The Vision Architect

Episode 202
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[00:00:23] Simon Vetter: Hello, I'm your host, Simon Veter. You're listening to The Vision Architect, my podcast where we explore the mastery of vision at the intersection of peak performance and leadership. I'm pleased to present conversations that inspire growth and transformation. In this episode, we're joined by Anne Bower's Evangelista, an expert in peak performance and leadership.

In this episode with Anne, we'll dive deep into how vision plays into peak performance in endurance sports.

I'm so excited to have you on my podcast.

[00:00:58] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: I'm so excited to be here, Simon. Thank you for asking me.

[00:01:01] Simon Vetter: So we're gonna talk about the intersection between performance endurance. How do we sustain performance over a long time?

And also the whole mental, uh, side of it. How do we stay mentally sharp and prepared? And then also the whole concept of vision. How does the vision kind of play into this? Now when we look at those areas, let's start with endurance performance. What makes endurance performance so challenging? And, and, and at the same time also, um, inspiring and compelling.

[00:01:35] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: You know, I think that people find endurance to be compelling because it feels. So out of reach for most people. So people get a, you know, they get lured in by people who are climbing Everest or swimming the English Channel or competing in the world Championship Ironman race in Kona, Hawaii, right?

Because these things feel. Hard for those of us who are just everyday Joe mos, right? It's a a little bit true, but it's also a little bit illusory, right? These people are not superhuman. They've just trained themselves. They've trained themselves physically, but to your point, they have also trained themselves mentally to go beyond.

And I think that we recognize that, but we don't really appreciate it until we're really watching them. And especially when you see coverage and you can see people's mental struggles, you can see their tenacity, you can see them. Fighting Right. For their success. So I think that's why we find endurance kind of interesting.

It tops into something we kind of know exists, but most of us haven't figured out how to access.

[00:02:53] Speaker 2: There's an aspect of aspiration, looking to future and having a desire outcome, and kind of envisioning something that is. Hard to do or challenging to do, but there is an a drive, an underlying drive. Is there something in your life looking back that you accomplished that was really hard for you and, and looking back, you, you feel very grateful that you have done it?

What is a personal Yeah, uh, uh, performance, uh, endurance experience you had?

[00:03:21] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Yeah, I think the, uh, experience isn't technically an athletic one, but it. It kind of is implicated. So, um, in 2011 I was training for an Iron Man race with about 50 other people. We were all doing it as a fundraiser for blood cancer research, and I.

Got in a bikerack and broke my hip and it was a very, very difficult recovery. You know, this was a process. I went from wheelchair to walker to cane, kind of, you know, it was, I was a, it was arduous and I had been so focused on this race and when I realized I couldn't do the race right, there was a little bit of what I sometimes call, like falling off the identity cliff, like.

When your identity is really focused on something outside of your control, and if you've achieved it or you don't, but that time kind of comes and you don't have something else, boom. You know, you can really, you start to question yourself. Yeah. It's like, what am I here for? Like once that thing's done or once you didn't achieve it, it's like.

Who else am I? Right? Because if you're, if all of it is externally driven, you can really feel that now. It felt that way a little bit, but it wasn't my whole identity. In fact, what I realized is that my identity was much more wrapped up in being a part of this team and serving, because for me, a part of my mission is to be able to serve my communities in this way where I can raise money, and I use races to do that.

I really started focusing on that during my recovery and so. Within, I think two weeks of my surgery, I showed up at swim practice with my team in my wheelchair, my mother pushing me along just to be there, just to be still have that sense of being a part of this team. And shortly after that, I actually was able to get in the practice pool and just do some therapy kinds of things.

And so. I feel like it was a real test of that entire endurance process. For me. There's more to the story around my recovery and you know, I'm today, now training for an Ironman, so there's a lot more there around the physical success, but in that moment. I had to dig really deep about who I really was and what was really important to me because everything else was kind of gone.

My work was gone, my training was gone. You know, my relationships still continued, but a lot of things were gone and I had to really think about and discern what was important, and then really apply some strategies to get back to it.

[00:06:02] Speaker 2: Yeah. Based on that, what are some strategies now you apply to maintain you?

