Performance: the contribution that a subject brings to the achievement of an objective through their own actions.
Timothy Gallwey, father of modern coaching, defines performance with the following simple formula: p=P-i, where “P” stands for potential, and “i” stands for interference.

Performance depends on 3 factors (identified in the formula as interferences):

  • The market: this is the viariable on which it is practically impossible to intervene. The market has its own movement, which can be studied and sometimes predicted, but is difficult to change.
  • The context: includes all company dynamics that do not depend on the individual. Work can be done on this point at the company level, but not the personal level. 
  • You: the easiest aspect to work on, a collection of skills and abilities that can make the difference. 

Observing these analyses we can conclude that a third of performance depends on the individual person. And the person can have success if he has the necessary skills to perform his work. This highlights the need for training, the need to practice habits and behaviour, to improve and learn new soft skills, to improve performance.

Performance and training.

Training that can have an effect on performance is not spot training that starts and finishes with just a few classroom hours, nor is it theoretical, the scholastic type, that prepares the person at the start, but does not follow the user throughout their professional growth.Performance training is constant and improves over time, in more decisive ways in cases where the user can talk with experts to learn further lessons.

Because the percentage of people involved in an improved by direct and precise spot formation is low. And the problem is not really the content of the training, but rather, the difficult practical application of information taught in a theoretical and schematic way.

Let’s imagine a training class carried out over two days.5% of the people involved are predisposed to learning, and an initiation is enough to get them going: just the fact of being in a classroom pushes these learners to open up to new information and begin learning and improving. The remaining learners, however, although interested in personal and professional improvement, and although active and concentrated, lack the self-discipline to go ahead on their own once the class has finished: these people need a personal trainer who motivates and guides them during the learning process. Coaching is required for this: to involve, hook and keep people.

Performance e objectives.

The long term objective is to understand the similarity between best performers and learning animals, meaning to understand who is hungry to learn, and therefore who represents a potential for the company. Training in this way becomes predictive with respect to performance.

Also taking advantage of the personal and professional grown, in addition to the individual and the company, is the team: in fact, company performance is now almost always measured at the team level, because the services offered are increasingly complex and cannot be provided by just one person. Finding the right setting for an effective and efficient team is no easy task, but personnel training in a continuous and monitored way also helps efforts on this aspect, shining a light on the abilities, propensities and particular skills of each resource.

Performance means results, achievement of an objective: and the only way to carry it out is to quickly and effectively develop the necessary skills to address the requests of a context that is out of our control and of a continuously changing market.

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