for the next kick. His attention remained on only how well he executed the techniques he’d practiced, and he repeated this process so often that he could soon tell where a ball would end up without needing to look up from his feet. Non-athletes, too, can prioritize process when completing pressure-filled tasks or making potentially high-risk decisions by sticking to exactly the right steps: weighing evidence, gathering feedback, and analyzing pros and cons. Leadership expert J.P. Pawliw-Fry calls this focusing on the “integrity of the inputs” you can control instead of the outputs, which can be unpredictable. Leaders can also build routines to problem-solving. In the book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When The Stakes are High, the authors highlight the importance of finding one’s own sense of control during challenging situations, which then enables productive inquiry and solution generation. Embrace reflection and routine. In the NFL, it is common for coaches to call a timeout right before an opposing team’s field goal attempt. Called “icing the kicker,” the ploy is intended to interrupt the athlete’s well-rehearsed routines and increase his anxiety. When I asked Maher how he learned to handle those tense moments, he explained that he tried to see it as an opportunity to reflect and revert to his pre-kick routine Numerous researchers in psychology have shown that expertise is a result of the amount of time and energy you spend in deliberate practice. This is true for leaders, too, especially when it comes to overcoming disruption and conflict. The more we expose ourselves to pressure and then react by reflecting on our circumstances, finding clarity in routine, and refocusing our thinking to engage even more deeply in the task or problem, the better we’ll get at it. Over his career, Maher learned to embrace the pressure cooker that is being an NFL kicker. He learned to ignore the noise of the crowds, to focus on process not results, and to use disruption as an opportunity for reflection and routine that improved his performance.
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