High Performance… but at what cost? (Hint: Wellbeing)

We hear a lot about coaches helping others to improve their performance – to do more, sustain high performing behaviours and attain goals. It feels integral to a coaching practice. After all coaching is about the future and achieving goals?

But, what a great coach also does, is support you to understand the cost of this high performance.

This is because continued high performance is a bit of a fantasy. Constantly battling demands leads to fatigue, burnout and exhaustion. This can in time lead to serious health problems. On the other side of that there is of course low-performance, where we might not be motivated to achieve our goals or where we ‘rust out’.

Think instead of working with your clients to understand what their optimal performance is – that space where they are performing well but not to the detriment of other areas including their wellbeing.

When working with clients who are aiming to do more, perform better, go to that next level, ask them – at what cost? What are you willing to compromise so that your performance doesn’t get in the way of your wellbeing?

This idea of performance in light of wellbeing is something that we cover on our Certificate in Career & Performance Coaching. On the programme we cover aspects such as: 

– the links between high performance and wellbeing

– factors that impact performance including perfectionism, procrastination and resilience

– unhelpful thoughts and how to help someone overcome these 

– supporting an individual through a planned career change or settling into a new role

– unplanned career changes including dealing with loss