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Timothy Gallwey, “Work as an Inner Game” (compendium). “Work as an inner game” () - download the book for free without registration Inner game in writing

Electronic magazine “Secrets of self-hypnosis and auto-training” Issue 128

Hello, dear subscriber!

About a year ago, I read Timothy Gallwey’s book “Work as an Inner Game” and realized that I had another excellent technique in my arsenal.

Timothy Gallwey is a famous American trainer, business coach and author of several best-selling books.

He began his professional career as a sports coach (tennis, golf, cross-country skiing).

Watching his players and other coaches, he discovered that there are two main training models:

The first and most common model based on the expert assessment of the trainer.

The second model (later called the Inner Game) advocates a non-judgmental approach, using a technique of focusing attention on critically important variables in the process of activity(it still sounds unclear, but have a little patience and everything will become extremely clear). With this approach, learning occurs to a greater extent on an unconscious level without unnecessary stress and overload.

So, The most common is the expert model. Its essence is that the expert has the “correct” model in his head and he compares it with the student’s actions and tells him what to do and what not to do.

The student, at the same time, is in the role of a performer and, as it were, responsibility for the learning process is removed from him. In addition, the student develops subconscious resistance.

By the way, a separate large article could be written about this very internal resistance to change. I don’t want to get distracted now, I’ll just say that the essence of such self-sabotage is that we have a certain fear of “losing ourselves” (this is all, of course, on an unconscious level). That is, we perceive our mistakes and shortcomings as part of our personality and therefore “receive with hostility” any attempts at change, even positive ones.

Opening of the second model

Gallwey noted that all athletes note that during their best performances they are completely focused on the process and have no evaluative internal dialogue.

Self1 is essentially what I call the Social Self. It’s like an image of a coach in the student’s head who evaluates and gives instructions

Self2 is the true self of the student.

Gallwey illustrates these ideas with the example of a tennis player who has a poor backhand and return stroke.

When a ball flies towards him under his left hand, he actually sees not a ball (a yellow round flying object), he sees a THREAT. He “KNOWS” that he has a bad left hand. He has certain expectations that things will turn out badly again. And then, he once again reinforces these negative attitudes by saying to himself something like: “This is the most terrible technique, you are good for nothing!” This not only reinforces negative expectations, but also further reduces the athlete's self-confidence.

Once again I would like to recall the works of our famous hypnotherapist Vladimir Leonidovich Raikov, about whom I have already written many times. When a person “knows” that he draws poorly, he... draws poorly :). While in hypnosis, in the image of a great artist, he “knows” that he can draw well. And this simple change in his settings and expectations allows him to start drawing much better.

The main problem of the expert model is that it looks like a broken phone. Our unconscious, which controls our behavior, does not operate with words and linear logic. This is essentially a powerful computer that performs a huge number of operations per second. It is based on experience, input and purpose. We cannot fully verbalize (describe in words) this process. We usually say that we feel whether we are doing the right thing or not. Therefore, the trainer’s instructions still need to be translated into the language of sensations.

Essentially, all our unconscious mind needs to learn is a clearer goal and feedback.. And this is the essence of the Inner Game approach.

And, by the way, these ideas are confirmed in biofeedback technology. It is very difficult to explain to a person what he needs to do to change the electrical activity of his brain in a certain way. But once we make this parameter perceptible, our unconscious can learn to change it arbitrarily

Also, Gallwey’s approach has great resonance with the ideas of Csikszentmihalyi, who developed the theory of Flow (see issues 45 and 46). Both began with a simple observation and the question: “What is this state when everything turns out very well?”

Csikszentmihalyi talks about WHAT is needed for an activity to become flowing. Gallwey shows HOW this can be done.

To illustrate the concept of the Inner Game, let's return to the example of a tennis player who had a bad backhand.

Using his technique, Gallwey did not give the athlete instructions such as not to retreat, but to step towards the ball and keep the racket lower when swinging, he simply suggested that he watch the ball more carefully and scrupulously.