You do now a Iron man. Coming up soon, can you give two, three strategies that really help you get ready? So it's gonna be. An enjoy, uh, as much as possible an enjoyable experience.

[00:06:19] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: An enjoyable experience. It's funny you say this, Simon. I just got an email from my coach about a half an hour ago that has an entire, it's a, an Excel spreadsheet with my entire carbohydrate load for the two days before my race on Saturday.

So exactly what I'm supposed to eat each meal and how many carbohydrates that I need to take in. It isn't anything other than carbohydrates, I mean. I have to take in other things, but that's what she's tracking. So part of the strategy is having a great coach. That is definitely part of the strategy for me because a coach, I will respond to a coach differently than I will respond to myself.

And I know that. So for me, that is a mental strategy. I will push myself, but I will not push myself the same way or with the same. Focus that a coach will because I'm not objective about myself. Yeah. And this person is, and that is a mental strategy, you know, most.

[00:07:17] Speaker 2: That third, that neutral, that outside perspective that gives some objectivity and some perspective to our game.

[00:07:25] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Absolutely. Do you know any. Real high performing athlete of any distance who isn't using a coach, right? Even people who go and hike Kilimanjaro or of Everest, they are not doing that on their own. I mean, I guess some people maybe have, but most of them are gonna have experts who are telling them and informing their decisions.

So part of it for me is having somebody who's external, who helps me to break down. That long term goal into the short term objectives. So part of it is. And this is a really important thing we might talk about is different kinds of goals, right? So there are outcome goals and there are process goals, and there are performance goals.

I'm happy to talk about those in more detail, but outcome goals are like, you know, did I do the thing right? Did I win the race? Did I finish the 5K? But. A process goal is I want to go from running three times a week to running five times a week. Right? That's something I am doing, and so when I have a coach, we're working on taking my long-term outcome goal, which is to finish this iron man.

Saying, what am I gonna do today? What are my process goals? My process is to bike this amount of time and to run this amount of time, or to lift weights and to swim. Those are process goals. So having those and really understanding those goals can be very helpful.

[00:08:49] Speaker 2: This is a very important key about goals.

Goals is an integral part of of performance management, yet it's focusing on execution and deliverables and accountability. It's usually not helping with driving commitment and motivation. It's that vision part. It's that mental side. So you have very clear goals. You're very good at that. And when we work with companies, they're really, really good managing goals.

So let's talk about the other side. Yeah. The

[00:09:23] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: vision piece. Yeah,

[00:09:24] Speaker 2: the vision piece. Because it's the vision that drives the change and motivation. So can you elaborate on how do you stay committed? How do you stay? Motivated. How do you go train when it's raining outside and it's freezing. That's right.

Exactly right. You still go.

[00:09:44] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: That's right. You still go. 'cause you never know what it's gonna be like on race day. And that's a really important thing. And there's so much research, you know, kind of like queuing up the whole piece of vision. There's uh, Locke and Laham, there are these very well respected researchers in sport and performance.

They show that like. Goal setting can enhance your focus, right? It can help build your self-efficacy and motivation, but they also can lead to burnout if it's disconnected from broader meaning. So like that's exactly what the vision piece is, right? Which is giving. Purpose to those goals, because if you don't have that sense of purpose, you really don't.

You're missing the intrinsic motivator, the internal thing that keeps you going. Even when all of the external stimuli might be completely absent, such as it's pouring rain, or it's 12 degrees, or you know, you didn't bring the right clothes for your cycling and you're out of town and you don't have any.

Right. So that sense of purpose, that sense of internal, Hey, this is where I'm going, right? This is where I'm going. It keep, you know, you might occasionally be off course a little bit, but if you have that broader vision where you wanna go, you go, okay, well I can course correct here. You know, it's not the end of the world.

I have this thing that is still in focus and I'm still gonna get there. It also helps with things like. You know, often we talk about these examples where it's pouring rain and you might actually say, or you, you know, it might be really cold. You might say, you know what? I am gonna still go, but I am gonna shorten up my run today because my muscles aren't gonna respond as well.

That's okay. I don't have to do it a hundred percent today or I'm gonna, you know, not finish the goal because I see I have this broader vision and usually the vision is well beyond that, that specific outcome. Like in a race.

