Reframing Failure for Optimal Performance with Adolfo Gómez Sánchez

Are you ready to break through your limitations and unlock your full potential?

Join us as Adolfo Gómez Sánchez, best-selling author, speaker, and Chief Passion Officer at Gold Results, shares his remarkable journey from competitive athletics to leadership in performance psychology.

Adolfo Gómez Sánchez and Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor met while speaking in New York under the direction of Tricia Brouk -- and quickly discovered shared synergy between Adolfo's Optimum Performance Formula and Dr. Diane's work of helping educators learn and lead through play. This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking to foster a culture of continuous improvement and high performance, especially those in educational leadership roles who aim to inspire both educators and students.

Why Listen:

• Gain actionable strategies to manage stress and pressure, vital for both startups and established businesses, and equally important in educational settings where teachers and students face constant demands.
• Learn how to apply an athlete's approach to leadership, enhancing success and innovation in schools and educational institutions.
• Explore the transformative power of reframing failure and embracing courage, essential for educators and leaders aiming to cultivate resilience and perseverance in students.
• Understand the importance of curiosity and collaboration in driving performance, key components in creating a dynamic and engaging learning environment.
• Get inspired to create thriving teams that support growth and development, crucial for educators seeking to foster collaborative and supportive school cultures.

Chapters:

• 00:38:Adolfo's origin story
• 03:23:Unpacking the Optimum Performance Formula 
• 16:58:Investing in Practice, Not Perfection -- Applying the Optimum Performance Formula principles to education
• 26:18:Embracing Failure and Taking Chances 
• 35:55:Brave Leaders Empowering Performance With Curiosity and Collaboration 

Links:

• The Optimal Performance Formula
• Adolfo Gómez Sánchez's website
• Gold Results
• Listen to Adolfo Gómez Sánchez speak about the importance of failure for performance optimization
• Connect with Adolfo on LinkedIn

Transcript

00:02 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. I am so excited to bring you a guest who has become a dear friend of mine and somebody whose passion and drive I greatly admire. Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez is the Chief Passion Officer of Gold Results and he's an incredible speaker to boot. We're going to learn all kinds of strategies for failure reps and for motivating and achievement today. So, Adolfo, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us from Spain. 

00:35 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
Thank you for having me on. It's such a pleasure to be here. 

00:38 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So tell us a little bit about your origin story. How did you go from your MBA at Yale to becoming the chief passion officer at Gold? 

00:51 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
Well, actually the story starts a lot earlier. It starts in my childhood. So I was always a competitive athlete and in anything that I could compete, that was my thing right. So I played football, got the second division, I played a lot of tennis as you know, in Spain we have a strong tennis culture so competing that and I've been doing martial arts since I was a teenager and I went off to Japan and I trained um and it was always about pushing myself and you know how far could I go, um. 

01:20
And then at one point I went off studied um and and, as you mentioned, when I got to my graduate degree at Yale, I discovered this thing called well, back then it was called organizational behavior, but it's performance psychology and I thought, oh my God, these are all the things that I've learned and applied in the world of sports. That actually has science behind it and you know that was about 30 years ago, but since then it's evolved a lot. But I went down the rabbit hole and started studying all-around performance. The key thing that drives me is why do some individuals, be them athletes, corporations, executives, teams why does it always work below their maximum potential? Because very few ever get there. The reasons are varied, but it's it's really interesting and that that's kind of what got me looking, because I've seen a lot of athletes who had a lot more potential, just never fulfilled it. And you go into any organization and you'll find almost anybody will tell you they've got a whole bunch of inefficiencies and they don't work as well as they should. Um. So the missing ingredient is the is a human being, right, um? 

02:24
So I kind of went down that rabbit hole and married my two loves of you know what's the science of performance for sport? And then once I model that, how do you take that to the world of business? So I've worked with professional athletes, mostly ATP tennis pros, and tennis is a great sport or metaphor for it, because you're there alone, right? And the difference between number one and number 200 is not technique, it's basically mental. And so I modeled that and I went to the world of business and found, you know, people were really, really open to hey, you know, why don't we think about this in a different way? And that's where Gold Results was born as a vehicle to do that. And we've been growing year on year and we're still a very small firm 25 people but you know, growing and published last year a book called the Optimum Performance Formula, which is kind of our treaty on this. So that's how we got here. 

