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Performance and The PAL Model©

The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery [w]hile those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

—Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

There are certain slogans that are drilled into our heads throughout the course of BUD/S that SEALs learn to live by: “The only easy day was yesterday,” “Earn your Trident every day,” “It pays to be a winner.” These sayings serve to remind us of who we are and the shared purpose that binds us. Shoot, move, and communicate is the simplest and most fundamental way of explaining how SEALs work together. It sounds basic, but it’s a winning formula with catastrophic implications if, at any point, the system breaks down.

Now, as I explained at the end of the previous chapter, what most people don’t realize is that anyone from any walk of life can borrow the SEALs’ dynamic for success; it just needs a little bit of translating for the private sector. That’s where the PAL Model© comes in.

The PAL Model© refers to the way in which any team—whether at work, on the athletic field, or even at home—can borrow this dynamic from the SEALs and apply it to their own efforts toward success. Shooting is the skill that embodies the SEALs’ efficacy on the battlefield; it’s the most fundamental of the skills that we need to perform, but off the battlefield, it’s all about performance (the “P” in PAL). Does each and every member of your team have the skillset in place that is needed to advance the team’s collective cause? That’s the performance piece.

Similarly, as I demonstrated in the previous chapter’s firefight illustration, a SEAL’s ability to survive in combat hinges upon his—and his team’s—ability to move. In the civilian world, what we’re talking about is adaptability (the “A” in PAL). Adaptability is what enables any team to tackle the unknown and strategically improve their position at a moment’s notice.

Finally, there’s communicate. If a SEAL decides to move in battle but that message doesn’t come across to his brothers and they don’t move together with shared purpose, it could result in his, or worse, his team’s, demise. If this happens it’s game over, with no chance to try again. Off the battlefield, communication translates to the “L” piece of PAL: leadership. Without effective leadership in any situation, communication breaks down and things rapidly spin out of control.

Before moving on, I’d like to make one small note about performance. While the term definitely connotes performance of the physical sort, it is critical not to overlook the mental, emotional, and spiritual pieces, which comprise the larger puzzle of performance. All four elements—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—contribute to one’s daily living, how he or she feels, and, ultimately, how he or she performs. Varying levels of each are called upon based on the task at hand, but the capacity of each still exists.

No matter your objectives, goals, or pursuits, the mental piece is what sets the wheels in motion to execute or to pursue said goals; it is what encapsulates intent, which is the essential building block to thought, emotion, and behavior.

The Mental Piece

While I could write another book on mental toughness alone, that’s not what this next section is about. The purpose of the next section is to share with you specific aspects of mental toughness that helped me navigate uncertainty. While this is certainly not the end-all-be-all list for finding solutions, it is what has worked for me and what I’ll share with you.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his bestselling book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Performance, says that to achieve optimal performance, one must merge behavior with intent. Doing so undoubtedly requires a laser-like focus that not many people choose or know how to employ. Common office distractions such as calendar reminders, cell phones, background noise, and that annoying email inbox chime all serve as momentary distractions that divert your attention away from the task at hand and, as a result, make your output sub-optimal. To sustain superior performance, you need a mental gear shift of intent and focus. This gives you the awareness to know when to downshift to first gear or even “park,” and when to put the pedal to the metal and shift into high gear.

How PAL© Works

Before sport science became a widely known field of study, athletes and coaches trained in a linear fashion. In the old way of thinking, the belief was that, in order to become better, an athlete just needed to improve his or her physical capacity by working harder, putting in longer hours, honing their technique, and competing more often.

Over the years, however, discoveries in human performance were made that suggested that the opposite was actually true: too much focus on one particular “silo” of training led to faster athlete burnout and actually inhibited performance.

What sport science discovered was this: for an athlete to perform optimally, he or she requires a multidimensional training regimen. That is, the physical performance associated with top-tier athletes entails not just role-specific training (i.e. sprinters sprinting, weight lifters lifting) but also nutrition, mental fortitude, sport psychology, biomechanics, economy of motion, and rest and recovery. If an athlete only has one piece of this so-called “performance puzzle,” then his or her overall performance will never reach an optimal state. To perform optimally physically, one must also possess the proper faculties to face hardship, endure difficulty, become motivated, and ceaselessly pursue a higher purpose that drives him or her to continually improve.

Now, if we take this sport-specific example of multidimensionality and apply it to one’s everyday life, team, or company, what changes?

Nothing. The same multifaceted approach to performance—the balance of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual capacities—still exists, and it is the basis of performance.

The “P” in PAL: Performance

For the PAL Model©, I consider Performance to encompass four life capacities, referred to hereafter as “the four pillars,” that constitute human output: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Collectively, the four pillars all comprise the full makeup of one’s being and are critical to navigating chaos when chaos arrives—as it always will.

In the PAL Model©, performance corresponds to the shoot component of shoot, move, communicate. The physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects that go into squeezing that trigger and ensuring that the bullet finds its intended target are critical, but so are the internal and external awareness that the shooter must have to ensure his bullet finds the right home. Believe it or not, sending a one-inch projectile across three hundred yards is no easy feat, let alone eight hundred yards or one thousand. There are significant steps one must take to get and stay “in the zone,” and that’s what the performance section will cover.