For example, he might ask the student to note how the ball flies before contact with the racket - up, down, or parallel to the ground. At the same time, he clarified that he was not asking him to change anything, that the task was simply to observe.

What may seem surprising at first glance is that this non-judgmental approach turned out to be much more effective than the standard way of teaching. The athlete's technique improved spontaneously.

In fact, there is nothing surprising about this. Full concentration on the flight of the ball allowed the student to do two important things.

Firstly, it “expelled” the evaluative social self, which only got in the way “talking hand in hand.”

Secondly, this created a regime of that very clear feedback, which, as I said above, is necessary to create a state of flow in which activity becomes most effective. That is, the student fully concentrated on what was actually happening at the moment. How his actions affect the result.

Clearly aware of the goal (hitting the ball into a certain area on the opponent’s field) and receiving instant feedback from his actions, the athlete’s unconscious automatically adjusted to the task. You just had to not disturb him.

That is, the trainer’s task was not to teach, but to create the best conditions for natural learning. And to do this, you can simply select appropriate exercises and goals to focus your attention.

But if Gallwey had limited himself to using his internal game system only in sports, you and I would hardly have known about it. Over time, he found that his system worked great in almost any field of activity, such as business.

To make the main idea of this system more clear, let me give a few examples of its use, and only then make some generalizations

Let me start by saying that I myself have received very impressive results using this system in personal coaching.

Not long ago, I had a client (head of a department in a large company) who asked me to help him solve a communication problem.

His difficulties were that in communicating with management it was difficult for him to conduct a dialogue on equal terms, and in communications with colleagues, he often felt coldness and alienation. In general, this led to the fact that he generally wanted to communicate less and less and he became more and more withdrawn into himself, which was not only unpleasant in itself, but also interfered with his career.

I suggested that during the communication process he simply concentrate on tracking the level of interest that the interlocutor shows.

As a result, this simple exercise helped him not only in communicating with colleagues and management, but also in negotiating and closing deals. By the way, this is what he himself wrote:

“The individual personality correction course helped me adapt more easily to a new team, feel more confident, and most importantly, significantly increase productivity and focus on main tasks, as well as build smooth relationships with people who seemed difficult to communicate with. In the second part of the course, I learned the skills of attracting and maintaining attention when negotiating and concluding deals. The course not only helped me feel more confident, but also gave me the opportunity to highlight those communication skills that I had not previously used, for example, seeking interest, forming a positive image in an opponent, behavior in conflict situation. In general, I rate the work and your qualifications as very high level. I can recommend your work to most people who need to improve their effective communication and negotiation skills. I hope to continue working with you both individually and as part of collective and online courses. Thank you very much again!”

Continuing the theme of using the inner game in a business context, I will give a few more examples from Gallwey himself.

One day, he was invited to an IT company to work with call center employees. The problem was their high stress level, because... I often had to deal with dissatisfied clients, while their work was constantly being evaluated. Gallwey offered them a kind of game.

First, they had to listen carefully to the caller and try to rate his level of “irritation” from 1 to 10 based on his voice.

As a result, the task was to listen to the caller, determine his level of stress and answer him with the appropriate level of warmth in his voice. That is, for example, if the client’s stress was rated high, say 9 points, then this meant that he needed to respond with more warmth (also 9)

As a result, agents noted that their work became significantly more interesting, they experienced significantly less stress, and their overall rating of call center politeness increased significantly.

One of the simplest and yet most important ideas of the inner game system is that if you want to improve something, just start measuring and tracking it.

For example, one dental clinic became concerned that clients were waiting too long to see a doctor.

Using inner game ideas, they began by simply asking all clinic staff at the end of the day how many patients they thought spent more than 20 minutes waiting. In addition to these guesses (most employees could only guess because they could not directly observe the patients in the waiting room), real figures were also announced based on the data of the receptionist.

Imagine the surprise of the clinic director when, after five days, there was no longer a single patient waiting more than 15 minutes in the waiting room.

