The Inner Game

A Brief History of The Inner Game

In 1971, while on sabbatical from a career in higher education, I took a job as tennis professional in Seaside, California. While teaching tennis one day, I realized that many of my teaching instructions were being incorporated in the student’s mind as a kind of “command and control” self-dialogue that was significantly interfering with learning and performance. When I inquired into this, I found that there was a lot going on in the mind of my tennis students that was preventing true focus of attention. I then began to explore ways to focus the mind of the player on direct and non-judgmental observation of ball, body, and racquet in a way that would heighten learning, performance, and enjoyment of the process.

In 1974 The Inner Game of Tennis was published describing the initial experiments and their surprising results. The book surpassed the expectations of both author and publisher by selling over one hundred times more copies than predicted and soon became a NY Times Best Seller.

Shortly thereafter KCET produced a six part, nationally viewed TV series called Inner Tennis each of which focused on a particular theme such as overcoming fear, achieving concentration, breaking bad habits, etc. Inner Skiing applied the same learning techniques to skiing and dealt specifically with overcoming the various kinds of fear commonly experienced in that sport.

In 1980, Random House asked me to write The Inner Game of Golf and describe the learning from the point of view of a student of the game, which I was. Perhaps more than in any other major sport, the golfer is vulnerable to subtle shifts in mindset which can have drastic impact on one’s performance. About that time Barry Green, then the lead bassist for the Cincinnati Philharmonic Orchestra approached me to collaborate on The Inner Game of Music, another activity in which both the fear of failure and doubt can be anathema to the quality of performance.

Starting in the mid-seventies many corporate leaders and managers recognized the implications of Inner Game concepts and models for facilitating desired changes in the workplace.

One of my first long-term clients was AT&T. In the early 1980′s they were faced with the challenge of changing the mindset of the largest company in the U.S. from the “bell shaped head” of monopolistic thinking to the mindset of a competitive, market-driven, entrepreneurial company. Not long after, I was asked to help IBM to change its prevailing corporate attitude of “we know it all” to that of a learning and coaching organization. Inner Game methods were then put to use in Apple Computer Company’s Leadership Development program. And in the 1990′s Inner Game methods were used to train most of the top-level managers of The Coca-Cola Company in how to coach and develop the skills of their work teams, and eventually to move towards becoming a learning organization.

Hundreds of keynote addresses were delivered on a wide range of Inner Game applications including Achieving Excellence in Performance, Learning to Learn in an Age of Change, The Inner Games of Management, Leadership and Coaching, as well as The Inner Game of Work. It was easy for me to apply the Inner Game principles to any corporate application because the foundation was simple and universal. Often I used tennis, golf, or skiing demonstrations to make visible the dramatic changes that could take place with a different approach to coaching.

The Inner Game of Work, to be published by the beginning of 2000 is a summary of Inner Game methods and models applied by many individuals in a wide variety of companies over the past twenty years. Mostly, it is focused on the attainment of individual excellence. With the turn of the century, the focus of my own interest has turned towards The Inner Game of Teams. The work of overcoming the obstacles faced in people working together effectively is challenging and fascinating. In the last half of 1999 I helped facilitate over 50 workshop days with teams, and joined forces with Dr. Valerio Pascotto to do what I believe is pioneering work in the field of people learning to work effectively together.