Over the past four years, I’ve been on a mission. I’m tired of seeing people, myself included, cave under pressure and perform at less than our best. To solve this problem, I’ve worked closely with former Major League Baseball pitching coach and mental game guru Rick Peterson as well as a number of other elite coaches and performers in business, sports, entertainment, and the military. What does Rick know about performing under pressure? He is renowned for getting Hall of Famers, All-Stars, as well as average pitchers to calm down in the highest stakes situations, in thirty seconds or less, and come through in the clutch.

Rick’s and my experience and interviews with elite perform­ers reveal that, even more than physical skills, it’s performers’ mindsets that separate the best from the rest under pressure. Clutch performers start by recognizing their instinctive thoughts don’t serve them under pressure. They know how to flip the switch, to think on command in counterintuitive ways that help their performance.

Here are four counterintuitive tips you can use to be your best in your high-stakes situations. I didn’t know these tips until I interviewed Rick, Navy SEAL Ed Hiner, and Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine.

1. Don’t try harder; Try Easy! Contrary to what many of us were taught, trying harder under pressure is often counterproductive. Many examples, across a number of fields—athletic, military, and business—show that trying harder leads to a decline in performance. Think about your best performances. Were you grinding and full of anxiety? More than likely, you remember your best performances as almost effortless.

Try Easy is not about not trying or being lazy. It is about throttling back just a little. It’s about taking the tension out of what you’re doing and replacing it with a level of effort that allows you to perform in a relaxed state. Optimal performance does not come from maximum effort; it comes from optimal effort.

Figure 1: The relationship between effort and performance

2. Under pressure, humor isn’t a nice to have; it’s a must have. Humor diffuses pressure better than any pharmaceutical on the market. It momentarily reduces the perceived threat posed by the situation. It also helps generate a sense of control and provides perspective that can help you see dire situations with some levity. It also stops the stress hormome, cortisol, in its tracks and releases endorphins, the feel good neurotransmitter that enhances performance.

Rick regularly used humor on his visits to the mound to calm his pitcher down and get him back on track. Consider the following exchange between Rick and relief pitcher Jason “Izzy” Isringhausen, on the mound of Yankee Stadium in front of 57,000 screaming fans, American League playoffs, 2-0 lead, runners on first and second base, nobody out, bottom of the ninth inning.

Rick: Hey Izzy, how’s it going?

Izzy: I can’t feel my legs.

Rick: That’s okay, we don’t need you to kick a field goal. (Izzy laughs). Remember, you’re a professional glove hitter. You’ve done it thousands of times before and you’re going to do it again here.

Izzy proceeded to get the next three batters out and  save the game. Crisis averted.

3. Shift your source of confidence like a SEAL. Most people base their confidence about an upcoming perfor­mance on their most recent performance. When they perform well, they’re confident. When they don’t perform well, they aren’t. The obvious drawback of this approach is that performance fluctuates, in some cases based on conditions outside your control.

Consider the great confidence a young Navy SEAL takes with him into battle, even if he has no combat experience. The SEAL’s confidence is based upon his intense preparation and skill acquisition, not upon his prior performance in battle.

“We call war ‘monkey business’ because of how easy it is compared to training.”

—Brian “Iron Ed” Hiner, retired Navy SEAL

4. You don’t have to feel great to perform great. Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine shared a surprise with me during our interview. He said he only felt great—was in the zone—one out of every five starts he made. The other four times, he said something was missing. Glavine said, “My career really took off when I learned to how to win games when I didn’t have my ‘A’ stuff (best pitches working for me). I learned how to win that B+ game or that C+ game (where I was pitching less than my best). That really made all the difference because now I have confidence to win when I’m not at my best.”

If the Hall of Famer Glavine was in the zone only 20 percent of the time, then how realistic is it that we will find ourselves in the zone more often? When you aren’t feeling it, dig in and learn to win with what you do have in that moment.

Different and better thinking is the starting point to experiencing the pure joy of coming through in the clutch.

In so many ways, this week was a dream come true. Crunch Time was an Amazon #1 New Release in two categories: ‘Business Mentoring & Coaching’ and ‘Sports Coaching.’ I was reminded of the virtual village of people who love me and did innumerable things to help share the book with others.

And on Tuesday morning I received this message from Mark, a friend in NJ who encouraged a friend he works out with to read Crunch Time. The workout friend read the book cover to cover on Monday evening and shared his thoughts with Mark:

“Good to see you last night at the YMCA. Hope you had a great workout.

You’ve likely read the dismal statistics when it comes to keeping New Year’s resolutions (surveys show only 8% of people keep their resolutions). While there may be some initial excitement or motivation by creating a lofty goal for the year, this excitement is often quickly replaced by anxiety.

