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Work as an internal game. “Work as an inner game” () - download the book for free without registration

Inner Game at Work

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The gist of what I've learned through my exploration of the Inner Game can be summed up in one sentence: I've found a better path to change.

Timothy Gallwey

What is the book “Work as an Inner Game: Unlocking Personal Potential” about?

About how to maximize the potential of your “I”, achieve high results, while avoiding overload and gaining new knowledge and pleasure from work.

Why Work as an Inner Game is worth reading

“Work as an inner game” is the fruit of more than twenty years practical work Tim Gallwey, one of the greatest teachers of our time.
This book is a magic wand: what was the cause of stress will become simply interesting, what you avoided will become attractive, and what seemed futile will become a source of opportunity.
Method Inner game universal: it can be successfully applied to any type of activity and in all professional fields.

Who is this book for?

If you feel like you're facing another moral crisis at work, then this book is for you.

Who is author

Timothy Gallwey - one of the founders of coaching as a way to unlock a person’s potential in order to maximize his effectiveness. World bestselling author, creator of Inner Game Corporation, which applies the principles and methods of Inner Game to develop skill in groups and individuals. Gives lectures all over the world, conducts group trainings and seminars as a coach.

Key Concepts

What is our life? That's it...

This is the third edition. The first is “Work as an internal game. Focus, learning, pleasure and mobility in the workplace" - published in 2005. The commercial success of the 10,000th circulation stimulated a re-release in 2010 under the title “Maximum Self-Realization: Work as an Inner Game.” And here's one more thing. The circulation, however, fell five times, but in the era of p...

Published with permission from Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC and the literary agency Nova Littera Ltd.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holders.

* * *

without whose love, care, support and patience this book would not have been completed

Preface

The way we do business is changing so much that our ability to adapt and reshape our thinking is integral to success. We are faced with the challenge of how to transform institutions that are designed as consistent, controllable, and predictable structures into organizations with cultures that truly value learning, passion, and discovery.

Work as an Inner Game helps you find your own direction in the landscape of what is now called the “learning organization.” Any manager or employee with the courage to learn what training is will find concepts and examples that will help turn training plans into everyday practice.

B O Most traditional learning strategies involve additional activities. We conduct trainings, organize special programs and meetings to create a culture of learning. One of side effects Such events are to strengthen the belief that learning and work are two different, competing activities, which acts as a limiting factor. We are hard at work deciding how much training we can afford before it starts to interfere with the production process. We worry about the “transfer” of learning: how to take it and “bring it back” to the workplace. Methods Inner game eliminate the conflict between learning and work, showing us that both are parts of one big whole.

Tim Gallwey's ideas about learning were amazingly deep and practical from the very beginning. In 1976 his book The Inner Game of Tennis 1
Published in Russian: Gallwey T. Tennis. Psychology successful game. M.: Olimp-Business, 2016.

It radically changed my understanding not only of tennis, but also of many other things.

Twenty-three years later, her influence on me is still strong. She showed me for the first time that our efforts to improve ourselves and improve our performance were actually holding us back from achieving our goals. Tim's views contradict many ideas about teaching methods and show that O Most of our educational programs are hostile to our learning. Work as an Inner Game brings these discoveries directly to the workplace.

The idea that standard teaching and coaching methods reduce our performance is truly revolutionary. Most educational institutions and organizations rely heavily on instructions and directions, but if all their efforts at improvement are not yielding any benefit, perhaps we should take a second look. If the instructions do not help, then what should we do? Many authors describe processes that need improvement, but when it comes time to actually take action, they are limited to theories and abstractions.

What's special about Tim's book is that he not only defines the nature of our interventions, but also offers wonderful, concrete ways to enhance learning and performance while minimizing instruction and direction. This is his genius. He understands how we learn and has spent his life working on how we can organize ourselves for greater achievement. Methodology Inner game has changed the way people think about work and, perhaps even more importantly, offers organizations a way to simultaneously deliver learning, improve performance and create a more engaging work environment.