Again, please note that no special measures have been taken to reduce wait times. The unconscious of the employees took care of everything 🙂 having received enough information.

Let's summarize all of the above a little. One of the most important questions is how to choose the critical variable on which to focus your attention to improve your work or learning performance?

Gallwey identifies three important criteria.

First, this variable must be observable here and now

Secondly, it is desirable that it be interesting. For example, listening to the shades of feelings and intentions of the interlocutor is usually more interesting than simply following the content of the conversation

Third, the variable must be relevant to the purpose of your task. For example, in the process of the same communication, many variables can be identified on which attention can be focused. Level of trust, respect, control, clarity, motivation, pressure, etc. It is impossible to maintain attention on several variables at once. Therefore, you need to choose the one that best suits your needs.

For example, if your task is to establish more trusting relationships, then it is the level of trust (which can be tracked by the nonverbal components of the interlocutor’s behavior) that should be chosen as the object of focus in the communication process.

All other things being equal, it is, of course, better to choose a variable that is easier to observe.

I suggest you experiment with this technique yourself. Please write about your results in the comments to this article. What variables did you use to improve some of your skills? Or, write about what activity you would like to improve in and apply the inner game technique, and I will try to tell you where you can focus your attention for greater effect.

Published with permission from Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC and the literary agency Nova Littera Ltd.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holders.

* * *

without whose love, care, support and patience this book would not have been completed

Preface

The way we do business is changing so much that our ability to adapt and change our thinking is integral to success. We are faced with the challenge of how to transform institutions that were designed as consistent, controllable, and predictable structures into organizations with cultures that truly value learning, passion, and discovery.

Work as an Inner Game helps you find your own direction in the landscape of what is now called the “learning organization.” Any manager or employee with the courage to learn what training is will find concepts and examples that will help turn training plans into everyday practice.

B O Most traditional learning strategies involve additional activities. We conduct trainings, organize special programs and meetings to create a culture of learning. One of the side effects of such activities is to strengthen the belief that learning and work are two different, competing activities, which acts as a limiting factor. We are hard at work deciding how much training we can afford before it starts to interfere with the production process. We worry about the transfer of learning: how to take it back to the workplace. Methods Inner game eliminate the conflict between learning and work, showing us that both are parts of one big whole.

Tim Gallwey's ideas about learning were amazingly deep and practical from the very beginning. In 1976 he book The Inner Game of Tennis 1
Published in Russian: Gallwey T. Tennis. The psychology of successful gaming. M.: Olimp-Business, 2016.

It radically changed my view not only of tennis, but also of many other things.

Twenty-three years later, her influence on me is still strong. She showed me for the first time that our efforts to improve ourselves and improve our performance were actually holding us back from achieving our goals. Tim's views contradict many ideas about teaching methods and show that O Most of our educational programs are hostile to our learning. Work as an Inner Game brings these discoveries directly to the workplace.

The idea that standard teaching and coaching methods reduce our performance is truly revolutionary. Majority educational institutions and organizations rely heavily on instructions and direction, but if all their efforts to improve are not producing results, perhaps we should think twice. If the instructions do not help, then what should we do? Many authors describe processes that need improvement, but when it comes time to actually take action, they are limited to theories and abstractions.

What's special about Tim's book is that he not only defines the nature of our interventions, but also offers wonderful, concrete ways to enhance learning and performance while minimizing instruction and direction. This is his genius. He understands how we learn and has spent his life working on how we can organize ourselves for greater achievement. Methodology Inner game has changed the way people think about work and, perhaps even more importantly, offers organizations a way to simultaneously deliver learning, improve performance and create a more engaging work environment.

Establishing a learning culture is a very responsible process. It requires more than most of us realize, and asks leaders to make enough commitment to learning and performance improvement that they can let go of the reins somewhat.

Methodology Inner game requires faith and - to a large extent - the abandonment of bad habits when studying. It requires us to value awareness, consciousness and pay attention to what is happening in ourselves and around us. This is not an easy task. In Western culture, the words "awareness" and "attention" are labeled "New Age" and the theory is dismissed as a variation of the "California Dream." But that's not true.