Let me share with you a different and better approach I learned from Rick Peterson, former Major League Baseball pitching coach with the New York Mets, Milwaukee Brewers as well as the Oakland A’s of Moneyball fame.

At the beginning of spring training every year, Rick asks his pitch­ers, “What’s your goal?” Most of the answers given center around outcomes like winning a certain number of games, or pitching a certain number of innings. Rick takes these answers as an oppor­tunity to teach his pitchers a lesson in goal setting. While many of us have been taught to set lofty, long-term-outcome goals, the type that show up on the back of a baseball card or a company financial statement, these goals are overrated in comparison to lesser-appreciated, short-term, bite-sized process goals.

What’s wrong with focusing on lofty outcome goals? It can lead to unhealthy distractions, such as focusing on factors outside your control. For example, winning a baseball game has many factors outside the pitcher’s control—how many runs his team scores, how well his team fields, how well the opposing hitters handle good pitches, and even the calls of the umpire.

In addition, the magnitude of a lofty outcome goal that was initially inspiring and motivating can become intimidating and demoralizing, causing doubt and anxiety that hurts performance.

Rick refocuses his pitchers on simple, short-term, bite-sized pro­cess goals. He tells them they are professional glove hitters. Their goal is, quite simply, to hit the catcher’s glove as often as possible with the right pitch.

“Hit the glove!” is the mantra Rick uses to reduce the pressure of lofty outcome goals and keep them focused on what they can con­trol. By focusing on this simple process goal, they are able to avoid being distracted by things outside their control.

In addition to increasing focus, hitting the glove on a high per­centage of pitches is also the most probable path to achieving larger, outcome-oriented individual and team goals.

So how does “hit the glove!” translate beyond professional baseball?

I’ve worked in sales for many years. The beginning of each year is one of the moments when salespeople’s anxiety levels are at their highest. The number you produced last year is a thing of the past. The scoreboard is turned back to zero. Your new and enlarged mul­timillion-dollar quota is staring you right in the face. You have to prove yourself all over again, and again, and again.

In many sales organizations, it’s viewed as motivational to talk about hitting big numbers—to talk about how much more you’re going to deliver this year compared to last. Despite positive inten­tions, the rally cry of “We’re raising the bar!” leads some to shed tears. While this is intended to be motivational, the result is often fear, worry, and doubt.

Why? Because, just like pitchers, as salespeople, we know there are many parts of the sales game that are beyond our control. Also, it’s easy to lose focus amidst the cornucopia of daily distractions.

After I heard Rick talk about “Hit the glove!” I immediately began to think of what my day-to-day sales version of hitting the glove was. I settled on high-quality interactions with customers and prospects. I defined a high-quality interaction as any interaction with the customer or prospective customer that advances a sale and/or our relationship. If I simply focused on having high-quality interactions with customers on a daily basis, I would make great progress toward putting a dent in my quota.

Once I defined my version of hitting the glove, I began to think about how many high-quality interactions I should have each day. I set the initial target at two. Before you laugh and ask what I was going to do after lunch, consider the math. If I had two high-quality interactions per day, that was 10 per week. That was 40 per month. Assuming one month of vacation, that was 440 per year. That was many more than I had been averaging.

As soon as I started focusing on my new simple, short-term, bite-sized process goal of two high-quality interactions with cus­tomers each day, I began thinking about my day differently. I began prioritizing the two high-quality interactions with customers above everything else. As I considered how to invest my time, I regularly asked myself, “Is this helping me hit the glove?”

As a result, my focus improved remarkably. I wasted less time. I didn’t give my quota a second thought. My numbers took off, and I finished the year more than 25 percent ahead of my prior year’s performance. Small changes, big results.

What’s your version of hitting the glove?

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The following is an excerpt from ‘Chapter 6: Reframing from Doubt to Confidence’ within Crunch Time: How to Be Your Best When It Matters Most. 

Chad Bradford was a relief pitcher for the Oakland A’s from 2001–2004. Under pitching coach Rick Peterson’s tutelage, he became one of the dominant setup relievers in the American League. He did so without a blazing fastball. His fastball was in the mid-80-mph range—very slow for a big leaguer. To be successful, Bradford relied on deception. With his unconventional submarine-style delivery, his knuckles almost scraped the ground as he released the ball toward home plate.

Chad shared with me a funny conversation Rick had with him to move him from doubting to confident.

In 2001, the Moneyball season and my first season with Oakland, Rick made some big changes to my mechanics in spring training that really helped me and gave me a lot of confidence. I had pitched well most of the year, but in August, I had a stretch with a couple bad outings in a row. I was struggling with my confidence. It was my greatest weakness. When things weren’t going well, I had zero self-confidence.

“All the pitchers that believe they can and all the pitchers that believe they can’t are right.”
—Rick Peterson, borrowing from the famous quote by Henry Ford

Rick pulled me aside and asked, “What’s going on?”

