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Professional Readings includes reviews of recent publications and highlights of reports on current issues that affect schools. Your contributions are welcome. Send them to principal@osu.edu. Please indicate if we may use your name in the “contributor” credits.
Administrative Performance Skills
Gallwey, W. Timothy. (1999). The Inner Game of Work. Random House.
Gallwey’s first book, The Inner Game of Tennis, was greeted in the mid-1970s with derisive hoots of “Zen tennis” by traditional teachers and players.
At the time, I was a tennis novice, struggling for something, anything, to play better. I bought the book, tried Gallwey’s advice, and watched my confidence and enjoyment of tennis grow.
Now, Tim Gallwey, college professor-turned tennis pro-turned corporate consultant, focuses his theory on the workplace.
In the latest Inner Game, Gallwey keeps his original 2-self explanation of our internal voices: Self 1 is the teacher voice: “Do this. Don’t do that. What a lousy shot!”
Self 2 is our human potential. We had it as children, learning to walk, for example, without any formal instruction. For most of us, our command-and-control Self 1 shouts down Self 2.
Gallwey proposes that our potential to learn and work productively, with enjoyment, comes only when we stop interfering with the process. To accomplish that, Gallwey offers three principles for learning and coaching: awareness, trust, and choice.
- The Power of Nonjudgmental Awareness: Rather than perceive an approaching ball—or work situation—as a threat, maintain a nonjudgmental focus on things as they are.
- Trust in Self 2: Trust yourself and your natural capacity to learn. Let go of Self 1’s inferior control system. The heart of Gallwey’s process, this principle must be learned “over and over in each new situation.”
- Keep Choice with the Choice-maker: As coach or principal, you realize that (A) command-and-control will meet with resistance, and (B) “when choices for learning and change are allowed to be self-initiated and self-regulated, they become more comprehensive as well as more enjoyable.”
How Does This Apply to Your Job?
Skip to Chapter 5 for this one. Gallwey identifies typical mental constructs, or inner definitions, we bring to our work: “Getting the ‘job’ done. Responsibility. Duty. What I do that’s associated with ‘hard,’ or ‘challenging.’”
Work, in Gallwey’s view, includes performance, but it equally means learning and enjoyment. A simple formula defines the Inner Game:
P = p - I
Performance = potential - interference
If you’d like to get out of your own way and begin to enjoy, learn, and perform your job—or sport—at a new level, The Inner Game of Work is a must-read.
For more: http://www.theinnergame.com/html/IGW_ChapterExcerpts.html