The fundamental question is: what can be done in the workplace? Can we provide good work results while enjoying and learning? This raises an even more serious question about what the purpose of the work is. Is the goal to achieve institutional results—more profits, better service, market dominance? Economists, the financial community and the business press give a simple answer to this question: that goal is money.

For most people, however, the question of purpose is much more complex. They agree that financial success is necessary, but work is about more than filling the wallet. People care about workplace culture, relationships with colleagues, the opportunity to realize their potential, learn and improve their skills. We often view this as a conflict between managers and employees, but that is not the point. The main thing is the individual, internal struggle. We are constantly torn between delivering results for the company and living a satisfying life.

And here the method gives us hope Inner game. Tim constantly raises the question of what game we are playing. Can we play Inner game, which would bring us satisfaction and at the same time meet the requirements of the external game?

However, the search for integration between internal and external requires a series of radical experiments. To deal with this difficult question, we need to try new structures, new tools, new ways.

Many years ago, Tim and I attended a conference held by a large American corporation for sales staff across the country. It goes without saying that these people love to compete. They not only like to compete, they believe in the power of competition. The meaning for them lies in competition; winning the market is both a goal and a reward. This is true for both a business and an individual. The entire conference was essentially a gathering of winners, a confirmation that they were the best in their company and perhaps the best in the industry, and even in the whole world.

After my presentation on coaching using the method Inner game, Tim agreed to host the annual tennis tournament, which has become a tradition for such sales conferences. After all, winners love tournaments, and here the master of the event was a famous coach and author of a book about tennis. But it wasn’t enough for Tim to just host the tournament. He decided that this could be a unique opportunity for each participant to answer the question: “What game are you really playing?”

Tim proposed to arrange everything so that the winner of each game would leave the tournament, and the loser would move on to the next round. Just think: the loser was rewarded for his defeat, and the winner was kicked out of the court. What's the point of playing a game where "winning" gives you nothing? This is exactly what was case. Each player had to answer a question about why he was playing this game. The traditional answer, especially for sales managers: “To win.” Tim's answer was that there is a more interesting game, and it is about playing for the sake of learning, for the sake of realizing one's own potential. Ironically, if you do this, your performance will improve.

In a tournament like this, where the losers moved on and the winners went home, it was unclear to the players whether it was in their best interest to win or lose? If they defeated the enemy, then, in fact, they lost. If they lost, they were celebrated as winners. In such conditions, participants could play for the sake of the game itself, and not for the sake of winning or losing, play and see how good players they can become. If you look at this from a philosophical point of view, they were asked to stop “dancing to the music of the world around them” and play in accordance with their own internal messages. The tennis tournament is a metaphor for what can happen in the workplace. No matter what structure we have in front of us, there is always an opportunity to transform a dominant cultural habit into an unpredictable event where the likelihood of learning is much greater.

Of course, I don't mean to say that all competitions should reward losers, but this kind of thoughtful and selective experimentation is what separates organizations that are merely surviving from those that are thriving. The willingness to doubt folk wisdom is the main difference. In fact, many management techniques that would have seemed radical just 15 years ago are now accepted in a huge number of corporations. These include, for example, the following:

Self-organizing teams perform b O most of the work previously assigned to the manager.

Employees themselves check the results of their work, although it was previously believed that in the interests of high quality this should be done by independent inspectors.

Subordinates evaluate their bosses.

Suppliers have become part of the organization and are included in the planning and decision-making process.

Sales teams can make their own customer service decisions, whereas previously decisions were made centrally and required two levels of approval.

All these and many other issues used to be the sacred prerogative of management and required adequate control. I remember that tennis tournament well, one of the first experiments needed to create a real learning environment. The tournament challenged its own purpose, was a marked departure from tradition because it made everyone involved feel a little awkward, and ultimately became the source of the energy and excitement that brought life to that sales conference.