03:23 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I think that's really cool. Can you tell us a little bit about your performance formula and how that applies? I'm thinking about teachers, because that's the realm I tend to work with and, as you're talking, I'm realizing so much of this could apply in the world of education as well. 

03:39 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
Yeah, well, you know, I believe in being able to explain things simply is actually the ultimate test of whether you understand them. And I always say I believe in being able to explain things simply is actually the ultimate test of whether you understand. And I always say I didn't come up with any of this. None of us ever have Right, I mean, it's thousands of years old. It's about how do you make it actionable, right, and a lot of times, a lot of people say yeah, I know what I should do, but why can't I get myself to do it? And I think that's the frustration a lot of people, especially people who've ever done a new year's resolution, have right, you know, um, you're gonna lose weight, right, it's not that hard to go to gym, eat properly, whatever, but but doing it, sustaining it's hard, and so the question is why, um, and so part of it is is the culture we're in, and and so the I. I have three big blocks in the performance formula and and it's. People tend to, especially in the in the first one, be very weak. So the three blocks are mindset, maps and mojo, and what. What's in there is mindset. If you think of it, it's like any product. It's the raw material right. So a lot of companies will try and improve or pivot or transform and, but they don't have the mindset Right. And when I talk about mindset I mean, for example, I'll usually meet a CEO and they'll say to me, you know their issues they're dealing with. And at some point in the conversation I'll ask, I'll say, look, what is your plan to be a better CEO in the next five years? And they'll go what? And? And then I say, look, I'm not trying to offend you, but you don't have one probably. But if you look in the world of sports, every elite athlete kobe bryant, michael jordan, tom brady, take whoever you want when they became top in their field they double down on getting better, whereas in business you get to a certain level, usually c-suite, and you stop. You stop getting better right. So why don't you think about that and think how much more runway do you have? And the science shows that you you know, dr Anders Ericsson, deliberate practice shows that. That's a famous 10,000 hour rule. You know it doesn't top out at 10,000. That's just, you know, an estimation of where you start to get pretty good. But the more you practice, the more you improve. The curve may be a little less steep, right, maybe a little smoother, but you can always improve. And so, in a world that's changing, a market that's changing, and when you want to inspire change in your organization, if you, as a leader, aren't the first one asking what can I do better, what can I challenge about myself, then it's never going to work. And they'll kind of look at it and go, yeah, actually that makes a lot of sense, right, and that's part of mindset. It's how do you start? 

06:03
And then I think one of the things that sounds so silly, but I see so many people fail on this is identity, right, who are you? And the reason I say that is because you have to be you and the decisions you make, what you do and what you don't do, have to be aligned about. Who do I want to be, what are my strengths and where am I not going to play right and um, and people and companies don't do that. I find that a lot right. Um, you know well, actually that's that's a tragedy of of you know, um, education is that people end up going down these limited rails and you have to choose one. And you have to choose one in an age when usually you don't really have enough, enough information to choose it, right, um, and it's sort of frowned upon if you sort of jump around and experiment. 

06:50
But that is where innovation comes from. Right, um, and and to do that, you have to fail, um, and. And you know, and that's where our society is terrible. Right, we get, we get frowned upon for failing um, it's like there's this pressure, you know, you got to get things going, you got to take the choice and then you got to get fast, but what it? What it ends up, uh, resulting in is people get good enough. 

07:14
Right, it's like driving when people start driving, once you stop running over people and hitting things, you generally don't get better. Most people will then drive for like 20, 30 years or whatever, but they don't never think about how can I become a better driver? And that, if you're honest, is how most corporate corporations and corporate jobs work. You get competent, which is the dirty word, and then you stop getting better, right, um, but then the organization wants to change or the market changes, and they say, guys, let's pivot. Well, you've been asking me to do the same thing for the last 30 years and you haven't allowed me to step out of my, my lane. 

07:52
So I think that's really important is and then you need to define failure, any skill, and if you start, you know from when you start walking, any skill you will at the beginning not be good at by definition. So you know from when you start walking, any skill you will, at the beginning, not be good at by definition. So corporations have very low tolerance for failure. So if you don't allow people to fail, you're really limiting them on any you know, skills they can evolve in, or capabilities that they can develop, or capacities or within the organization. So you need to not just absorb it and sort of grin and bear it. You need to not just absorb it and sort of grin and bear it. You actually have to embrace it, because it's in that failing where you learn. 

