The Inner Game

Here is a link to Tim Gallwey’s official Facebook page

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Do you think it’s possible to truly enjoy your job? No matter what it is or where you are? Timothy Gallwey does, and in this groundbreaking book he tells you how to overcome the inner obstacles that sabotage your efforts to be your best on the job.

via The Inner Game of Work: Focus, Learning, Pleasure, and Mobility in the Workplace | Mobility Scooter Preston – The UK’s Number 1 Mobility Scooter Specialist.

Tags: The Inner Game of Work

In his bookThe Inner Game of Tennis, pioneer coach Tim Gallwey developed a revolutionary programme for overcoming the self-doubt, nervousness and lapses of concentration that can keep a player from winning.
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quote Coaching ‘is the teaching of technical skills, but it is not teaching’ quote

Gallwey then applied these principles to the corporate world in The Inner Game of Work, his precept being that there is always an inner game being played in your mind – no matter what outer game you are playing.

Coaching can take numerous forms, the most influential being transformational coaching for business leaders and executives.
What to expect from your coach – Times LIVE.

Tags: Coach, coaching, inner game of work, mental approach, Motivation, Performance

The inner zone of excellence is a key part of what is known as the “inner game” of business. The concept of the “inner game” was developed by Timothy Gallwey as a way of helping people to achieve excellence in various sports (e.g., tennis, golf, skiing, etc.), music and also business and management training. Fundamental to the inner game is our ability to stay in a high performance state when confronted with difficult circumstances.

via Robert Dilts « Nadine36hypnotherapy’s Blog.

Tags: awareness, coaching, inner game, inner game of work, Innergame, mental approach, The Inner Game, Tim Gallwey

Inner game is what enables you to act. Nothing less, nothing more.

The Longer Answer

Timothy Gallwey first coined the term ‘inner game’ in his book The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance. He wrote that “every game is composed of two parts, an outer game and an inner game”; where the outer game is fought against another opponent and the inner game is fought against your own inner doubts and fears.

via What is Inner Game?.

Tags: awareness, empowering guide, influence, inner game, inner game of work, potential, The Inner Game, Tim Gallwey

A recent post on Bob’s Weblog, GROW a way to grow in life and business, breaks down some of the basics in 2 of Tim Gallwey’s books, The Inner Game of Tennis and The inner Game of Work.

Gallwey was a tennis coach who was frustrated by the limitations of conventional sports coaching methods. He noticed that he could often see the faults in a player’s game, but that simply telling him what to do to improve did not bring about lasting change.

For instance, if a player were not keeping his eye on the ball, most coaches would give advice such as: ‘Keep your eye on the ball.’ When a player received this sort of instruction he would try to do what the coach was asking him and watch the ball more closely. Unfortunately, no one can keep instructions in the front of their minds for long, so players usually slipped back into their old habits and both coaches and players grew increasingly frustrated.

So one day, instead of giving an instruction, Gallwey asked:

`Can you say “bounce” out loud when the ball bounces and “hit” out loud when you hit the ball?’

In order to do this, players had to keep their eyes on the ball but no longer had a voice in their heads repeating the words ‘I must keep my eye on the ball.’ At this, their play started to improve markedly and the Inner Game method of coaching was born.

From then on, whenever Gallwey wanted a player to change, he no longer gave instructions but would, instead, ask questions that would help the player discover for himself what worked and what needed to change.

The first stage in this process would be to set a target for the player. For instance, in a situation where a player was serving out a lot of the time, Gallwey would ask him how many first serves out of ten he would like to get in. In this way, together, they created a clear Goal.

Then he would ask the player to serve ten balls and see how many he got in. In this way he helped the player define his Reality.

The next stage might be to ask him to observe what he was doing differently when the serve went in from when it went out, thereby helping the player to get in touch with his Obstacles. The player for instance might observe that when he threw the ball up to a certain height it tended to go in whereas if he threw it lower it tended to go out. Once an Obstacle was identified it became straightforward to identify Options to get around them.

In this way by really looking at what was actually happening, rather than getting stuck in trying and getting frustrated, players learnt for themselves what they needed to change in order to meet their serving targets. This gave players a clear Way Forward.

In the example using Gallwey and his tennis players, the basic methodology of GROW was present from the start.

A number of principles have been developed out of Gallwey’s experience with tennis players. While they originate from sport, the same principles can be applied to many learning situations. For example:

1 It is more effective to focus your attention on a relevant aspect of what is actually happening while you are learning, instead of what you ‘should’ be doing or trying to get it ‘right’ according to someone else’s perspective. This may seem blindingly obvious; however, in practice it rarely happens. In our tennis example the player would probably be focusing on trying to remember what the last coach said about serving and would then become more and more frustrated if his attempts at improvement did not work.

2 The best learning happens when we are focusing on the present. This means we are not struggling to prove or remember something but rather making discoveries as we go along.