[00:11:41] Speaker 2: I want to dig deeper in that we all have a inherently a purpose. Many people never really find it out.

How do we uncover that? How do we shed some light on that, meaning that purpose, and ultimately the question is where we are going and, and, and the why behind. Yeah. Any, any tips, personal experience or from research how to shed some light on that?

[00:12:05] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Yeah, I think that, uh, well, I cover it quite a bit in my book, in the endurance leader on the, the whole notion of what I call ultimate mission.

So I think there are some very basic kinds of questions that I encourage leaders to, to ask themselves. Sometimes I call it hugging your headstone or embracing your earned, depending on what you like, but really thinking about what matters to you in the long term, even if that language doesn't appeal.

You know, we know from the work of Richard Bois, the importance of focusing on ideal self. What the research shows is that when people focus on their ideal self, their their best self

[00:12:46] Simon Vetter: mm-hmm.

[00:12:47] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: They're able to access their parietal frontal lobe, part of their brain, where you're more likely to do more open thinking.

You're able to be more creative, you're able to think of more solutions, and you, you have more versatility in that space. And then as we start setting goals. That we, we start shifting our, our neurons start to shift firing a little bit further back towards more of the regulatory parts of our brain. So you start moving more towards the cerebral cortex, the cerebellum, the motor functioning pieces of the brain that are gonna keep you protected and ensure that you succeed in these specific goals.

But your vision narrows.

[00:13:30] Speaker 2: Let's stop here. This is such an important point. I wanna reiterate. To try to summarize that this is so critical. So one is to focus on our, the best self. What does that ideal self look like? And to do that, we need to open up our perspective. We need to kind of relax and kind of, that's one, two pieces.

Any, can you elaborate that in, in practical terms, what it means for you or for a, for a person to really hone in on that mission and purpose and vision side?

[00:14:05] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Sure. Um, yeah, I mean, I, I try, I, I'm not quite as good as, as boy Asis would say about, you know, he's, he, uh, suggests that you spend. 50% of every coaching meeting in the ideal self conversation with your coachee because of the things that it allows their brain to access.

Um, not just for that session, but beyond, which is a huge point in performance and in leadership performance beyond that session. I do before I even, uh, start engaging with a client, ask them these kinds of questions. I ask them about their le, their goals for coaching. I ask 'em about their goals for leadership and I ask 'em about their goals and not just goals, but their vision for their life, kinda I talk about that ideal self, broader meaning.

Exactly. So I do think it is possible, not everybody. Is, you know, there's different levels of readiness to have those conversations, but where people are ready to have them, it's amazing how we, once we start having that, they're really more mindful about that as they show up in their leadership now, it's not, you know, we try to make those connections so it stays very top of mind, but.

It's pretty hard to feel resilient when you know the world is coming at you a million miles an hour and you can't really picture like, why, why am I doing this again? You know, what is this all about for me? So these kinds of strategies can be extremely helpful for both athletes and for leaders

[00:15:46] Speaker 2: in athletes.

What athletes are really, really good is listening to their body and also make time for rest and restoration. What can we learn from that aspect for people who are in, in companies and corporate environments where you're always on and always demanded to deliver any, any tips and perspectives.

[00:16:09] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: I, you know, I think there's some real differences between kind of looking at performance in these different spaces, right?

So we have to recognize some of them are just the inevitable realities of different environments in which we're being asked to perform, so, so one is athletes approach their. Performance, especially endurance athletes in, in what's called periodization, where you do a lot of training and then you'll have kind of a very specific recovery strategy, and then you train some more so that your, your training tends to go like this, right?

Kind of up a little like steps. That is an intentional way to build strength and endurance over time. Periodization isn't really possible in the, in the workplace in this same way, right? We're, we're an environment that favors continuous output and trying to push people as much as they can. So that kind of brings things to the notion of how do we get leaders to be better about that?

Well, that kind of also goes to the recovery piece, right? Athletes don't like recovery is not a nice to have. It's a requirement. And for leaders recovery and especially sleep is seen as like a disposable thing. It is something we can do without, and it is mind blowing how we've gotten to this place where we believe as a, as a species that that sleep is something we should deprive ourselves of.