The role of coaches and the constant change in our thinking about goals and structures seem important in understanding the role that management can play in creating an environment where learning is valued. What is required is the belief that learning and work are one and the same. Highly productive employees are those who simply learn faster. We learn faster when we pay attention to the world and see it as it is, not as it should be. Learning then becomes a function of awareness rather than instruction, and that means seeing clearly what is going on around you, without being overly judgmental and without the instinctive urge to control and change everything you touch.

The rate of learning slows down when anxiety levels are high and approval levels are low. For most problems, people have enough knowledge to cope with their solution, they simply find it difficult to act on their knowledge. And this is one of the deepest ideas Inner game. We don't need to learn more from a boss or an expert: we need to change how we apply the knowledge that already exists within us. Increasing pressure to achieve results is more paralyzing than liberating, even if this idea contradicts the traditional way of thinking in our culture.

These ideas have widespread implications for the next generation of change in the workplace. If we really want to achieve the best performance, we need to change the conventional practice of increasing it through coaching and constant intervention from managers. For example, we need to stop ranking people and departments for the sake of motivation and rewards. We need to move from the rhetoric of victories to the rhetoric of learning. Performance reviews must stop being an evolution of the strong and weaknesses individual and turn into a dialogue between a manager and an ordinary employee on the question of what experience each of them accumulates and what it means. We will treat employees as autonomous, self-developing individuals. In this way, our educational efforts will stop being focused on training and will focus on teaching; the latter should be built around the experience of the student, and not around the competence of the teacher. We need to doubt the value of models, trainings with predetermined, predictable behavior as a result.

We need a win in every workplace. Work is not an ordinary event; our survival is at stake here. This approach does not answer fundamental questions about purpose and meaning for either the organization or the individual. In her characteristic calm and specific manner, the technique Inner game advocates for the creation of institutions that can offer people deeper meaning than just profit, without giving up achieving economic success. How do we play a game that maintains the human spirit and gets the job done well? Most organizations have this desire, but their thinking remains limited to viewing people as a means to achieving financial results. A business needs to thrive, and a person needs to find a purpose beyond that, and do it carefully - so that it bears fruit and does not burn. Recognizing the greater value of learning and awareness that is so essential to successful education gives us hope that this is possible.

The book “Work as an Inner Game” is the fruit of more than twenty years practical work Tim on spreading ideas Inner game in the business world. The book requires the reader to abandon evaluative thinking and be open to completely new ways of realizing our intentions and desires.

May this book bring you pleasure. Take it seriously. Let it work for you, and what was a cause of stress will become simply interesting, what you avoided will become attractive, and what seemed futile will become a source of opportunity.

Introduction. Looking for opportunities to work freely

Man is born free, and yet everywhere he is in chains.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 18th century philosopher

I went in search of an opportunity to work freely. I'm not interested in the conceptual ideal of freedom at work, but in something more practical. I want to respect the part of myself that is free from nature, no matter the circumstances. My quest is to embrace this part of myself and allow it to find expression at work.

At work, more than in any other human activity, freedom is at significant risk. Don't we all feel the chains that bind us at work? The chains of “must”, “must”, “do it, or else...” are chains of fear and pressure from the outside. A common definition of work is: “This is something I would never do if I could choose.”

Every time I take the plunge to work freely, I feel those chains tightening. The bonds of unconscious habit pull me back, as if I were tied to a post with an elastic band. It's not hard to take the first few steps, but the further I step away from my usual routine, the more stressed I become. Then, when I reach a certain limit, I feel myself being pulled back forcefully, and I have no choice but to start all over again. Maybe the desire for true freedom must at some point release the post to which this rubber band is tied. The freedom I seek is an innate freedom, not one given by another person or society. The pursuit of it requires a completely different definition of the concept of “work.”