Establishing a learning culture is a very responsible process. It requires more than most of us realize, and asks leaders to make enough commitment to learning and performance improvement that they can let go of the reins somewhat.

Methodology Inner game requires faith and - to a large extent - the abandonment of bad habits when studying. It requires us to value awareness, consciousness and pay attention to what is happening in ourselves and around us. This is not an easy task. In Western culture, the words "awareness" and "attention" are labeled "New Age" and the theory is dismissed as a variation of the "California Dream." But that's not true.

The fundamental question is: what can be done in the workplace? Can we provide good work results while enjoying and learning? This raises an even more serious question about what the purpose of the work is. Is the goal to achieve institutional results - more profit, more high level service, market dominance? Economists, the financial community and the business press give a simple answer to this question: that goal is money.

For most people, however, the question of purpose is much more complex. They agree that financial success is necessary, but work is about more than filling the wallet. People care about workplace culture, relationships with colleagues, the opportunity to realize their potential, learn and improve their skills. We often view this as a conflict between managers and employees, but that is not the point. The main thing is the individual, internal struggle. We are constantly torn between delivering results for the company and living a satisfying life.

And here the method gives us hope Inner game. Tim constantly raises the question of what game we are playing. Can we play Inner game, which would bring us satisfaction and at the same time meet the requirements of the external game?

However, the search for integration between internal and external requires a series of radical experiments. To deal with this complex issue, we need to try new structures, new tools, new ways.

Many years ago, Tim and I attended a conference held by a large American corporation for sales staff across the country. It goes without saying that these people love to compete. They not only like to compete, they believe in the power of competition. The meaning for them lies in competition; victory in the market is both a goal and a reward. This is true for both a business and an individual. The entire conference was essentially a gathering of winners, a confirmation that they were the best in their company and perhaps the best in the industry, and even in the whole world.

After my presentation on coaching using the method Inner game, Tim agreed to host the annual tennis tournament, which has become a tradition for such sales conferences. After all, winners love tournaments, and here the master of the event was a famous coach and author of a book about tennis. But it wasn’t enough for Tim to just host the tournament. He decided that this could be a unique opportunity for each participant to answer the question: “What game are you really playing?”

Tim proposed to arrange everything so that the winner of each game would leave the tournament, and the loser would move on to the next round. Just think: the loser was rewarded for his defeat, and the winner was kicked out of the court. What's the point of playing a game where "winning" gives you nothing? This is exactly what was case. Each player had to answer a question about why he was playing this game. The traditional answer, especially for sales managers: “To win.” Tim's answer was that there is a more interesting game, and it is about playing for the sake of learning, for the sake of realizing one's own potential. Ironically, if you do this, your performance will improve.

In a tournament like this, where the losers moved on and the winners went home, it was unclear to the players whether it was in their best interest to win or lose? If they defeated the enemy, then, in fact, they lost. If they lost, they were celebrated as winners. In such conditions, participants could play for the sake of the game itself, and not for the sake of winning or losing, play and see how good players they can become. If you look at this from a philosophical point of view, they were asked to stop “dancing to the music of the world around them” and play in accordance with their own internal messages. The tennis tournament is a metaphor for what can happen in the workplace. No matter what structure we have in front of us, there is always an opportunity to transform a dominant cultural habit into an unpredictable event where the likelihood of learning is much greater.

Of course, I don't mean to say that all competitions should reward losers, but this kind of thoughtful and selective experimentation is what separates organizations that are merely surviving from those that are thriving. The willingness to doubt folk wisdom is the main difference. In fact, many management techniques that would have seemed radical just 15 years ago are now accepted in a huge number of corporations. These include, for example, the following:

Self-organizing teams perform b O most of the work previously assigned to the manager.

Employees themselves check the results of their work, although previously it was believed that it was in the interests of High Quality this should be done by independent controllers.

Subordinates evaluate their bosses.

Suppliers have become part of the organization and are included in the planning and decision-making process.