Every study in the world will show we perform so much more poorly when we don't have enough sleep. Things like how do we build in and really get leaders to focus on and be intentional about recovery? And I don't just mean going and meditating and that's great, but I mean sleep, I mean, you know, doing nothing.

I mean, really giving your, your body and your mind a chance to, to rest. I've got there's more strategies like that, but I'll pause 'cause I know, yeah.

[00:18:12] Speaker 2: I write this concept of strategic disengagement.

[00:18:17] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Absolutely

[00:18:18] Speaker 2: talks about to really put in phases of disengage strategically to rest, to restore, and it can be during a day.

It could be having pauses after three hour meetings or having a have day self-care session during the week, or having a week vacation. And

[00:18:41] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: That's right. That's right. I just, if I could just to engage around that for a moment. Simon, I think what you're really highlighting is something that is a big difference between athletes and leaders in general, which is a proactive versus reactive performance system, and that athletes are consistently being proactive about their performance, and leaders are often taught to kind of.

Be reactive in their performance. They're responding to environments. And instead, how can we help leaders become more active in behaving in their best leadership ways? Right? So taking from the, the endurance leader, you know, notions or the endurance athlete notions of like. How can you practice these? So for example, like pre-performance routines, which are a really big part of an athlete's life.

How can we help leaders learn how to do those very same things? Using visualization techniques, utilizing meditation practices, making sure they go through a series of. Physiological sequencing to help them, but leaders are not, it's so counter to what their experience has typically been. So we have to really help them learn how to do these things.

[00:20:10] Speaker 2: Can you gimme some examples how you. Use some of those techniques for your own physical exercises or also for your, when you give a presentation or go into a client?

[00:20:21] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Yes. Okay. Simon, I'm gonna ask you something, see if you'll play with me here.

[00:20:27] Speaker 2: Let's do it.

[00:20:28] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Can I do it with you? Can we go through, and so I know you have been working on public speaking.

That's something you're really wanting to master. So we won't go through an entire exercise, but if we were working together, I would say, Simon, let's close our eyes. And have you imagine yourself getting up in the morning from that point, you know, looking at what are your first thoughts for the day? How are you preparing your thoughts?

What are you thinking about? Are you thinking positively? You know, are you looking out the window? You know, visualize yourself looking at something that brings you joy, looking at something that brings you engagement and energy. Now let's move to, you know, getting in the car and going to the side or from the, you know, getting in the Uber from the hotel and thinking about how you want to show up.

What, what does it look like when you arrive? What are. Visual, what are you seeing? Who are you talking to? What are some of the noises and sounds around you when you get into the backstage area? What does it smell like? What does your skin feel like? What are you feeling in your stomach? Are you confident, et cetera.

So really working through and getting people to. Practice. This is called multisensory visualization. So you're really working all of the senses, and this is something athletes do all the time. They are not just focusing on their motor coordination or their muscles they're focusing on, or their mental gain.

They're focusing on the entire part and really practicing that and rehearsing it. Even things like. There's a small thing that goes wrong before you go on stage. It maybe the AV system has a little hiccup. What's your response? How are you holding yourself? Who are you talking to? What are you saying?

Because people often fear that these things are gonna happen. Things will go wrong. It isn't. About that. It's about how we're gonna respond to 'em when they do.

[00:22:44] Speaker 2: So I closed my eyes and went through some of the pictures. Being backstage, it's dark, and one of the things I focus on is my posturing. How do I hold my body?

How do I help my head? And then how do I interact with others that I exude that, that optimism and that energy and, and that kind of appreciation for others. So this is a great exercise. I just went through some of those, those seeds and, and I think what I liked what you did is what does it smell like?

What's the temperature? What do you feel? How does your, how do you look? In your mirror, how does it, how does your suit fit? So I think addressing the senses I think is such an important piece.

[00:23:26] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: And sometimes I really ask people the questions too, so they can pull from what they're actually looking at, because I might.

Not say the suit part, but that's what they're thinking about and that's so powerful because it's kind of this combination of my words and their words, and so they really own it, and therefore they can hold onto that so much more easily when they're in those scenarios. It's particularly helpful when people have to go into very difficult conversations.