08:28
And then you know innovation is not a sort of I wake up and I've got it, eureka thing. All great innovators have gone through iterations and a little forward, a little back, and then all those little pieces kind of one day click together and the best organizations are doing that. But you have to be ready to fail. The key is so what? Who cares? What does it mean? Doesn't mean anything, right? Um, it just means that you, you know, you're trying, you're stepping out of your zone, um, and you're getting data right and and so that's part of the mindset and part of the raw materials that, for a company that wants to be the best they can be. I said you don't have these in place, you're going to, you're going to trip up on yourself as you go forward. Second piece is so that's mindset. 

09:09
Second block is what I call maps and um, anything great we talked about the 10,000 hour rule. Right, to be great in anything or anything ambitious takes years, literally years, and we live in a hack-driven culture, but it's absolutely naive. And if you look at great companies I mean Amazon, lost money. How many years 10, 15 years. You know, apple was not what it was until years later. And great athletes are not born being great right, they have to develop, so you have to are not born being great right, they have to develop, so you have to sort of say, okay, I have to think in decades. Elite performers think in decades. Um, and to do that, though, it's hard to maintain that motivation over over decades. 

09:48
So what you need is what I call mastery map, which is you know, I can't compare my day one to day whatever n of michael jordan, right, he's been doing it for 20 years and I want to compare it. So there's no way, no matter how good I am, even if I get better than him day one, I'll never be as good as he is right. So I need to know where I need to be at each part, each step, and I need to break down the skills, because a lot of them are actually dependent on other skills, right? So if I want to do a transformation, I need to know how to communicate, I need to create an environment of psychological safety before I start putting, you know, changing people's worlds and their jobs upside down, et cetera, because if not, I'm not going to get the participation. And you know, on a physical level, if I want to be a ballet dancer, there's a series of flexibility and strength, you know abilities that I need before I can start doing the moves. And if I try to skip that, I'm just hobbling myself and I'm going to end up getting injured. 

10:42
So maps is about what are the steps and where should I be for this point, um, and then that's where a mentor or somebody who's been through it, or an expert, no, really helps because it allows you to sort of say, okay, you know, these are the, this is what you have to work on. And best companies, the best athletes, work on fundamentals. Even when they get really famous, they go always back to the fundamentals because that is the cornerstone. And you know there's iterations of understanding. So once you get really good, you go back to the fundamentals and you have a whole new vision of it. You say, oh, my God, I didn't understand these fine details. Um, and you know, an expert will probably see things that a novice will not even not even visualize, right, not even understand. 

11:28
And that's where. That's where you get into the neurochemistry of the whole thing. Right, you're not trying to just achieve, right, which is, which is dopamine. You're not on this cycle to to tick off boxes or to get victories. You're, you're building yourself and and you are a long-term project and that's driven by serotonin, right, and? And that's where true fulfillment and happiness comes, um, and so you know, I slipped here, I went less quickly, that's fine, but I'm building myself and you look back and it's solid, that stays with with you forever. So you need a map to know. 

12:01
And as an organization that's one individual, imagine you know a hundred thousand employees, right. How do I get them all aligned? One of the big mistakes companies make, in my opinion, is that they don't tell you where the journey is going and what each of the steps are, so that you can understand that what you're being asked is part of this mission and how it contributes. Right? If not, it just looks you end up with with change, fatigue, right, with a whole bunch of initiatives. People don't know what, what's driving them. So it's really, really important to put sit down and do the lap, and as you start doing it, you will find it in think of this wait, I gotta take a step back. Hey, we'll push this back, but it's okay because you thought about it and you feel comfortable and confident. 

12:40
And then the third piece is. The third block is what I call mojo. Right, it's about executing, cause I seen a lot of startups, a lot of in the world of finance, and so this great idea will get you. You know used to say, with a dime you can make a. You know a diamond idea, you can make a. You know a diamond idea, you can make a phone call, right, but a great idea will get you, maybe some funding. 

12:59
But what makes the great companies great is exceptional execution. And and the great athletes right, the great athletes are consistent. Um, you get some people who are really good and then they go down and but the greatest ones kind of just stay here. They're really stable, right, and they're're consistently exceptional. And so organizations, how do you do that? How do you structure that? How do you organize that? And that's where we get into stuff, like you know, how do you help people manage stress and pressure, which, by the way, are two completely different phenomena? People sort of say it as one thing, just for your listeners. This is something I think is really important. 

