The Human Side of High Performance: Article 8

Recovery Is Part of Performance

What if doing less sometimes enables us to perform more?

There is something elite sport understands about performance that business still seems strangely reluctant to accept. Recovery is an important part of the job.

Elite athletes train incredibly hard, they push their bodies, they stretch their capability, they repeatedly operate outside their comfort zone but they don't expect themselves to perform at maximum intensity indefinitely.

• Training is followed by recovery.

• Competition is followed by recovery.

• Sleep is monitored.

• Nutrition matters.

• Rest days are planned.

• Training loads are adjusted.

This is because coaches understand something very simple:You cannot continually withdraw from the body without eventually making a deposit. Yet in business, we often behave very differently: back-to-back meetings, lunch at the desk, e-mails late into the evening, teams calls while travelling, working through holidays, responding at weekends, moving from one major project straight into the next and somehow we've allowed being permanently busy to become evidence of being valuable. I dont believe it is.

Being Busy Isn't the Same as Performing

Ask someone how work is going and one of the most common answers is: "Busy." We almost wear it as a badge but busy doesn't tell us anything about performance. You can be incredibly busy and achieve remarkably little. You can also create enormous value in a relatively short period when you're rested, focused and thinking clearly. The question isn't: "How much are you doing?”

It's: "What state are you in while you're doing it?”

Human performance isn't linear and more hours don't automatically create more output.

At some point concentration falls, judgement deteriorates, creativity reduces, patience disappears, emotional regulation becomes harder, we become more reactive and eventually we start making mistakes. The irony is that exhausted people can then spend even longer correcting work they might have done better if they'd stopped earlier.

Recovery Is Not a Reward

This is the mindset I'd particularly like leaders to challenge. We often treat recovery as something we earn:

• "I'll take some time off once this project is finished."

• "I'll slow down after quarter end."

• "I'll have a proper break when things settle down."

Then things rarely settle down, another deadline arrives, another project starts, another problem appears and another quarter begins. Elite performers don't recover because they've earned it.

They recover because they need to perform again. That's a very different mindset.

Recovery isn't the reward for performance. Recovery enables performance.

The 90/10 Problem

This takes me back to something I've written about before. In elite sport, performers may spend around 90% of their time preparing, practising, reviewing and recovering — and 10% actually performing when it counts. In business, we often behave as though the ratio should be reversed.

90% doing and perhaps 10% — if we're lucky — preparing, reflecting, learning and recovering. We expect people to perform continuously while investing surprisingly little time in the conditions that make great performance possible. Imagine an elite team that never: reviewed the previous game, practised, recovered or reflected but simply played another match tomorrow. We'd think the performance model was ridiculous. Yet organisations can operate remarkably close to that.

Recovery Isn't Just Physical

When we hear the word recovery, we tend to think about sleep or taking a holiday and those things matter enormously but recovery can also be psychological:

• A walk between meetings.

• Ten minutes without a screen.

• Time to think before making an important decision.

• A proper lunch.

• An evening when you genuinely stop working.

• Space after an intense project to ask: What did we learn?

• A meeting-free hour to actually do the work.

• A conversation with somebody who helps you process what's happening.

Sometimes recovery isn't about doing nothing. It's about changing the demand we're placing on ourselves and leaders have enormous influence over whether people believe they are allowed to do that.

Leaders Set the Pace — Often Without Realising It

This is where recovery becomes a leadership issue.

If a leader sends emails at 11pm ( perhaps that's simply when they prefer working), the team receives another message:“I should probably be available too.”

If a leader works throughout their holiday, people notice.

If a leader consistently eats lunch during meetings, people notice.

If a leader celebrates the person who worked all weekend to rescue a project, people notice that too. We teach people what high performance looks like through the behaviour we reward and model and if high performance starts to look like permanent availability, exhaustion and personal sacrifice, we shouldn't be surprised when burnout follows. This isn't about leaders working fewer hours. There will always be intense periods, deadlines, crises, major pitches, transformations and growth. High performance sometimes requires extraordinary effort but sprint cannot become the permanent operating model. Intensity needs recovery.

Sustainable High Performance Requires Rhythm

Perhaps that's the word business can learn from sport.

• Rhythm.

• Push.

• Recover.

• Perform.

• Reflect.

• Learn.

• Go again.

  
  

  Not:

• Push.

• Push.

• Push.

• Push.

• Break.

The strongest performers I've worked with aren't necessarily the people who can tolerate the greatest workload. They're often the people who have learned to manage their energy intelligently.

They know when they're at their best. They prepare. They create boundaries. They recover.

They recognise when their thinking is becoming compromised and importantly, they don't confuse exhaustion with commitment.

Rest Is Not the Opposite of Ambition

I think this matters particularly in high-performance cultures. We can become nervous that talking about wellbeing, recovery or boundaries somehow lowers expectations. I don't believe it does.

You can care deeply about people and expect exceptional performance. You can have demanding standards and recognise human limits. You can be ambitious and recover. In fact, if the ambition is sustained performance rather than one exceptional quarter followed by exhaustion, I'd argue you have to because people aren't machines ( and even machines have maintenance schedules)

Performance Follows People

We talk a great deal about increasing productivity. Perhaps we should spend more time protecting the human capacity that produces it because when people are exhausted, overwhelmed and permanently switched on, eventually something gives. Their creativity, judgement, patience, health, relationships or their desire to stay.

Sustainable performance requires sustainable people. So perhaps recovery shouldn't be something we squeeze in when the work is finished. Perhaps it should be part of how we design the work in the first place because the goal isn't simply to perform today. It's to be capable of performing again tomorrow.

What does your behaviour teach your team about recovery — that it's part of high performance, or something they have to earn?

At PROBOS we believe leadership is not becoming simpler. But it can become clearer.

We help leaders navigate complexity with clarity and confidence.