I first began my search for freedom to work in the early 1970s, when I left a relatively secure career in higher education and began to think about what I really wanted out of life. Then I began working as a tennis instructor, without having any long-term plans here other than earning money during this transitional time, and I made several important discoveries about training and coaching, which later became the topic of the book “Tennis. Psychology of successful gaming." Based on simple principles and techniques Inner game there was a deep faith in man's natural ability to learn from direct experience.

These principles Inner game have stood the test of time and have been successfully used in a wide variety of applications over the past twenty years. Inner game is a viable alternative to the traditional command-and-control methods that we take for granted in both work and play. This is a promising start to the path to freedom. Success here depends primarily on the willingness of readers to fully trust to ourselves.

Chapter 1. A successful path to change

The essence of everything I learned by researching Inner game, can be summed up in one sentence: I found a better path to change. Although I discovered this path by practicing forehand and backhand serves and strokes, the principles and techniques that helped my students develop tennis skills can be applied to improve skills in any activity. This book is about how to change the way we work. How to make it work work for us.

We are constantly told that we live in an age of change, and most often it is at work that we hear words that we need to change. This could be a global reorganization of the company of which you are a part, or a medium-scale change, for example, in “how we work in our department,” or a change in the personal qualities of a person that, according to the manager, is necessary based on the results of the latest performance appraisal. Even if we are not influenced by outside influences, most of us want to change the way we work and achieve new results. In the bookstore, the largest section is devoted to self-improvement books that will teach you how to change myself.

We talk about everything that needs to change, but how well do we imagine how implement these changes?

I began my professional career as an educator, a profession that continues to be notoriously slow to embrace real change, even though, ironically, education is about learning and therefore about change. Education must explain the essence of change and demonstrate good examples. But I discovered a new approach to learning and change after leaving the corridors of formal education.

How did the inner game come about?

Towards understanding Inner game I came in the early 1970s when I played and taught sports games others. Looking back on this time, I understand why sport has become such a good research laboratory for learning and change. Because achievement in sport can be directly observed and goals are crystal clear, these changes in performance are much more visible. My first laboratories were on the tennis court, the ski track and the golf course - sports where you are well aware of the huge difference between the best and worst results. This difference cannot be explained solely by lack of ability. It is directly related to the way of learning or making changes in performance.

In my early years of coaching, I made two observations. Firstly, almost all of my students tried very hard fix something in their game that they were unhappy with. They were waiting for me to give them a solution to the problem. Secondly, after the students stopped try, and trust in one's ability to learn from one's own experiences, positive changes occurred with relative lack of effort. There is a sharp contrast between forced and natural learning, which we can see in the example early development our children.

Observing a typical interaction between a beginning player and a tennis coach provides insight into how we all learned to make change. Usually a student turns to the coach with some kind of complaint: about a bad shot or unimportant results. He says, “My serve is weak” or “I need to change my backhand.” The coach watches how the student performs a kick and compares what he sees with a certain standard the right blow, which exists in his head. This standard is based on what the coach himself has been trained to accept as a correct shot. Looking through the lens of this model, the coach sees the difference between “what is” and “what should be,” and tries to correct “what is.”

Here the trainer can use a variety of instructions, but the general context is the same. Maybe he will say: “When contact is made, you need to take a step towards the ball, transfer your body weight to the leg that is in front. When swinging, you don't need to take the racket so high. Swipe the ball like this..." General context: "I'll tell you what you should and shouldn't do."

Ed.D. Progra Chair Human Resource Management, Franklin University, USA

As a professor in the subjects of leadership, management, coaching and team building, I have the opportunity to meet professionals across the world. I want to provide my support and recommendation for the expert services provided by Natalia Pereverzeva. Natalia is a highly skilled presenter of workshops and offers a number of training programs in topics such as Coaching Technology, Emotional Intelligence, Goal Integration, Personal branding and Effective communication. I highly recommend natalia Pereverzeva as a true professional in executive coaching, business coach and trainer in the field of coaching.