13:39
So stress is when you don't have the demands and when you don't have the resources for the demands, right. So you're trying to pick up a weight that's too big for you, right, and that puts you out of homeostasis and then suddenly your muscle has to grow. Well, physically, same thing. Cognitively, it's the same thing, right. So when you're trying to do a job where you don't have enough people, enough resources or you're new at it, great stress. Stress is a blow burn, right, and what you have to do, and it's good if you manage it, you have recovery and you grow right. It's part of what you need to grow, but you need to manage it. A lot of companies just have chronic stress and at one point you burn out, and when you burn out it just breaks. 

14:14
Pressure is a whole different story. In the case of pressure, you do have the skill right. So I'll give you a great example of pressure um, the game winning free throw right that a basketball, professional basketball player can make. That free throw has a skill, absolutely. But because of the gravity you attribute to the situation, you are unable to access your full capability. So you see, it's a whole. It's a very different problem than I don't have enough resources. 

14:42
I'm being asked to do something I still am not good at. In the first case, we need failure reps. We need to practice. In the second one, I need to change the meaning of that event. I learned to manage my state, and the reason this is important is because, as leaders, you have to distinguish them and you have to help your team get through it. Right, because what? 

15:01
What I see a lot and I think it's just absolutely insane is they'll come down and somebody messes up and then you berate that person, right? So if you think about it. If you're under pressure and you're feeling nervous, you got to do that. Having somebody yell at you probably will not make it better, right? Um, having somebody yell at you probably will not make it better, right. 

15:18
And if you mess up on your job because you don't have a skill or you haven't had the practice, it'll just make you want to shy away, right? And how many people go into work saying, oh, let's see if I really mess this up? And, you know, screw up everybody's day. People don't do that, right. So why would you pressure them? Why don't you think about how you can support them? In one case, getting the resources and supporting them and giving them reps, and in the other case, um, helping them reframe it and say, okay, well, you know, it is what it is like but it's okay, we'll get through it and don't worry about if we don't make it, because then you enable people and that's what a great leader does. 

15:51
Right, because the other the other version of I will, I need a fall guy is what mediocre leaders do, and unfortunately there's far too many of those, right? Uh, you better get this and it's your fault, right? Um, and even look at, look at the metaphor in sports. So, um, what is that? What does an athlete do versus a manager? Or a coach versus a bench? So a coach goes in and they lose a game, right? Or manager comes in and you didn't hit your target. So what's the manager do? Hey, diane, you better smarten up. You and you didn't hit your target. So what's the manager do? Hey, diane, you better smarten up. You know you're not getting your quota. I'll be back in a couple of months or you're out in the street, right, much money. 

16:25
If a team did that. Imagine Bill Belichick going into the locker room going we lost the game. You guys are rubbish. I'm going to go home. I'll see you next Sunday. You better smarten up, right? You'd say fire that coach, right? What does the coach do? He says why didn't we hit it. What skills are you missing? What teammates are we missing? What strategy are we missing? What did we do wrong? Coaching team. How different would it be if a manager did that? Hey look, diane, you're not hitting your targets? What support are you missing from marketing? In terms of skills, in terms of okay, and hey, monday, we're going to do a plan and we start working on it together. Right, why wouldn't you want to do that? 

16:58 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and as you're talking, I'm having like this mind explosion as I think about the world of education and how all of this applies really powerfully to what we do as educators, or what we should be doing. You know, starting with the notion of mindset and the idea of what we talked about before the whole learning through play you're giving kids that opportunity to practice in a safe environment what it is to try something, to iterate, to fail. You know there are so many books and I actually picked some of my favorite children's books behind me that deal with that exact topic. You've got things like Boxitechts, Jabari Tries, Saturdays, where things don't go to plan, and how do you deal with it? Do you curl up in a ball or do you regroup, rethink, try again, try something else? You know, learn from it. 

17:55
So I'm thinking about, you know, if we change the mindset in our classrooms, that would be so powerful in terms of giving kids that freedom. But then, even more than that, if we gave the teachers the support so that it's not just a test that we're asking kids to pass, but it's looking at that data and going. Okay, as we look at the data, we can see that we've got some weaknesses here. It's not. Good luck next year's teacher. What can we do to provide you the supports to be able to help those individual kids build their skills? 