Sales teams can make their own customer service decisions, whereas previously decisions were made centrally and required two levels of approval.

All these and many other issues used to be the sacred prerogative of management and required adequate control. I remember that tennis tournament well, one of the first experiments needed to create a real learning environment. The tournament challenged its own purpose, was a marked departure from tradition because it made everyone involved feel a little awkward, and ultimately became the source of the energy and excitement that brought life to that sales conference.

The role of coaches and the constant change in our thinking about goals and structures seem important in understanding the role that management can play in creating an environment where learning is valued. What is required is the belief that learning and work are one and the same. Highly productive employees are those who simply learn faster. We learn faster when we pay attention to the world and see it as it is, not as it should be. Learning then becomes a function of awareness rather than instruction, and that means seeing clearly what is going on around you, without being overly judgmental and without the instinctive urge to control and change everything you touch.

The rate of learning slows down when anxiety levels are high and approval levels are low. For most problems, people have enough knowledge to cope with their solution, they simply find it difficult to act on their knowledge. And this is one of the deepest ideas Inner game. We don't need to learn more from a boss or an expert: we need to change how we apply the knowledge that already exists within us. Increasing pressure to achieve results is more paralyzing than liberating, even if this idea contradicts the traditional way of thinking in our culture.

These ideas have widespread implications for the next generation of change in the workplace. If we really want to achieve the best performance, we need to change the conventional practice of increasing it through coaching and constant intervention from managers. For example, we need to stop ranking people and departments for the sake of motivation and rewards. We need to move from the rhetoric of victories to the rhetoric of learning. Performance reviews must stop being an evolution of the strong and weaknesses individual and turn into a dialogue between a manager and an ordinary employee on the question of what experience each of them accumulates and what it means. We will treat employees as autonomous, self-developing individuals. In this way, our educational efforts will stop being focused on training and will focus on teaching; the latter should be built around the experience of the student, and not around the competence of the teacher. We need to doubt the value of models, trainings with predetermined, predictable behavior as a result.

We need a win in every workplace. Work is not an ordinary event; our survival is at stake here. This approach does not answer fundamental questions about purpose and meaning for either the organization or the individual. In her characteristic calm and specific manner, the technique Inner game advocates for the creation of institutions that can offer people deeper meaning than just profit, without giving up achieving economic success. How do we play a game that maintains the human spirit and gets the job done well? Most organizations have this desire, but their thinking remains limited to viewing people as a means to achieving financial results. A business needs to thrive, and a person needs to find a purpose beyond that, and do it carefully - so that it bears fruit and does not burn. Recognizing the greater value of learning and awareness that is so essential to successful education gives us hope that this is possible.

Work as an Inner Game is the culmination of Tim's more than twenty years of practical work disseminating ideas. Inner game in the business world. The book requires the reader to abandon evaluative thinking and be open to completely new ways of realizing our intentions and desires.

May this book bring you pleasure. Take it seriously. Let it work for you, and what was a cause of stress will become simply interesting, what you avoided will become attractive, and what seemed futile will become a source of opportunity.

Introduction. Looking for opportunities to work freely

Man is born free, and yet everywhere he is in chains.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 18th century philosopher

I went in search of an opportunity to work freely. I'm not interested in the conceptual ideal of freedom at work, but in something more practical. I want to respect the part of myself that is free from nature, no matter the circumstances. My quest is to embrace this part of myself and allow it to find expression at work.

At work, more than in any other human activity, freedom is at significant risk. Don't we all feel the chains that bind us at work? The chains of “must”, “must”, “do it, or else...” are chains of fear and pressure from the outside. A common definition of work is: “This is something I would never do if I had a choice.”

Every time I take the plunge to work freely, I feel these chains tightening. The bonds of unconscious habit pull me back, as if I were tied to a post with an elastic band. It's not hard to take the first few steps, but the further I step away from my usual routine, the more stressed I become. Then, when I reach a certain limit, I feel myself being pulled back forcefully, and I have no choice but to start all over again. Maybe the desire for true freedom must at some point release the post to which this rubber band is tied. The freedom I seek is an innate freedom, not one given by another person or society. The pursuit of it requires a completely different definition of the concept of “work.”