They're having a conflict. They have to address a performance problem. They need to talk to their boss. Because people are, they're so anxious about the unknown, and if instead we can really help them work through that and do some of that prediction of like the other person's getting a little upset, what's your response?

You know, how, what changes in your posture? How do you res, you know. What are you gonna respond with? It's very, very helpful for people because they don't feel clueless walking in. Like, I don't know what's gonna happen. It's like, Nope, I, I'm ready. I'm ready for whatever happens.

[00:24:31] Speaker 2: And it's a, at the end, it's a, a mental rehearsal and it's also a mental simulation of what could happen.

It's like athletes that's exactly do that before they go into a high performance, uh, experience. Like I always remember skiers. Downhill skiers. Mm-hmm. When you look at the preparation, half an hour before they are behind the start, and then they're gonna go through the whole race, and then even though physically go through the chumps.

They almost go through their performance many, many times in their mind.

[00:25:05] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Lindsay Vaughn used to go through every single shoot like multiple times in her room, absolutely every single.

[00:25:13] Speaker 2: Do you know what's happening in the brain? Can you elaborate that? What does the Brain science neuroscience tell us about those mental exercises?

[00:25:25] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Yeah, so I, you know, I'm not a neuroscience expert, right? But I do know that like what we start talking about in these, anytime you're doing these kinds of pre-performance routines for anticipatory strategies, you're utilizing different parts of the brain for different elements. So. When you are physically moving your body that way, you're really using your motor cortex to, um, uh, sorry.

If you're actually practicing it, you're using the motor cortex, right? So if you're, if, if you're Lindsay Vaughn and you're working your way through the shoot and you're actually physically moving your body, you're using that. If you're visualizing it, you're using what's called your mirror neurons. So you're using a different part of the brain to basically simulate that.

And together these become incredibly powerful tools for people to utilize. And then depending if you start to utilize your, um, olfactory sense, right, your olfactory sense. Is a different type of, you know, activates different neurons, and it's also very closely tied into your emotional response center.

Your amygdala, your, your sense of smell is closest to that amygdala back there. So those two things are in very close relationship with each other. So if you're thinking about what you're smelling, it may also be really important to think about what you might be feeling and how the smell might trigger some different types of responses.

So. The actual activity of those things will activate certain parts of the brain. The visualization of them will activate other parts of the brain, and together they can become very powerful. The, when we're doing the, the mirror, uh, neuron in engagement, we're building a lot of, as you can imagine, you start to kind of build resilience.

You're facilitating greater kind of. Prefrontal cortex, um, activation because. Anytime you have to simulate or you are basically acting in a future state. You're not kind of in a present state. You're using your imagination, you're activating your prefrontal corte. You know, you're using all these pieces of your brain that are, make us distinctly.

Human right. So all of our more advanced thinking, that creates a lot more resilience in the brain. It gives us a lot more power to be able to respond to different types of situations.

[00:27:57] Speaker 2: Now, for an individual athlete, it's very good to do. I mean, you, you, when you go, I'm sure when you do your. Triathlon this weekend, you're gonna go through those mental exercises.

Do you have any experience how to do it in a team sports, in a team environment?

[00:28:16] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, I wanna clarify, I said prefrontal cortex, and I'm meant frontal cortex prefrontal here, which is fine, but that gets you used to. But in a team, you know, I think when you're talking about, um, an athletic team, there.

Many teams do many of these exact same kinds of things. They may not be able to visualize, let's say your up a soccer team, a foot, a football team. You might not be able to simulate the exact position you're gonna be in with, you know, your entire team and entire opposing team, but you could simulate it with other members of your team so you could practice those motor skills.

But often they will have captains or sometimes even junior members of teams lead through these kinds of activ activities and exercises in organizations. You know, we're not as good at kind of engaging in this pre, you know, pre-performance routine, but I could certainly see it with a teen that might be going into a very.

Intense period where they have a lot of deliverables to say, okay, so how are we gonna prepare for this? What are the things we wanna ensure that we're doing over these next two weeks? What do we wanna be feeling about these couple of weeks? What do we wanna do in terms of caring for one another? What do we wanna ensure we feel from a health perspective?