Venera Gabova

expert in personnel selection and assessment, specialist in career development and planning, professional career coach, member of the Association of Career Professionals

The session with Natalia Pereverzeva was valuable for me! Instant rapport! Pleasant and easy communication! Sincere desire to help! Kindness and diplomacy! Faith in the best and manifestation of this faith! A New Look at Simple Coaching Techniques! And the most important thing is that Natalya managed to easily and delicately reach my deepest values (only a few can do this) And as a result, we outlined certain reference points in my professional development! I express my deep gratitude! And I will be very glad to cooperate!

systems analyst,
St. Petersburg

Ilya Grinyuk

business coach, Co-Founder/CEO at Mobil 1 Center Podorozhnik Auto, master coach Moscow www.ilyagrinyuk.ru

Excellent master class by Natalia Pereverzeva “Personal branding. Connecting with yourself”! A mix of a creative and rational approach to the formation of a personal brand opens up new opportunities for effective promotion in the market! The result of the master class for me was the identification of blind spots, work on which will begin in the near future. Thanks again!

Grasevich Dmitry

General Director of DELEX GROUP LLC

On behalf of DELEX GROUP LLC, I express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to your company Style of Success for the effective, fruitful cooperation and assistance provided in the selection of personnel: engineers, logisticians, sales managers. I would like to note your professionalism, high efficiency in your work, maximum focus on wishes when selecting specialists. Your company is distinguished by its prompt approach and efficiency in solving emerging problems of any complexity, a good combination of speed and quality. I am confident in maintaining existing business relationships and further mutually beneficial cooperation in the field of personnel selection and training. I wish your company successful development and achievement of new heights in business!

Chuiko Valery Anatolievich

General Director of TRANSMAR TRADE LLC

The company "TRANSMAR TRADE" LLC expresses gratitude to the company "Style of Success" LLC for the services provided in the field of personnel selection. During the period of cooperation, the company showed and confirmed its professional level, high competence in quickly solving assigned tasks of filling positions with rare highly qualified specialists. I would like to note the efficiency, quick response to clarifying questions, attentive attitude towards us as clients, HR partner Anna Bondarenko. We recommend the company "Style of Success" to companies interested in fast and high-quality services in the field of personnel selection. We are confident in further productive cooperation!

Sergey Yurievich Lobarev

Ph.D., Chairman of the Board of the NP “Guild of Driving Schools”

Having experience in business for more than 30 years and considering himself a successful creative person who finds time to search for new forms and methods, both for personal growth and for the development of the company, classes with coach Natalya Pereverzeva not only impressed, but amazed me with their energy and an extraordinary approach to the learning process. Working with the assigned tasks fit surprisingly harmoniously into my busy schedule. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult for an experienced person who has a status in society to accept corrections, wishes, and recommendations for self-analysis over the years. When communicating with an expert, you feel tact, professionalism, and a desire to be useful. I am very pleased to have met and worked with this charming lady and consider her very strong specialist in this area.

Timothy Gallwey

Work as an internal game. Unlocking your personal potential

Published with permission from Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC and the literary agency Nova Littera Ltd.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holders.

* * *

without whose love, care, support and patience this book would not have been completed

Preface

Tim Gallwey's ideas about learning were amazingly deep and practical from the very beginning. In 1976, his book The Inner Game of Tennis radically changed the way I think about not only tennis, but many other things. Twenty-three years later, her influence on me is still strong. She showed me for the first time that our efforts to improve ourselves and improve our performance were actually holding us back from achieving our goals. Tim's views contradict many ideas about teaching methods and show that O Most of our educational programs are hostile to our learning. Work as an Inner Game brings these discoveries directly to the workplace.

The idea that standard teaching and coaching methods reduce our performance is truly revolutionary. Most educational institutions and organizations rely heavily on instructions and directions, but if all their efforts at improvement are not yielding any benefit, perhaps we should take a second look. If the instructions do not help, then what should we do? Many authors describe processes that need improvement, but when it comes time to actually take action, they are limited to theories and abstractions.

However, the search for integration between internal and external requires a series of radical experiments. To deal with this complex issue, we need to try new structures, new tools, new ways.