18:25 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
And that is something I'm really critical about because, you're right, the educational model is broken, a lot of things, because a lot of what they teach you in school is the opposite of what you need. Right, there's one right answer don't work with others, called cheating, right? Um, don't question a lesson which is the exact opposite of what they ask you when you get into the workforce. And that last part you said about how can teachers work with students, right, it's a test. You have to get the answer, right or wrong. And I'm going to grade you as opposed to my job is to help you get it right and understand it. 

18:55
And one of the things I teach professional athletes and then I take to the world of corporate is there are two very different mindsets between practice and performing. Right, and in work, there really is only just performing, and that's part of the problem. But when an athlete trains in practice, you are a perfectionist, right? So we stop. When we do it, we try and fix it right. Well, when we were, you know, on the big stage and it was rehearsal, right, stop it, stop it, stop it. So you work and you fine-tune everything. Now, when you perform, it's the opposite. You can't get get stuck. You have to flow right, because if not, you just lose your flow and you lose your whole thing, and you need to teach children in education, but even later adults, how to have those two things and schedule time for, okay, we're going to do perfection and we're going to go over it, and we're going to go over it Now. We're going to flow right, and then you've got to get over. You know, not get stuck. When you get, when you don't know the answer, you're doing the test. It's. It's. 

19:48
Why are kids so bad at doing tests? Because they're taught to be a perfectionist. They know they made a mistake or they don't know the answer and they freeze Right, whereas there has to be strategies about that. And that's what world-class athletes do. Right, they'll work themselves to death and they'll, you know, on practice, but when they play, they just windshield, what I call windshield wiper. Right, made a mistake, windshield wiper on to the next one, because it's about getting the best performance and unleashing your talent, and in companies we need to be able to do that. But to do that, you have to plan practice time. There is no practice time in work, right? So what do we do? We say, hey, you know here's. This is another, I guess continuing education, call it right. So okay, we want you to learn a skill psychological safety. That's a big one. I hear a lot in my clients. Great, okay, besides the fact they don't really understand what it is. But okay, so they'll say it. 

20:34
And then they say, okay, great, here, a one-hour course to everybody. And then, okay, dr Diane comes in and explains it. Great, now bugger off and go to your desk, right, well, I just I need to practice it. I will not be proficient at it, and where is the time where I practice it and get feedback right? What I'll do with clients is I'll set stuff up like that and then in their day-to-day we'll stop them and we'll say hang on, feedback, feedback. It's just like when you're learning a physical skill right, you swing a tennis racket, let's stop. No, you're not finishing, you're not finishing. And after you hear it, you start getting it right. But you need to practice. You correct it. Practice feedback, practice feedback. 

21:11
And that in the corporate environment is just unthinkable. Right, it's inefficient, it's embarrassing because you're getting corrected all the time. You don't get it the second time around. You know you're something, but that's insane. That's a total ignorance of how human beings learn. So great organizations need to understand how people learn and create the conditions so that they can learn and they can grow and continuously be growing, and understand that there's moments where you're not performing at 100 or you're not growing. You've got to go backwards, but that's fine. You're investing in the future, just like you take material wealth and you invest it in some kind of investment that pays back. It's exactly the same thing. But we don't think of team members like that. We don't think I'm going to invest in them, right, and you have to. 

21:53 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You know I'm thinking about what you were saying about the sort of the chief, the chief executive officer it's the principal or the teacher as well. 

22:04
You know it trickles down in the education world that if the principal sets that culture and has the mindset of where do we want to go and works with the teachers and provides those supports, then the teachers hopefully get that same mindset and that same opportunity to practice that kind of culture with the kids. 

22:21
And you set the goal of you know by the end of the year, this is where we want to be, how are we going to get there? And that's where you build in that time for the practice and the flow. And I love that idea of being able to give teachers that freedom but also to provide real structure and support for coaching. And that's one of the things I've tried to build into my own professional developments is not just go in and deliver for half a day or a day and then be done, but to also offer the opportunity for teachers to have me walk into their classrooms, to model with their students, to be able to provide them with feedback, because I think that that's critical for being able to take what you learn in your professional development and then grow and actually use it. 

23:06 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
Yeah, exactly, and the thing with education is almost like in work. It's again there's one right answer, there's one model. Right, education is very skewed to people to work for people who are predisposed to it right, but it's not designed to get the best out of everybody, right? And so you miss a lot, an opportunity to develop people with a lot of incredible talent, because the system just doesn't work for them. And that's where a teacher should be able to experiment and sort of question right, how did this person process? Right, you know, there's more and more people who are neurotypical, which is, you know, I mean, I'm sure I was, me too. It just wasn't diagnosed Exactly. 