There are many points of performance when it comes to shooting, which is why performance is the foundation upon which PAL© is built. The physical positioning of the shooter is key as his (or her) body is the foundation that affords the greater certainty that serves as the foundation of a solid shot. The mental aspect of focus and concentration supersedes all else because without mental focus all else—the discomforts of life—pour into the mind and overwhelm it. Every distraction in nature wants to throw your bullet off its intended path, and the amount of mental focus it takes to ignore those seemingly tiny disturbances is significant—but no more significant than what it takes to perform optimally in business.

Next is the emotional piece, which is the feeling of comfort, control and acceptance that one must have before and after taking the shot. There can be no second-guessing, no hesitancy, only the willingness to look (and move) forward to the next objective.

Finally, the spiritual piece is where purpose and passion play in, as they are what provide fulfillment and meaning to your actions. Being spiritually content enables you to continue taking more shots and never doubt or second-guess yourself. The convergence of these four elements is where certainty lies. The key, obviously, is learning how to balance the four amongst a world of constant change and disruption.

The “A” in PAL: Adaptability

The need to adapt comes from the uncertainty of a situation that is both a challenge and an opportunity. The uncertainty that springs up out of nowhere acts as a defining moment to test your skill and will, your spirit and motivation. What separates those who stay relevant from those who don’t is their willingness to adapt.

Adaptability allows you to respond immediately and intelligently to constant change so as to seize opportunity where others might see obstruction. Adaptive capacity also facilitates forward momentum because it lessens the need to have to stop what you’re doing to review what happened. Instead, you’re in a fluid, dynamic state that continually “reads and reacts” to problems as they arise.

The late Warren Bennis, widely considered a pioneer of the study of leadership, once described people with adaptive capacity as individuals who:

…may struggle in the crucibles they encounter, but they don’t become stuck in or defined by them. They learn important lessons, including new skills that allow them to move on to new levels of achievement and new levels of learning. This ongoing process of challenge, adaptation, and learning prepares the individual for the next crucible, where the process is repeated. Whenever significant new problems are encountered and dealt with adaptively, new levels of competence are achieved, better preparing the individual for the next challenge.

Adaptability refers to an organism’s ability to stay relevant amidst change; to adjust to new conditions based on a compelling impetus to do so. To stay current—to do away with the old and adapt to the new—requires the skill and will to do so, and this change stems from performance-based criteria mentioned above. In the scientific world, adaptability depends on two things: self-renewal and self-organization.

 Self-renewal refers to your skill and will to reexamine and ultimately reset any emotional “hiccups” that may have caused your values and subsequent behavior to derail. It is your ability to both learn and unlearn.

 Self-organization refers to individual and/or group behavior without direction from external authorities. For instance, when an eighth grade teacher leaves her classroom, the students have two choices: they can incite chaos and behave poorly, or they can maintain their composure and align their behavior to the teacher’s objectives. In either instance, the students guide their behavior based on the understanding and mutual agreement they all share. The students’ abilities to self organize, then, isn’t dependent upon an external force to guide them along.

What this means is that if an organism or system can self-organize, then, by definition it can also adapt. If the hypothetical students above lacked self-organization, then they would’ve needed guidance from an external authority figure. But they didn’t. Instead, they moved from a setting under which their teacher measured their performance, to one where their performance was measured by their own willingness to perform—they unlearned and relearned.

Furthermore, if such a self-organized group of students can create “something from nothing,” then such an act also speaks to the emergence of leadership.

The “L” in PAL: Leadership

Contrary to common belief, leadership is not indicative of one’s position, status, or authority. Just because you are defined as a “leader” through semantics, doesn’t mean you know how to lead. Leadership does not fall upon the shoulders of the person with the loudest voice, but rather the individual who possesses both the character and competence that inspires others. To lead is to express oneself authentically through a display of decisions and actions that inspire others to think or act in a certain way.

Here’s a quick way to test your leadership effectiveness. Ask yourself, “Will people follow me because of my position, or despite it?” If the answer is the former, sorry, but you still have work to do.

Here’s how leadership unravels under the PAL Model©:

Every individual possesses the four pillars. The degree to which his or her physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual capacities are filled, however, differs as some people are more emotionally charged while others stem from a long line mental meatheads. There are two pathways here that lead to adaptability. The first is person A, whose four pillars of performance are completely satiated such that he doesn’t need time to rest and renew; he’s ready for greater self-actualization. Self-actualization is the practice of realizing one’s potential. To the extent that his four pillars are already maxed out, however, the only possible next step is to push himself further; to change his current state and adapt to a new one.

Conversely, person B lacks mental fortitude and is emotionally unstable. His four pillars are not maximized which, by simple definition, indicates that adaptability is inherent given a person’s intrinsic need to self-actualize.

The very act of adapting personifies leadership, as leadership is defined as a behavior of self-expression that creates value for oneself and/or for others.

Key Takeaways

 The physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual capacities require fulfillment based on any motivational theory

 Whether you lack fulfillment in one capacity or are satiated across all four, the only possible next step is to change something in one way, shape, or form, and change entails adaptability.