Performance under extreme pressure is as challenging in business as it is in sport and team players have to work on perfecting their own game whilst covering the gaps in their defence left by colleagues.

The first two games for England have shown the damage that performance anxiety can have on the end result.

At Psycuity, we understand the importance of the psychology of sport and its relevance to the world of business. Working with Sale Sharks and other sporting personalities, we know that unmanageable levels of anxiety can hinder natural talent and ability, making players become tense, rigid and prone to mistakes. (let’s not forget Robert Green.)

The key is self confidence. When you’re under pressure, people who have confidence in their abilities are more likely to have a positive reaction and thrive on the challenge. Worry and confidence are at opposite ends of the spectrum – when confidence is strong, it tends to crowd out worry.

It’s debatable if this is the best team that England has ever fielded, but a boost in confidence is exactly what the team needs.

Individually, players can try visualisation techniques (think Rooney, foot, goal, cheer), progressive muscle relaxation and cognitive restructuring.

Fans could try this – stop booing and demonstrate confidence in your team’s abiliIities to beat Slovenia. Cheer, stamp your feet, jump up and down and tell the lads that we know they can do it. The Kiwis have The Haka the South African’s have the Vuvuzella and we have three lions on our chest – so let them roar.

According to the report, just 59 of Fortune Global 100 firms have invested in recruiting staff specifically assigned to core social media and those in the role tend to be paid less than the equivalent positions in the traditional fields of PR, marketing and publishing.

 Financial services, petroleum and energy are flagged as being some of the slowest sectors to respond.

 Social media is here to stay, and although retail and telecoms have been quicker at bringing in inhouse expertise, we understand the resistance to take action.

Recruiting people into a role where the job description is continually evolving, evaluation is challenging and the experts are usually the youngest people in the room is enough to put anyone off and finding the right person who embodies your company culture and values is key.

 Finding the right person now will help you to build better relationships with your customer, attract new customers and help you to influence your own reputation – after all, no one knows the value of a proactive social media campaign better than Nestle.

The game, developed using some principles of psychometrics, could land you an interview at L’Oreal, but before you all go rushing off whispering ‘because I’m worth it’, the really interesting part for us is the pledge to feedback to each candidate on their performance (and suitability) for a potential career in one of five departments, ranging from finance to marketing.

The game is a bit too gimmicky and much too rigid to really understand the delicacies of placing the right candidate in their chosen career within a company culture where they will flourish. However, it’s a way of encouraging people to think outside or their predetermined career path and consider roles that perhaps they’ve never even heard of.

With looming cuts in the public sector about to reshape the employment market, Psycuity has been helping individuals at career crossroads and transferable skills to help find a new career path.

It was a brilliant event for owners of businesses to attend as TheBusinessDesk.com had secured Simon Showman, CEO of Ultimate Products as their main speaker. Simon gave a great account of his initial years working as an auctioneer, to creating his highly successful business Ultimate Products. He discussed his experiences of issues with products, funding streams, banks and the importance of quality control.

With specific regards to the area Psycuity works in, he passed on some advice he was given early on in his career that “A good CEO can lead a team, but a great CEO creates a team that can lead“. He went on to say that he “learnt the skill of investing in good strong people“. We agree enormously with this statement. Pick people who are naturally good at their jobs and who get on with those they work with. People should play to their strengths and we help them identify what those are.

Other speakers at the seminar were Montpellier’s CEO Robert Jackson and Pannone’s Head of Entrepreneurial Services Kay Kennedy. Robert shared with us his vital components for business planning – strategic, fiscal and business and went on to predict that VAT would rise to 20%, in line with the rest of Europe.

Kay gave a great account about how her business, and entrepreneurial firm itself, had made proactive cost cutting and group buying key to their business success, whilst maintaining the quality and USPs that made them successful in the first place. Kay and her team have worked with a lot of our clients and the feedback we’ve had from their entrepreneurial services offering is always first class.

You can see all the video content of the seminar here.

Ian Hudson with Phoenix Players

On Sunday 4th April we were lucky enough to sponsor the EPL match between the Manchester Phoenix and Peterborough Phantoms.