How do we wanna be thinking about it? These elements that are, you know, often people think about what do we have to deliver and how it's. Remember that just shuts us all down to right here. If instead we're like, how do we wanna show up to be the best team we can be open? Right? Expanse it. So absolutely.

These activities work really well for teams and in fact they just, the experience of engaging with other team members can help. Kind of create an upward cycle that you couldn't really get on your own because you see other people getting active, getting engaged, getting excited, you know, feeling very confident.

It's, it's really wonderful.

[00:30:20] Speaker 2: And sometimes when we get into a project or we need to get this done, we kind of focus on it and then kind of dive into it and forget, let's step back. Let's see, how do we work together? How do we support each other? How do we challenge each other? How do you make decisions and, and also kind of that mental side, the softer side, and how do we introduce that in a way that in a business environment where people say, yeah, let's go through those exercises.

How do you pro, how do you sell that?

[00:30:54] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Yeah. Well, I think it's a great question and it's something that I think CEOs and leaders need to understand and, and this is why I think that this is kind of the future of consulting and coaching, because I think when we talk about high performance, right? Most leaders pay attention.

If you asked leaders if you could do some things to motivate your team, the way SEAL teams do, the way, you know, super Bowl winning teams do the way you know, would you wanna do it? Heck yes, right? They would wanna do that. And so these kinds of strategies, often I think people think they're touchy feely and what they're really doing is.

Taking into account the entire human who's showing up for that performance. And so when we just activate on this very, you know, just this very high function cerebral level, we are missing all of the potential neuronal benefits or brain benefits to. Activities that can help us build more kind of muscle memory, as it were.

Muscle memory around what are kinds of things are we doing as a, as a team. You know, rituals are so important to team. We know for, you know, you can go watch the All Blacks all day long, right? And watch their rugby, you know, watch that, that routine. It's so powerful. But there's this notion of. What do we do before every team meeting and companies have tried to do it with their company, cheers and those kinds of things.

And even if people think those are stupid, they will, they prefer them Existing research will show people prefer That kind of thing exists than not exist, even if people think it's dumb because of the recognition that this defines us as a team. This is a performance strategy. Yeah. And if we can help leaders understand that this helps drive high performance,

[00:33:01] Speaker 2: gimme some, uh, examples or, uh, more evidence around that.

[00:33:05] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: You know, when we look at CEOs, like the research will show, like you can look at HBR, you can look at Gartner, you can look at every, you know, kind of big research publication out there, CEOs who are particularly very tied into their own mission and purpose. Um, the, the outcomes from an engagement, from productivity, from recruiting and retention, from psychological safety, all of these metrics are amplified, right?

They're much higher for CEOs and leaders who have a sense of not only their own, I mean, when you have a sense of your own purpose, that mission. You are going, you're gonna be more likely to express that and ensure that the values of the organization are being manifested. So like there's all this really good evidence that organizations are more successful when leaders invest themselves.

Into these kinds of activities. You know, I can think about, um, and I'm not gonna remember the specific example, but it was, uh, an example of a, a company in the Midwest. It was a manufacturing firm, and during. The COVID-19 crisis, they were having to face some layoffs. Right. And that's, well, that's what they were gonna talk about.

And the CEO said, that isn't something we value here, but we have, we don't, you know, we've had a reduction in our workload, so we don't believe in that. So what we'd like to do is. Rotate time, basically non-paid time off and better for all of us to suffer a little than for e, a few of us to suffer the most or completely right.

And that's the quote that I really liked. And everyone agreed. And in fact, people started donating some of their time to people who had more greater needs, medical needs, kids' needs, et cetera. They didn't lose any employees during that process, and their engagement scores went through the roof and it was really about the reflection of the values mm-hmm.

That, that CEO held onto. And in some ways, I mean, it's. It's a performance strategy. It's kind of a singular example of a performance strategy, but it is still a performance strategy. And if we can help leaders link having a vision, that is a performance strategy. What athlete, high performing athlete, doesn't have a vision of success?