I first began looking for opportunities to work freely in the early 1970s, when I left a relatively secure career in higher education and thought about what I really want from life. I then began working as a tennis instructor, with no long-term plans other than to earn money during this transitional time, and made several important discoveries about teaching and coaching, which later became the topic of the book Tennis. Psychology of successful gaming." Based on simple principles and techniques Inner game there was a deep faith in man's natural ability to learn from direct experience.

These principles Inner game have stood the test of time and have been successfully used in a wide variety of applications over the past twenty years. Inner game is a viable alternative to the traditional command-and-control methods that we take for granted in both work and play. This is a promising start to the path to freedom. Success here depends primarily on the willingness of readers to fully trust to ourselves.

Chapter 1. A successful path to change

The essence of everything I learned by researching Inner game, can be summed up in one sentence: I found a better path to change. Although I discovered this path by practicing forehand and backhand serves and strokes, the principles and techniques that helped my students develop tennis skills can be applied to improve skills in any activity. This book is about how to change the way we work. How to make it work work for us.

We are constantly told that we live in an age of change, and most often it is at work that we hear words that we need to change. This could be a global reorganization of the company of which you are a part, or a medium-scale change, for example, in “how we work in our department,” or a change in the personal qualities of a person that, according to the manager, is necessary based on the results of the latest performance appraisal. Even if we are not influenced by outside influences, most of us want to change the way we work and achieve new results. In the bookstore, the largest section is devoted to self-improvement books that will teach you how to change myself.

We talk about everything that needs to change, but how well do we imagine how implement these changes?

I began my professional career as an educator, a profession that continues to be notoriously slow to embrace real change, even though, ironically, education is about learning and therefore about change. Education must explain change and demonstrate good examples. But I discovered a new approach to learning and change after leaving the corridors of formal education.

How did the inner game come about?

Towards understanding Inner game I came in the early 1970s when I played and taught sports games others. Looking back on this time, I understand why sport has become such a good research laboratory for learning and change. Because achievement in sport can be directly observed and goals are crystal clear, these changes in performance are much more visible. My first laboratories were on the tennis court, the ski track and the golf course - sports where you are well aware of the huge difference between the best and worst results. This difference cannot be explained solely by lack of ability. It is directly related to the way of learning or making changes in performance.

In my early years of coaching, I made two observations. Firstly, almost all of my students tried very hard fix something in their game that they were unhappy with. They were waiting for me to give them a solution to the problem. Secondly, after the students stopped try, and trust in one's ability to learn from one's own experiences, positive changes occurred with relative lack of effort. There is a sharp contrast between forced and natural learning, which we can see in the early development of our children.

Observing a typical interaction between a beginning player and a tennis coach provides insight into how we all learned to make change. Usually a student turns to the coach with some kind of complaint: about a bad shot or unimportant results. He says, “My serve is weak” or “I need to change my backhand.” The coach watches how the student performs a kick and compares what he sees with a certain standard of the correct kick that exists in his head. This standard is based on what the coach himself has been trained to accept as a correct shot. Looking through the lens of this model, the coach sees the difference between “what is” and “what should be,” and tries to correct “what is.”

Here the trainer can use a variety of instructions, but the general context is the same. Maybe he will say: “When contact is made, you need to take a step towards the ball, transfer your body weight to the leg that is in front. When swinging, you don't need to take the racket so high. Swipe the ball like this..." General context: "I'll tell you what you should and shouldn't do."

Ed.D. Progra Chair Human Resource Management, Franklin University, USA

As a professor in the subjects of leadership, management, coaching and team building, I have the opportunity to meet professionals across the world. I want to provide my support and recommendation for the expert services provided by Natalia Pereverzeva. Natalia is a highly skilled presenter of workshops and offers a number of training programs in topics such as Coaching Technology, Emotional Intelligence, Goal Integration, Personal branding and Effective communication. I highly recommend natalia Pereverzeva as a true professional in executive coaching, business coach and trainer in the field of coaching.