3 We can easily interfere with the learning process by, for instance, trying to look good or using a lot of unfocused effort. The less we interfere with our learning, the faster we progress

Tags: coaching, GROW, GROW process, inner game, problem solving, sports coaching, Tim Gallwey

“Ever since The Inner Game of Tennis, I’ve been fascinated and have personally benefitted by the incredibly empowering insights flowing out of Gallwey’s self-oneself-two analysis. This latest book applies this liberating analogy to work inspiring all of us to relax and trust our true self.”
–Stephen R. Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

A new entry in the SunMobility blog

Do you think it’s possible to truly enjoy your job? No matter what it is or where you are? Timothy Gallwey does, and in this groundbreaking book he tells you how to overcome the inner obstacles that sabotage your efforts to be your best on the job.
Timothy Gallwey burst upon the scene twenty years ago with his revolutionary approach to excellence in sports. His bestselling books The Inner Game of Tennis and The Inner Game of Golf, with over one million copies in print, changed the way we think about learning and coaching. But the Inner Game that Gallwey discovered on the tennis court is about more than learning a better backhand; it is about learning how to learn, a critical skill that, in this case, separates the productive, satisfied employee from the rest of the pack. For the past twenty years Gallwey has taken his Inner Game expertise to many of America’s top companies, including AT&T, Coca-Cola, Apple, and IBM, to teach their managers and employees how to gain better access to their own internal resources.
What inner obstacles is Gallwey talking about? Fear of failure, resistance to change, procrastination, stagnation, doubt, and boredom, to name a few. Gallwey shows you how to tap into your natural potential for learning, performance, and enjoyment so that any job, no matter how long you’ve been doing it or how little you think there is to learn about it, can become an opportunity to sharpen skills, increase pleasure, and heighten awareness. And if your work environment has been turned on its ear by Internet technology, reorganization, and rapidly accelerating change, this book offers a way to steer a confident course while navigating your way toward personal and professional goals.
The Inner Game of Work teaches you the difference between a rote performance and a rewarding one. It teaches you how to stop working in the conformity mode and start working in the mobility mode. It shows how having a great coach can make as much difference in the boardroom as on the basketball court– and Gallwey teaches you how to find that coach and, equally important, how to become one. The Inner Game of Workchallenges you to reexamine your fundamental motivations for going to work in the morning and your definitions of work once you’re there. It will ask you to reassess the way you make changes and teach you to look at work in a radically new way.

Tags: Habits, HighlyEffective, People, StephenRCovey

The Inner Game of Tennis is listed in the Knowledge is Social blog as one of the 5 top books for entrepreneurs in 2009. Here is the author’s quote:

As an entrepreneur you struggle with the external “game” of dealing with co-founders, employees, investors, and customers. Perhaps even more importantly, you also deal with the internal “game” existing in your head as you fight fear, anxiety, and doubt. The roller-coaster of these two games can derail you from focusing on what is truly important and be a hindrance to success. In this book, Gallwey provides you with techniques and lessons on how to balance the two games by establishing the proper mental grounding. I cannot say enough for how this book has helped to achieve clarity in thought and focus.

Also check out Galleway’s related book: The Inner Game of Work

Tags: entrepreneurs, immediate, impact, improvement, innergametennis, knowledge, Performance

Dr. Valerio Pascotto is the founder of EOS® – Effective Organizational Systems. Tim Gallwey attended Harvard University where he majored in English Literature and captained the tennis team. Together they have a company called IGEOS, the premier company in building the teams that drive corporate success.

Tags: corporate, drive, IGEOS, success, teambuilding

A recent post ib the True Love blog relates Tim Gallwey’s principles in the Inner Game of Work to coaching. Here is what the author says:

Was reading the above book and wanted to share part of what I have read about his experience gained from being a tennis coach…

Learning takes place within the student. The student makes the choice that ultimately control whether learning takes place or not. He then realised that the student was responsible for the learning choices and the coach was responsible for the quality of the external learning environment. Allowing the student to be more aware of the choices he was making and the reasons behind those choices was an essential part of this learning process. The student felt more in control and as a natural consequence was willing to accept more responsibility, and exercise greater initiative and creativity in achieving their goal.

Experience comes with three principles – awareness, choice and trust. Awareness was about knowing the present situation with clarity. Choice was about moving in a desired direction in the future. Trust was the essential link that enabled that movement.

The greater the external challenges accepted by an individual, team or company, the more important it is that there be a minimum of interference occurring from within. No matter what culture you work in, what kind of work you do, or what your present level of competence is, both inner and outer games are always going on. Progress will always be dependent on both.

They are like two legs of a person; one leg represents the external challenges and the other represents self. As a culture and current situation, we have placed too much emphasis on mastering the outer game and making changes in the external world. With science, technology, and the modern information explosion, we have developed a relatively long outer-game leg. But our understanding and control of the Inner Game has not evolved equally.

We have a profound need to better understand, and learn to make changes in the domain we call ourselves. This will only happen if we change in ways that are in harmony with our true nature, not at war with it.

Tags: Coach, coaching, inner game, inner game of work, Innergame, Tim Gallwey