I told Rick, “I don’t know. My stuff just isn’t there right now. I’m getting hit. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t feel like I can pitch consistently right now. I don’t feel like I can get guys out. I don’t know if it’s my mechanics.”

Rick tells me, “Chad, your mechanics are just fine. You’re just doubting yourself.”

And I said, “Maybe you’re right. I had a really good stretch of games for a month and then I just hit a wall.”

We started talking about my confidence and Rick asks me, “Why don’t you believe you can get this done? Why don’t you believe you can go out there and get these hitters out?”

I said, “Well, Rick, I don’t know. If I could answer that question, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

Rick thinks for a minute and then asks me, “Are you a Christian?”

Rick knows I am a Christian. He knows what’s important to all of his pitchers. I went along with him: “Yes Rick, I am.”

“So you’re telling me you believe in Jesus Christ?”

“Absolutely, 100 percent.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

“No Rick, I’ve never seen Jesus.”

“Have you ever seen yourself pitch well on video?”

“Yes, I have seen myself pitch well.”

“Rick starts laughing and says,

How in the world can you believe in Jesus Christ and you’ve never seen him  and you’ve seen yourself pitch great for months and you don’t believe you can get hitters out?

It was so simple. Rick boosted my confidence. It was hard to argue with his logic.

Chad closed his conversation with me by saying, “I want you to know about the major impact Rick has had on my life. When I first came up to the big leagues in Oakland, Rick improved both my mechanics and my mental approach. He taught me how to be successful in the major leagues. After we both left Oakland for different teams following the 2004 season, I got injured and didn’t pitch much in 2005. When I did pitch, I didn’t pitch well.

In 2006, when I had the chance to be reunited with Rick and play for the New York Mets, it was a no-brainer. In New York, he got me back on track. I had a great year and we went to the playoffs. Right after that season, I signed a three-year, $10.5 million deal with Baltimore. My family is financially secure because of what Rick did to get me back on track.”

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The following is an excerpt from ‘Chapter 7: Reframing from Failure to a Learning Moment’ within Crunch Time: How to Be Your Best When It Matters Most.

More than most endeavors in life, baseball is riddled with failure. Hitters are considered great if they get a hit just three times out of ten. The baseball box score serves as a daily performance report, highlighting the successes and failures of every player. In the case of major leaguers, their failures are on display publicly to fans in the thousands and sometimes millions.

While all baseball players know no one succeeds all of the time, the best players have figured out how to respond to the inevitable failures in a way that makes them better.

Tom Glavine pitched 16 seasons with the Atlanta Braves, win­ning a total of 244 games, including 5 seasons of 20 wins or more (the gold standard for a starting pitcher) and 2 seasons in which he won the Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in the National League. At the rate he was winning, Glavine looked like a sure thing to surpass 300 wins and earn his place in the baseball Hall of Fame.

At the end of the 2002 season, Glavine’s contract with Atlanta was up. Glavine surprised many in baseball by leaving the only professional team he’d ever played for and signing with the New York Mets. He signed a three-year contract for $35 million, with an option for a fourth year that could make the deal worth $42.5 million.

It would be an understatement to say expectations in New York were high. These expectations came from many sources—the team, the New York fans and media, and Glavine himself.

Baseball analysts projected Glavine would reach the magic 300 win total as a Met sometime during the 2006 season and lift the Mets to glory in the process. Then, a not-so-funny thing happened on Glavine’s road to the Hall of Fame. He struggled.

In 2003, Glavine finished the season with 9 wins and 14 losses. This was the first time since his rookie season he hadn’t won at least 10 games. Had he lost his skills? No. Was he buckling under the pressure of playing in New York? No. The game had changed.

Major League Baseball introduced the QuesTec Umpire Infor­mation System. QuesTec is a pitch-tracking technology used to evaluate the performance of home plate umpires. It keeps track of how many correct and incorrect ball and strike calls an umpire has during a game.

While he was in Atlanta, Glavine had thrived for years with one approach—pitch to the outside part of the plate, preferably off the plate, to get hitters to chase pitches outside the strike zone. Because of the success and reputation he’d earned in Atlanta, umpires often called pitches that were just off the outside edge of home plate a strike for Glavine. Now that the umpires were being evaluated more objectively, they stopped giving Glavine that strike and started calling a pitch in the same location a ball.^1,2

This meant Glavine’s game plan to get hitters to chase his pitch off the plate no longer worked.

As Glavine put the tough 2003 season behind him and prepared for a turnaround season in 2004, Rick Peterson made a huge decision to leave the Oakland A’s. Despite the great success of the A’s pitching staff and the team, Rick wanted to move back to the East Coast so he could be a bigger part of his sons’ lives. The New York Mets hired Rick as their new pitching coach.