In a tournament like this, where the losers moved on and the winners went home, it was unclear to the players whether it was in their best interest to win or lose? If they defeated the enemy, then, in fact, they lost. If they lost, they were celebrated as winners. In such conditions, participants could play for the sake of the game itself, and not for the sake of winning or losing, and play and see what good players they could become. If you look at this from a philosophical point of view, they were asked to stop “dancing to the music of the world around them” and play in accordance with their own internal messages. The tennis tournament is a metaphor for what can happen in the workplace. No matter what structure we have in front of us, there is always an opportunity to transform a dominant cultural habit into an unpredictable event where the likelihood of learning is much greater.

You have to concentrate on the book; it is not one of those that you quickly skim diagonally. This is not a book of thought, but a whole collection of deep, fundamental approaches to work, learning, life... and in general - to yourself and your self-awareness.

Who will benefit from Work as an Inner Game? One of the images in the book seemed very vivid and visual to me. Ask yourself a question: are you sitting behind the wheel of the car of your life, driving it confidently and without stress, knowing where you are going and enjoying the scene around you? Or is the steering wheel in the hands of someone - the boss, the organization, fate, and in the back seat you can only grit your teeth, suffer from the jolts and complain about the gloomy landscape outside the window? If your life and especially work activity at least partially resembles the second picture - be sure to read this book!

One of the important concepts of the book is the duel between the two “I”s that live inside us. “I1” is the “invented” part of oneself. She constantly evaluates, uses the “should” operator, undermines our self-confidence, restrains the desire for freedom, “whispers” in different voices: the voice of parents, boss, society, the crowd. “I2” is the “original”, real part of oneself. Gallwey suggests ignoring the “L1 whisperers”, and listening to the voice of “L2” and following it the way children do - freely and with natural ambition.

Awareness, choice and trust are the three pillars on which the “inner game” is built. Be aware of what you are doing, select and monitor critical variables; be mobile, freely choosing a direction, following it, constantly learning and changing; trusting your abilities, listening carefully to “L2” is the formula for successfully playing your inner game.

The concept of the “triangle of work” proposed by the author seems so obvious and fair that you feel bitterness when you agree with Gallwey: in most companies the triangle is heavily unbalanced towards performance, while learning and pleasure from work practically fall out of focus. But there is a solution - to take responsibility for your “triangle” (move from conformity to mobility), realize the need for balance and purposefully work to restore it: set goals not only “productive”, but also “learning”, and make room for pleasure in work .

The book contains a whole set of magic wands" One of them is the STOP (step back, think, organize your thoughts, proceed) technique, which is simple to the point of genius. But... the technique seems simple and obvious only in theory. The most difficult thing to start using this technique is for those who have entered NONSTOP mode, turned into a “Maserati without brakes” (another vivid image from the author) and rush through tasks, projects and functions at full speed, unable to stop, look back at the path traveled, draw conclusions and correct – or rebuild – your route.

In addition to the “little STOP” at the beginning and end of the day, before the start and after the end of the project, the author suggests making a “big STOP” and introducing yourself as the CEO of your corporation. A very provocative STOP agenda item is “Do I own all the shares of my corporation? If not, to whom and for what were they sold? Is it possible – and is it necessary – to buy them back?” Doing this practice can lead to amazing results.

The special value of the book lies in the chapter devoted to coaching. Even if you, as a modern manager, are well aware of the concepts of coaching and even apply them in practice, you will be interested in following the author's thoughts on coaching in the context of the “inner game”.

In addition to the rich set of concepts and tools, I found the cases of company transformation from the author’s practice very interesting. For readers who manage change processes in their companies, comments on these cases will certainly be useful in their activities.

Although the title of the book includes the word “work,” the concept of “inner game” can be successfully applied in any activity and in any context, be it personal life, raising children, or hobbies.

In conclusion: “Work as an Inner Game” is a complex, multi-layered book with a long trail of meaning. Final advice: before you read, stock up on a huge notebook!