Psycuity were tasked by Tony Ayin, the newly appointed Business Development Director of the Faculty of Health & Social Care, to audit the members of his new team, work with the team on understanding their relative strengths, and assist in identifying achievable objectives in both the short and long term.

At the core of this project, as with all Psycuity’s work, is detailed understanding of each team member as an individual, gained using psychometric analysis. Psycuity then use the assessments of each team member to represent the capabilities and potential strengths and risks of the team.

Director of Psycuity, Ian Hudson comments: “We give leaders of new teams a unique insight into how this group of people that they’ve never met will work for them.”

 “Having assessed each member of the team at the University of Salford it was then very important to share the insights we’d gained in a training day. This means Tony’s team will be able to make practical use of the assessments we’ve made of their individual skills in order to work more effectively together.”

 Ayin adds: “The work Psycuity carried out with us certainly opened our eyes to new ways of achieving effective team working.”

 “Overall the two day event was fantastic in achievement of stronger collaborations and the need to develop both individually and collectively.”

The University of Salford project is the latest undertaking by the North West business psychology consultancy. The company, established in 2007, continues to experience a boom in customer demand as companies and individuals turn to the principles of psychology to make informed business decisions.

 Additional services within their portfolio include business turnaround, due diligence assessments to analyse management teams, skills training to boost networking and negotiating skills and career guidance helping individuals to find new roles in industries that compliment their talents and personalities.

Clients including Enterprise plc, Grant Thornton, Pets at Home and the NWDA are choosing Psycuity to deliver a diverse range of services to help their businesses recruit and build great teams.

Digital agencies and professional and financial services firms are coming together in Manchester to tackle 21st century dilemmas affecting both sectors.

• Why dont digital agencies have the budget for professional services & and why dont professional services firms have the budget for digital agencies!
• Why is collaborative working helping smart firms thrive during 2010?
• The Digital Age vs. Intellectual Property how technology has changed the value of both IP and expertise?

An expert panel will debate the issues, with the audience, in a lively, imformative and entertaining session.

Philip will be talking alongside:

Shaun Fensom – Chairman of Manchester Digital
Nick Rhind – MD from Web Development Agency CTI
Simon Wharton – MD online marketing agency PushOn
Steve Kuncewicz - IP and Media lawyer Halliwells LLP
Coral Grainger – Innovation Activist M:KC
All of whom are good friends of ours.

Sathnam Sanghera’s article reveals that it actually poorly aired first in the UK, prior to being lanuched after the super bowl with 39million prime time viewers, hailing it a success.

The basic principle of the programme is sound. It’s all about the bosses of companies going back to the floor to experience first hand how their companies actually work and treat customers. The bosses are disguised to enable them to blend in as it’s been observed that the staff act differently when they know they are being watched.

Sathnam draws some good conclusions in his article and wraps it up with a great sentence “A great many problems are caused bu out-of-touch executives, but just as many are caused by the inability of employees to understand how hard it is being in charge”.

Not everyone is a great leader, not eveybody wants to have the responsibility of people working for them. At Psycuity we have experienced this with our customers time and time again. Just because someone is a good engineer, or a good coder – doesn’t make them a good Line Manager, or Managing Director. We understand it’s about picking the right person for the right job.

This psychological gem comes from Professor Richard Wiseman he studied over 3,000 peoples new year resolutions and found that 88% of them fail. A psychological explanantion is the prefrontal cortex part of the brain controls which controls willpower, short-term memory, focus and problem solving gets overloaded. Like a muscle it only has so much ‘capacity’ and once the limit is reached it’s your willpower that goes out of the window!

In another study Professor Baba Shiv at Stanford University split students into two groups, one group had to remember a 2 digit number and the other a 7 digit number. They were told to walk down a hall and presented with two snack options – chocolate cake or a healthy snack option. The 7 digit students were twice as likely to take the cake as the 2 digit students, the cognitive load of trying to remember 7 digits overwhelmed the prefrontal cortex making it harder to resist the cake.

So if you want to stick to the diet – don’t try and do too many other things at once, be aware that the pre-frontal cortex can get overloaded – willpower is not just strength of character, and if cravings do come on use a diversionary tactic to filter to temptation from your mind.