I’m a sports fan. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, badminton, it doesn’t matter. I’m a huge fan of watching athletes compete. One of the most fascinating things to me about sports is that they are so often a mental game as much as they are a physical one. Professional athletes are elite physical performers, but there’s a performance happening that fans don’t see as well: mental performance. The best athletes also know how to perform mentally in high pressure situations. 

Mental performance is also a crucial component of leadership. But there are lots of pieces that make up mental performance. Pieces like focus, confidence, perfectionism, and various mental skills are all important to healthy mental performance.

As a leader, what if you could “own the pieces”? What if you could not master those pieces, but teach others how to master them as well. Dr. Josiah Igono believes that you can. 

This week on The Daily Leader Presented by Pattern Talent, Brad and Taylor host Dr. Josiah Igono, founder of All Things Performance and author of the book Own the Pieces: The Heart-Felt Guide to Mental Performance. Brad and Taylor discussed the book, as well as the concepts of leadership and performance as a whole. Make sure you give the whole conversation a listen in the video above! 

If you are a leader who is interested in improving your mental performance, Own the Pieces is an absolute must add to your library. This short but action packed guidebook is designed to help you apply elite performance concepts to your career, or help someone else with theirs.

Dr. Igono’s book is divided into two parts: macro (the philosophy of performance) and micro (specific skills that you can begin applying and practicing immediately. 

Whether it’s improving your focus or confidence, overcoming stress and anxiety, practicing healthy perfectionism, or removing the clutter from your mind, or practicing some of the twelve mental skills from part two, Own the Pieces has something for any leader who wants to improve.

Above all else, Dr. Igono’s book does an excellent job of nailing down two areas that we care deeply about at Pattern:

the purposeful and the practical. 

Each chapter is highly practical, and not only because so many of them are tactical skills. Dr. Igono is a master of memetic language, using story, acronyms, and various frameworks to make points stick. My personal favorites include “feeding the BEAST” when it comes to confidence, or using “BRASS” to increase your punching power against stress and anxiety. These are frameworks that will stick with me in my leadership. 

Perhaps the reason the whole thing works, though, is that Dr. Igono’s message is rooted in purpose. At the end of section one, he walks through eight questions that all of mankind must answer including questions of identity like: who am I? And questions of destiny like “what happens when I die?” If our lives and leadership aren’t rooted in good answers to questions like these, we’re likely to miss the meaning for all of it. 

If you’re a leader who wants to “Own the Pieces” pick up a copy here and be sure to check out The Daily Leader on YouTube. 

For more information about Pattern Talent, visit patterntalent.co or contact Brad here or email brad@patterntalent.co.