Venera Gabova

expert in personnel selection and assessment, specialist in career development and planning, professional career coach, member of the Association of Career Professionals

The session with Natalia Pereverzeva was valuable for me! Instant rapport! Pleasant and easy communication! Sincere desire to help! Kindness and diplomacy! Faith in the best and manifestation of this faith! A New Look at Simple Coaching Techniques! And the most important thing is that Natalya managed to easily and delicately reach my deepest values (only a few can do this) And as a result, we outlined certain reference points in my professional development! I express my deep gratitude! And I will be very glad to cooperate!

Systems Analyst,
Saint Petersburg

Ilya Grinyuk

business coach, Co-Founder/CEO at Mobil 1 Center Podorozhnik Auto, master coach Moscow www.ilyagrinyuk.ru

Excellent master class by Natalia Pereverzeva “Personal branding. Connecting with yourself”! A mix of a creative and rational approach to the formation of a personal brand opens up new opportunities for effective promotion in the market! The result of the master class for me was the identification of blind spots, work on which will begin in the near future. Thanks again!

Grasevich Dmitry

General Director of DELEX GROUP LLC

On behalf of DELEX GROUP LLC, I express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to your company Style of Success for the effective, fruitful cooperation and assistance provided in the selection of personnel: engineers, logisticians, sales managers. I would like to note your professionalism, high efficiency in your work, maximum focus on wishes when selecting specialists. Your company is distinguished by its operational approach and efficiency in solving emerging problems of any complexity, good combination speed and quality. I am confident in maintaining existing business relationships and further mutually beneficial cooperation in the field of personnel selection and training. I wish your company successful development and achievement of new heights in business!

Chuiko Valery Anatolievich

General Director of TRANSMAR TRADE LLC

The company "TRANSMAR TRADE" LLC expresses gratitude to the company "Style of Success" LLC for the services provided in the field of personnel selection. During the period of cooperation, the company showed and confirmed its professional level, high competence in quickly solving assigned tasks of filling positions with rare highly qualified specialists. I would like to note the efficiency, quick response to clarifying questions, attentive attitude towards us as clients, HR partner Anna Bondarenko. We recommend the company "Style of Success" to companies interested in fast and high-quality services in the field of personnel selection. We are confident in further productive cooperation!

Sergey Yurievich Lobarev

Ph.D., Chairman of the Board of the NP “Guild of Driving Schools”

Having experience in business for more than 30 years and considering himself a successful creative person who finds time to search for new forms and methods, both for personal growth and for the development of the company, classes with coach Natalya Pereverzeva not only impressed, but amazed me with their energy and an extraordinary approach to the learning process. Working with the assigned tasks fit surprisingly harmoniously into my busy schedule. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult for an experienced person who has a status in society to accept corrections, wishes, and recommendations for self-analysis over the years. When communicating with an expert, you feel tact, professionalism, and a desire to be useful. I am very pleased to have met and worked with this charming lady and consider her a very strong specialist in this field.

Awakening the Guardian
Minaeva Anna
Romance novels, Romance-fantasy novels

The night that became a nightmare for the world turned my life upside down. Now I, who recently learned about my strength, must subjugate all four elements. Fortunately, I'm not alone. But it’s unlikely that this will help me much.

But even in the hours when you give up, there are people who can support you. I never would have thought that Kane Lacroix would be one of them. The one who annoys me with his mere existence. Whose motives are incomprehensible to me, and just looking at him makes me shiver.
Dragon tradition
Geyarova Naya

I'll introduce myself. Tiana Fat is a witch. In addition, he is an artifact of the highest category. I signed an agreement to teach artifact studies in a country abroad. I was promised a mind-blowing career, eye-popping pay, and my own home. But no one warned me that I would have to work with dragons. And in the dragon academy there is an unspoken but mandatory tradition. The teacher must get married. And definitely for... the dragon!