23:58
And you know, my son it's funny because I see it when my son, my son, started speaking late, just like I did, and but he had a whole different environment and a different support system and you know, we looked for how he interpreted and process information. He had a wonderful teacher and we worked on it and he just boom, when we figured it out, he just took off right, and now he's developed skills that were like wow, he's ahead of the class, he just leapfrogged everybody. But that was because this teacher was, you know, dedicated and caring enough to actually, you know, we would get together and say I'm trying to figure out how he processes things right, and I would tell him this is what I see at home and you know, but that is actually that's what being a teacher is right. Being a teacher is being. It's just such a great responsibility and it's such an amazing thing. You can really shape somebody's world. 

24:39
And, on a lesser level, being a leader is kind of the same. Right, do I create an environment? You know you were asking about my title before we got on and you know I have on my business card I said CEO and it's crossed out chief passion officer. Because my job it's there to remind me my job is to create a strong vision, create the conditions, get the best talent around and then get out of the way right. So my job to micromanage or tell them to do it, the way I would do it is to let them bring their own genius to it. Genius to it, and in a sense, teaching is kind of the same. Right, here's some principles, but oh, wow, tommy, you've got this way. Or Diane, you've got this way of looking at it. Tell me more, how can we bring that in? 

25:18 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Because that's where innovation comes from, that's where great breakthroughs come through. Well, and that's for when I work with kids. I love to do STEM, steam challenges because often, as you were saying, school is geared towards the kids who are fluent readers and writers or are able to sit still. That's sort of the traditional, old-fashioned model of school. But when you start bringing in these challenges, you find that you're attracting a different kind of kid. You're encouraging creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, and the kid who might otherwise be ignored suddenly has an avenue to, because they've had practice failing and so they're less afraid of getting the wrong answer in those challenges and they're more willing to put themselves out there and then suddenly they take a leadership role. And that kind of challenge needs to be imbued throughout the school day, but also throughout the workforce, like offering people opportunities to be able to practice working together, to practice innovating, to practice failing. I think that's super important. 

26:21 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
Well, you know, failure, you know it's a big thing of mine, like failure is like an honor badge, right, you know I failed enough. And there's actually a quote by Michael Jordan who said, you know, I succeeded because I missed I don't know how many shots and I, you know, failed in so many games and whatever. That's exactly it. I remember when I was on tour, you know, I met Rafa Nadal obviously he was on tour and I heard him once say something. He said, you know, he was telling a younger player and he said to learn to win, you need to learn how to lose a lot, because in those little fuss you learn lessons and then you put it together. Right, and that's true. And we have like this. You know, I think social media has done us a great disservice there, because it's like I just see the good parts and it's like you know you go to success. It's like my mastery map, right, you're comparing my day one to somebody else's day, 30 and just the highlights, right, Just the right. 

27:09
Yes, you just get the highlight reel Exactly, which is why people are so afraid to step out. They learn how to do something, or CEOs get to a certain level, and they're afraid to take a risk. What if I look silly? What if I'm not good at it? Right, what a shame to play so small in your life, right, right, and you know, fall down, dust yourself off and keep going, and the people who can do that are the ones who make those amazing breakthroughs. But sadly, you kind of have to go against the social current Right, and you have to. Just you know, I don't care what you say, I'm going to do this. 

27:45 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And how do you encourage somebody to break out of going against the social current? Because a lot of what you're suggesting is radically different than the way the world works right now. And I 100% see the value, and I think that anybody who wants to innovate sees the value, but how do you encourage people to take that first step? 

28:01 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
So I think one of the things I teach people and it's really silly, but it's just so foundational is about you choose the meaning you want to give to things, so nothing in fact has any meaning. Right? You know, I'll often do, when I do seminars and events, I'll take somebody from the audience, usually a female member, because of the implication you'll see, and I'll say a simulation Okay, so we're on a late night train, it's just you and me and I'm looking at you, right? What do do you feel? And then the person will usually something like uneasiness, worry. But I say, okay. So now, all of a sudden you think, hey, maybe I know him from somewhere. I think I know him from somewhere, right. And so then you know, you start to get curious. How do you feel now? And they're like, oh, much more relieved, and, you know, excited. And then I said, oh, and then you think now I know where I know him from. I saw him on the news. He's like a serial killer, right? How do you feel now? Right, and then, and then you go and people go through this whole. You know a variety of reactions. 