[00:35:47] Speaker 2: Good example. What are some questions for leaders who are. In the midst of always delivering demanding performance over time, what are some questions you would have them reflect on? Mm-hmm.

[00:36:06] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: There's a probably a hundred different questions, but questions that I think are really important is, first of all, where are you?

Like start, and you have heard me use this probably many times, but really starting on the leading self. Where are you in in your self-leadership? Because if you don't have that well understood, if you don't understand what's going on with you, you don't understand what motivates you and drives you, you don't understand your ideal self.

How in the world. Are you going to be inspiring and, and creating high performance in others? It will only be through extrinsic means very likely thing, new promotions and and money. How tighter in are you to your own values? So that's the first thing I would ask. The second is, how are you engaging your team in our co, in your collective discussion about your mission as a team?

What are you here to do beyond this project? There's this team here to do, yes, you have a job, but that isn't intrinsically motivating for most people. It's feeling like I'm part of something bigger, and so inviting them into doing those kinds of activities is really helpful. How are you shaping the project?

You've got this project and it's got a momentum of its own. How are you helping your team to shape their performance in. Service of that goal. Yes, everybody's gotta perform, but how are people showing up? How are you ensuring that they're feeling inspired? How are you ensuring that your people are doing the right things around engaging their health, their wellness, their recovery.

They're taking the time off, they're getting intentional time to think, right? These are really helpful questions. How are you bringing the team together when you have a problem to engage on? Some of these mental performance strategies, are you thinking about this when you're planning strategies? What could you do differently?

You know, what could you include to start doing some more of this visualization? Bringing in all those essential elements beyond just solving the problem, right? What is it we're doing to create high performance and consistent high performance? So there's, you know, there's a lot of questions. They don't have to be.

Think you don't have to be an endurance expert, but it is about understanding that really good performance is a whole body sport, right? It's a whole body kind of experience and it involves other people, um, to be at our best. So I think if we can, any leader who can think about those things can come up with some of these questions themselves.

[00:38:54] Speaker 2: I like the holistic approach of the self, but then also holistically, how do we engage the team?

[00:39:00] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:39:01] Speaker 2: Before we come to a conclusion, is there a tip or advice or something you like to leave with that, um, shaped you or No. Will shape other people in a positive way?

[00:39:14] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: Yeah. You know what I would say is think of this as the long game, right?

Think about your leadership. And your team's success as the long game. Everything about organizations will not encourage that and as they shouldn't, organizations exist to maximize profit and and minimize costs. It isn't personal. But if you don't take your own leadership and the leadership of your people personally, no one else will.

And so recognize that we're not gonna get everything right. That, that your vision is your, is your compass or the your map to the top. The goals are, are the little mileposts on the way. We're not always gonna get them all exactly right, but we wanna continue up our trajectory. We might go a little bit sideways.

We might go a little bit this way. Some people might decide to come off and some others might join. Keep your focus on that longer term.

[00:40:16] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And uh, that's also, uh, the integrating the short term demands with the long term perspective and again, answering where are we going one year, three years, five years, 10 years?

And having that long term perspectives gives us a better sense of that perspective and opens up also, um, our options. Yeah,

[00:40:44] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: absolutely. I think that's a hundred percent right and I think that people are happier and they're more successful and they're more productive as a result of it. So it's, you know, it doesn't all have to be tough.

It just needs to be intentional.

[00:41:00] Speaker 2: How can we find out more about you or the research or your expertise?

[00:41:05] Anne Bowers-Evangelista: You can find me at ann@llumos.com or www.llumos.com. That is my website. My book, the, uh, endurance Leader is for sale, uh, wherever books are sold. Also on Kindle and Audible.

[00:41:22] Speaker 2: I have it myself. I am reading it.

I love it. A lot of great examples and thank you so much Anne. Great to have you and best of luck in your, um, triathlon on this coming weekend. Thank you so much. I will keep you posted on how it goes. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to the Vision Architect Podcast. I'm Simon Vetter. If you enjoyed today's conversation about leadership and peak performance, I invite you to subscribe to my show, share this episode with fellow leaders in your network who could benefit from these insights.

[00:41:57] Simon Vetter: And don't forget to join us next time for more transformative conversations about leadership, vision, and personal growth.