What kind of strange custom is this? Who invented it? Ah, is this a curse cast by an ancient demon? Well, we’ll have to disturb him and rewrite this point of dragon traditions.

What do you mean there are no spells to summon a demon? I'll call him! Even if you have to retrain as a demonologist.

And don’t you dare ask me to marry you, you impudent dragons! That's not what I'm here for.
Witch in a white robe
Lisina Alexandra
,

From time immemorial, kikimors, goblins, vampires, werewolves, and brownies lived next to people. For a long time we hid our existence, but over time, magic, like human technology, reached such a level that hiding in forests and dungeons became unprofitable. Now, thanks to spells, we live freely among people: in cities, side by side with you, although you do not suspect it. And we, like everyone else, work and use the Internet. We even have our own police! And, of course, our own medicine, which I, Olga Belova, know firsthand. After all, I am a doctor by profession. Although more often they call me a witch in a white robe.
Inspector 2.0
Marchenko Gennady Borisovich
Science Fiction, Alternative History, Popadantsy

Did a simple St. Petersburg tax inspector think that as a result of a failed attempt on his life he would be a thing of the past? However, fate sometimes presents very unexpected surprises, and now our hero is forced to somehow arrange his life in the middle of the 19th century. And who knows whether he will be able to return back?

Timothy Gallwey

Work as an internal game. Unlocking your personal potential

without whose love, care, support and patience this book would not have been completed

Preface

The way we do business is changing so much that our ability to adapt and reshape our thinking is integral to success. We are faced with the challenge of how to transform institutions that are designed as consistent, controlled and predictable structures into organizations with a culture that truly values learning, passion and discovery.

B O Most traditional learning strategies involve additional activities. We conduct trainings, organize special programs and meetings to create a culture of learning. One of the side effects of such activities is to strengthen the belief that learning and work are two different, competing activities, which acts as a limiting factor. We are hard at work deciding how much training we can afford before it starts to interfere with the production process. We worry about the “transfer” of learning: how to take it and “bring it back” to the workplace. Methods Inner game eliminate the conflict between learning and work, showing us that both are parts of one big whole.

Tim Gallwey's ideas about learning were amazingly deep and practical from the very beginning. In 1976, his book The Inner Game of Tennis [Published in Russian: Gallwey T. Tennis. The psychology of successful gaming. M.: Olimp-Business, 2016.] radically changed my understanding not only of tennis, but also of many other things. Twenty-three years later, her influence on me is still strong. She showed me for the first time that our efforts to improve ourselves and improve our performance were actually holding us back from achieving our goals. Tim's views contradict many ideas about teaching methods and show that O Most of our educational programs are hostile to our learning. Work as an Inner Game brings these discoveries directly to the workplace.

The fundamental question is: what can be done in the workplace? Can we provide good work results while enjoying and learning? This raises an even more serious question about what the purpose of the work is. Is the goal to achieve institutional results—more profits, higher levels of service, market dominance? Economists, the financial community and the business press give a simple answer to this question: that goal is money.

However, the search for integration between internal and external requires a series of radical experiments. To deal with this complex issue, we need to try new structures, new tools, new ways.

In a tournament like this, where the losers moved on and the winners went home, it was unclear to the players whether it was in their best interest to win or lose? If they defeated the enemy, then, in fact, they lost. If they lost, they were celebrated as winners. In such conditions, participants could play for the sake of the game itself, and not for the sake of winning or losing, and play and see what good players they could become. If you look at this from a philosophical point of view, they were asked to stop “dancing to the music of the world around them” and play in accordance with their own internal messages. The tennis tournament is a metaphor for what can happen in the workplace. No matter what structure we have in front of us, there is always an opportunity to transform a dominant cultural habit into an unpredictable event where the likelihood of learning is much greater.

Self-organizing teams perform b O most of the work previously assigned to the manager.