#50 Transforming potential with Luke Tyburski

“When reaching your limits, its only there where you’ll catch a glimpse of your true potential”

Luke shares his story and experience of overcoming obstacles, and chasing extremes. We discuss resilience and performance management, and how to translate his learnings into actionable and simple tools for management . We particularly look at self talk and how we can use it to improve our performance - consciously choosing the conversations you're having with yourself. 

For organisations to create space for a ‘reset’ they must look at their performance from a humanistic standpoint and leaders must normalise the conversation around mental health. Lots of corporate cultures will be questioned post-pandemic, and people must have the chance to grow, and embrace change in this changing workplace dynamic. 

Luke shares with us his insights, and learnings that he has operationalised into everyday tools, looking at how we can build resilience and have genuinely vulnerable and courageous conversations with ourselves. 

The main insights you'll get from this episode are :

-       Being driven, curious and hard-working from a young age led to a career in professional sport travelling the world, but this took its toll on his mental and physical health, and he embarked on a new career as an adventurer, writer, documentary-maker and speaker.

-       He was often asked how he pushes himself physically and mentally and how he views the world. To share his knowledge, he translated it into tools that can be used across the board to help people overcome obstacles and adapt to setbacks.

-       Self-talk can help improve performance yet lots of people don’t admit to or realise they are doing it; it is good to talk out loud and consciously choose the conversation you have with yourself rather than let thoughts dictate the conversation you’re having.

-       It is still perceived as weakness to ‘talk to yourself’ or talk at all, yet vulnerability is a superpower that no one can take from you. If we are positive with the truth and answer questions honestly, we eventually become more comfortable sharing our vulnerability.

-       It is simple and effective but requires training and daily practice. As we become better at speaking (up), this skill can be applied anywhere in life.

-       Sportspeople grow in their career because they are always practising different techniques. In an organisational setting, ‘corporate athletes‘ too must train their minds for physical performance and learn to pivot quickly.

-       This requires companies to invest time and money in a cultural evolution to allow people to grow and develop resilience - many corporate performance management systems are outdated and based on wanting results too quickly.

-       Mindset is about how we view, think and act on a daily basis. In organisations there is often lots of box-ticking but not much out-of-the-box doing; whilst they like the idea of change, they are resistant to it in practice because it is hard.

-       In terms of performance mindset, we are all high performers, it just depends if we act on it. Everything is relative and an improvement is a high performance for the individual. We must consciously acknowledge the scenarios we face and apply tools to them. 

-       Post-pandemic, many are waiting for things to ‘return’ to pre-pandemic normal, but we have come too far to go back completely: we must let the dust settle and reassess; look forward and define what is important to us, take the opportunity to reset.

-       For organisations to create space for a ‘reset’ they must look at their performance from a humanistic standpoint. Lots of corporate cultures will be questioned post-pandemic; people must have the chance to grow and embrace change - COVID has changed us all.

-       Every ultra-endurance challenge is transformational and an opportunity to learn about himself. The biggest shift came from being physically and mentally broken after a challenge and realising that it didn’t ‘fix’ him. This forced him to stop and ask: what is important? what do I want to achieve? what am I waiting for? The time is now. No permission or justification is required.

-       Leaders must normalise conversation around mental health. This requires education, mental health first aid training, and reassessment of what performance means - both personal and professional mindsets require authenticity and resilience.