28:54
But I'm doing the same thing. I'm just sitting there, I haven't done anything else? Right, and we do that daily. We give meaning to think, right. So most of the time there is no set meaning, it's just the one we give it and usually we inherit socially. So to do that, to step out the test that you know, dare to fail. You have to give a meaning to things. That's empowering, right. So what do you mean? So I failed, I'm just, I'm learning, right. And I go back to the liberal practice. Right, I wasn't expecting to get it good, get it perfectly the first time. I shouldn't get it, it would be insulting, right. 

29:28
I remember when I was on tour, I'd sometimes, you know, hit balls with some of the coaches and some of the players, and one coach said to me he said, look, you know. I said, man, I can never beat you. He said, look, I've been doing this eight hours a day since I was four. Right, it would be almost offensive if you could. And he's right, you know I haven't put in those hours in that, right. So that's okay, I'm just on the road and is it worth it for me? Yes, no, whatever. 

29:50
So it's taking that meaning, and when you go into a job, it's being able to say, look, I'm going to do this and I may fail, but I think it's going to make me better, right, and if you have an environment that supports that, then you can just take off. And the great innovators, the great, you know trailblazers, are the ones who do that regardless, right, and that's where identity is so important. It's, this is who I am and this is what I'm going to do. I remember early in my career, you know, went on my own, I started building this company and I got this great offer from a very prestigious bank and it was a real high profile role and I and I turned it down and the guy who offered it to me said I can't believe you're doing this, you're ruining your life. I said it's my definition of success. And when I go home at night right, this is what people have to know when you go home at night, it's not going to be all the people who think what a cool title you have, or all the people, your friends or whatever, the only one's going to be you. Or, because I tried and I failed and I scraped my knee and I'm going to do it again tomorrow you have a superpower, right? People can't keep you down. So it's understanding, and you know people like hear this and they'll go, but it takes a while to get it, to really get it Really. 

31:03
Nothing has a meaning except the meaning you give it. Look at Roger Bannister. Right, the first man to run a four-minute mile. Before Roger Bannister, people said it was impossible. Right After Roger Bannister, in the next 18 months, I think it was like 30 runners broke the four-minute mile. 

31:18
So all of a sudden you're saying I'm getting a new meaning. It's not impossible, I just it is possible and I just have to train different, right? So what you believe limits you so much it can, and you can, just you know. So why not choose something that empowers you? Right, and you know I have a saying. My motto is you know, impossible just means nobody's done it yet, right, and and, and you know time will prove that so, and maybe I'll be wrong, but hey, I'll probably get a hell of a lot closer doing that and feel happier looking at myself in the mirror at night than if I just said OK, well, I'm in this little box and I've gotten here and I can do this and I'll just stay here, right, because I think when you look back, I think you know, studies will show people in their deathbed. Regret not taking the chance. Regret not taking the chance. 

32:06 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Absolutely. You know you don't regret necessarily the time you spent in the office, or well, you do regret potentially the time you spent in the office. You don't regret the time you spend with family and you don't. I don't think you regret the chances you take. I don't know I'm not there yet. 

32:24 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
No, I mean, even you know, I look at big failures I've had or tough situations I've had and I look back on them and they were very formative. I learned how to deal with stuff and maybe in the moment I didn't deal with it right, but you know it stayed with me and I said, ok, I'm going to learn how to do this and I look at what I can do professionally now and how, you know, some of our team members learn and I think, thankfully, I went through that. Right, I went through this rough. It's like. You know, I've been through really tough situations in my life, things that I remember, moments where I felt I couldn't breathe. I mean I just thought my entire world had collapsed. And coming out the other end, I thought, well, I now have for myself the credibility to tell somebody who's going through a rough time. You know, here's how to get through it. You can get through it because I've been there. I, you know, literally had to say, ok, it's all dark, let me open a little hole. Ok, I got a little air, let me just open that hole bigger, right, and it was slow and it was painful, but you know, you can incredibly do it. 

33:22
It's not like you know, life has been so easy, it's all so great and you know, I'm going to just give you this lesson on how it works. It's not that Life is never clean, right? That's one of the problems. That's one of the things I teach athletes. They think they not only have to win, they have to win easy. A lot of them think they have to win easy, and that's insane, right? You just have to make it to the finish line. It doesn't have to be easy. It doesn't have to be beautiful. You know it can be messy, and that's OK, and there's a lot of actual value in it being messy. 