Glavine started the 2004 season like the pitcher he was during his years in Atlanta. He was superb. He made his ninth All-Star team that July. Unfortunately, disaster struck Glavine—literally—in early August. He was involved in a crash while riding in the back of a cab on the way to Shea Stadium. He tried to return to pitch­ing too soon after the injury and pitched poorly. More than ever, Glavine’s career-long quest for 300 career wins now looked like it was in jeopardy.

The 2005 season began the same way 2004 finished, with Glavine struggling mightily. To add to the pressure, the New York media called the free agent signing of Glavine a big mistake. One radio talk show host wondered if the driver who had hit Glavine’s cab the year before could be found to hit him again.³

On a June road trip to the West Coast, Glavine’s pitching hit rock bottom. He faced the Seattle Mariners and gave up six runs in less than three innings. For the season, Glavine had just four wins against seven losses and had given up a dismal average of more than five earned runs per game.

It was eating Glavine alive to pitch so poorly. He wasn’t the only one. Rick agonized as well. Rick had so much respect for Glavine as both a pitcher and a person.

Glavine was used to no longer getting the pitch off the outside corner of the plate called a strike because of the QuesTec Umpire Information System. The problem was he hadn’t figured out how to adjust.

On the long plane ride home from Seattle, Rick decided it was the right time to challenge Glavine to change. He was not going to ask Glavine to make a small change. He was about to ask him to blow up the way he had pitched for 18 years and try something he had never done as a pro. Not an easy conversation.

Rick knew the recipient of feedback and change often feels threatened. He knew he needed to reframe the conversation as an opportunity for Glavine to get back on track in his quest for 300 wins.

Rick got up out of his seat near the front of the plane, ordered a couple beers from the flight attendant, and walked to the back of the plane where Glavine was sitting. He slid into the empty seat next to Glavine and cracked open the beers. Knowing Glavine was an avid golfer, Rick decided to use a golf analogy. He asked, “Tommy, how many clubs are you allowed to have in your golf bag?”

Understandably so, Glavine wasn’t in a great mood, but he respected Rick enough to play along. “Fourteen,” Glavine answered.

Rick responded, “Right, and right now you’re only using two of the clubs in your bag—fastball outside and change up outside. Every team in the league has the same scouting report on you: lay off the pitch off the outside edge of the plate; wait for you to pitch over the plate, and then take the ball to the opposite field or up the middle. They’re sitting on your pitches. You were successful in the past by keeping guys off balance. No one is off balance right now.”

Glavine could be bitter about what he was hearing or he could learn from it. He couldn’t argue with what Rick was saying, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it to get better.

Rick shared his idea: “You’ve got to start using the other clubs in your bag. You have to start pitching inside!”

Glavine looked at Rick in disbelief. “Pitch inside? Me?” For a non-power pitcher like Glavine, pitching inside was risky. If a hit­ter is ready for an inside pitch, he’s likely to crush it for a home run.

The two men talked further about when to pitch inside and with what pitches, and when to go back to the outside of the plate. At the end of the conversation, Glavine thought, “I can’t pitch any worse. Why not try it?”

The new Glavine pitched in Yankee Stadium a few nights later. He pitched both inside and outside. Yankees manager Joe Torre remembered, “He was a different guy completely. I was tempted to check his uniform number to make sure it was Tom.”⁴ Glavine won the game, pitching as well as he had all season.

After the game, Glavine said, “They knew I was willing to come inside, but they didn’t know when I was going to come inside. It was like the old days; I had them chasing again.”

Glavine’s turnaround was extraordinary. Following his conver­sation on the plane with Rick, Glavine gave up an average of half as many earned runs per game for the remainder of the season. From 2005–2007, Glavine won 41 games, winning his 300th game on August 5, 2007.

On July 27, 2014, Glavine was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. During his induction speech, Glavine recognized Rick for the help he provided.⁵

“Rick Peterson, later in my career with the Mets, you helped me to reinvent myself and make the changes I needed to make for the latter part of my career. Trust me, when you’re doing something for 16 or 17 years, it’s not an easy thing to change. But you talked me into it, you convinced me of it, and you gave me confidence to do it. Rick Peterson, thanks so much for your help.”
—Tom Glavine

Like all of us, Glavine encountered adversity. He received feed­back that his performance wasn’t up to his own standards or the standards of others. Like us, he had to ask himself: Am I going to be bitter about the feedback I’m receiving or am I going to learn from it and act on it to get better? What opportunity might I miss if I choose to disregard this feedback?

Endnotes

• John Feinstein, interview by author, telephone, February 24, 2014.
• John Feinstein, Living on the Black (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008).
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• MLB.com, Video, MLB Network, “Glavine Inducted into HOF,” July 27, 2014, http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/6003532/ v34856591/glavine-is-inducted-into-the-baseball-hall-of-fame.

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