33:54 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And we learn from that. And you're right, as you were talking, I sort of I had that flash of failure sort of cascading in front of my face, thinking about all of the times that things were rough and I didn't get the job I wanted. You know the times where I failed. I wasn't the perfect parent, I wasn't the perfect teacher, and those were learning points and it's because I had those experiences that I feel confident working with teachers and educators today, because I've been in their shoes and I know how hard it is. 

34:27 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
Yeah, and you know, if you could get even one teacher to have the courage to step a little outside of the boundaries, you've done a great thing, because that's a butterfly effect, right, that teacher can impact so many people. 

34:39 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Yeah, and really you're absolutely right and I think that's the same way in business. If you've got the one person with the vision and the leadership and they're willing to have that bravery, it does spill over into other departments, and how great when it actually comes from your CEO. 

34:55 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
Well, yeah, you know, that's there's. This book by Robin Chairman says the leader with no title right, and so you don't need a title lead. But but you know, the one who has the title should be a leader right, and that means you put your ego on the coat rack. You know, you listen and you know there's some really interesting research by a lady who, besides being a doctor in cognitive psychology, she's also a world-class poker player. 

35:24 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Interesting. 

35:25 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
And champion, poker player and champion. And what she discovered and then did her research, was that not only the people when they win, they drastically overestimate their own merit in that, and when they lose, they drastically over-attribute it to external factors. And I always say leadership, do the opposite. When you win, it's who can I praise to help us get here, and what was kind of a lucky punch, which is okay, I'll take a lucky punch, but let's be aware of it. So I don't think I'm better than I really am, right. And then when you lose, it's okay. So what did we learn? What do we do right here? Okay, what do we have to fix? Right, and that's what a does, because that gives you something to work towards. Right, if you just it's oh, we lost, oh, it's terrible and you're gonna lose your job, you know, then that creates that pressure where people don't even access their skills. They just get, you know, just going down one road. 

36:17
Um, and what you need is to at those moments is to open your mind and say, okay, well, let's think about this totally different. Right, what is what is right? Um, and once you start thinking what is, then your mind opens all kinds of possibilities, because the way our minds work is really interesting. Um, we don't actually see the world and, as a matter of fact, we process a percentage of all the inputs we get. Um, and then our mind is predictive, right, so it guesses what the answer is. Um, which is why optical illusions work so well, right? So you've ever seen that that one was like one, was like a door with squares, and if you look in it you see circles. Because what your brain does is it for efficiency, because your brain is has been classified as a lazy piece of meat to conserve energy. It takes previous experiences and it kind of writes like a macro this is it? Okay? So the answer is this, and that may be an answer no-transcript. 

37:30
What you're actually doing is finding all kinds of combinations of that data and then at one point, you go boom. But you thought about the problem so much that it's just like an athlete who works so much on his skills learns different nuances, and that's where you know the difference, by the best, in those jumps is millimeters, right? So that's why you need to question like what do I know, what I think I know, do I know, is it right? And what don't I know right? And where could I learn? And that's a hard thing to do in our society, right, because you just have to put your ego on the coat rack. But that is the magic. The magic is when you say, okay, what don't I know and who am I going to find? 

38:08 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
to teach me that. Yeah, it's the getting curious part. You have to be able to get curious, to ask questions, to make mistakes and then to be able to find the answers. And so if people would like to find some of the answers, Adolfo, you have a book and you have a company. Can you tell people a little bit about how to find some of the answers from you? 

38:30 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
Sure Well, the book is called the Optimal Performance Formula. It's on Amazon and the company is called Gold Results wwwgold-resultscom. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez, and glad to have conversations with people. A lot of times people just call us and say, hey, you know we're going through this, what are your thoughts? And, and you know we love to share and sometimes that ends up in a collaboration. Sometimes it doesn't, but you know we believe these things come around, right. It's. It's about helping people get ahead and if we all contribute a little a little, a little more empathy, as you would say, takes the world really far. 

39:11 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, thank you for joining us today, Adolfo, and I will drop links to all of that in the show notes, and I'll also link to some of the articles and other podcasts you've done as well. We so appreciate you sharing your time and your expertise with us. 

39:25 - Adolfo Gomez-Sanchez (Guest)
Well, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here, and I think what you're doing is amazing.