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The 4 C’s of Peak Performers with Val Jones, Former Elite Figure Skater
Hi everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall. And on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down and talked to the expert in peak performers, Val Jones. Val is a former elite figure skater, and she has shared the podium with Olympians like Kristi Yamaguchi, Tonya Harding, and Nancy Kerrigan. Her own Olympic dream was crushed when she sustained a career-ending knee injury. In recent years, Val has had eight major surgeries in nine years and contracted a potentially deadly complication on the fifth surgery. She has not only survived these but has found a way to thrive in spite of them. Taking from her own experiences, Val has developed proven approaches on how to overcome obstacles, persist through problems and come out on the other side even stronger. She has taken all of her experiences and knowledge and is influencing audiences through keynote speeches, her training programs, and her book, Sharpen Your Edge, which was released last November. I’m happy to introduce to you the only human on the planet who can perform a triple Lutz but does not know how to ride a bike-Val Jones- as we sit down and talk about the four Cs of peak performance. Enjoy!
Meet Val Jones, Former Championship Figure Skater
Jenn DeWall:
Hi everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast. It’s Jenn DeWall. And today, I am sitting down with performance consultant, author, speaker, and coach— Val Jones. Now Val Jones can do a triple Lutz. So that’s the first starting point. But for those that may not know, Val’s got quite a track record. She has skated professionally with some of the most successful skaters in the world. And she is just got story after story. But if we’re talking about someone that really has expertise in peak performance, there is no better person to talk to than Val Jones. Val, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. I’m so happy to have you.
Val Jones:
Well, thanks for having me, Jenn, we’ve been talking about this for quite some time, so I’m glad we finally made it happen. I’m super excited to sit down with you today and share any nuggets that I’ve learned in my years.
Jenn DeWall:
No kidding! We’re excited to hear them. And yes, I’m so glad that we finally made this happen. Of course, that’s how life goes. It ebbs and flows, things happen, but we’re finally here in this moment, and now there were many reasons why I wanted to bring you on the show, but I want you to introduce yourself to our audience. If you could, could you tell a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do, and your background with our listeners?
Val Jones:
Yes. I often joke that I’m probably the most famous, not famous person ever. If one thing had been different, my whole life would have been different. So yes, I had the privilege and the honor of skating and competing against names that you probably know: Kristi Yamaguchi, Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan. I could clearly see my path to the Olympics. It sometimes felt like it was just, you know, within arm’s length. But then tragically, training the triplets, actually- I blew out my knee. And my surgeon was like, well, I think I could put you back together, Val, but it’s my professional opinion that you never skate again. You never compete again. And so, in just one instant, my whole life fell apart. What I couldn’t have even imagined at 18 was that sometimes plan A isn’t the plan at all. And I couldn’t have even fathomed that I would be doing this now and how God would use my story to do what I’m doing now. And so I just feel, I feel blessed. I feel so proud of the things that I’ve been able to do with seemingly a tragic story. And so much I’ve learned. I honestly feel that who I am today was developed at five o’clock in that freezing cold rink when all of my friends were snuggled up in their beds sleeping. It makes you tough.
Jenn DeWall:
Yeah. And when you, so you mean like getting up and going into the rink and practicing and putting in the work, is that what you’re kind of referencing is your life, your time, energy, everything into it.
Val Jones:
I skated six hours a day, six days a week, from the time I was six years old. So I would skate for three hours in the morning, then go to school, then skate for three hours in the afternoon. Dinner, homework, shower, and bed from the time I was six. So not a normal childhood. My parents weren’t crazy. They weren’t crazy. They didn’t make me do it. The ice is where I wanted to be. And so yeah, and that was 36 hours a week. That was just on-ice training. That didn’t include my off-ice training of strength and conditioning. And I took a ton of ballet classes, and later on sports psychology, I worked with a sports psychologist. So I devoted, I was all in, I had all my eggs in the proverbial basket, which is kind of what you have to do with a big audacious Olympic dream. You have to be all in.
Finding a New Direction
Jenn DeWall:
How did you pivot that? Knowing that there might be even leaders listening, where they have a big dream, they have a big goal. They may have invested a lot of time and energy. And maybe that was their primary, all of the eggs in one basket. How did you pivot that upon getting that devastating news that they were recommending that you shouldn’t skate again?
Val Jones:
Well, I think in my heart, Jenn- and we’ve known each other for quite some time- but you will get a very clear indication of my personality. And being a competitor isn’t what I do. It’s who I’ve always been. It’s who I’ll always be—and competing at that level hanging around. I was so blessed. I got to train not with one, not two, not three, not four, but five. I trained with five Olympians, and that’s kind of how I came into being a speaker, and peak performance expert is because from that time I have paid attention to peak performers, and not everybody hears that I’m an athlete, and they automatically think that I only work with athletes, no peak performers come in all shapes and sizes. They are CEOs, and they are entrepreneurs. They are solopreneurs.
They’re the mom with six kids who was the PTA president and had a side gig. You know what I mean? So they come in all shapes and forms. And so how I pivoted was I took the things that I learned competing at that level. And I really, over the last, say, 20 years, it came upon me like, Oh, these things are consistent throughout peak performers. And I used that to my, to my advantage. And I’ve been in some sticky situations, which we’ll talk about in our talk today. And so that’s kinda how I came up with our topic today, which is the four Cs of Peak Performance. And it’s just things that I’ve learned through life, and I’m not sure who’s it, but somebody once said, what do you get when you don’t get what you want? And the answer is you get experience.
Val Jones:
And so everything that I’ve learned, I’ve either learned firsthand the hard way. You know, graduated from the, from the hard school, the hard knocks of life, or I’ve learned by watching and interacting with other people.
Jenn DeWall:
I love that a deep amount of experience. And it’s not just any athlete that you maybe initially learned this from. These are Olympians. These are high caliber, you know, just like yourself, investing six hours in training (each day). These are not people that take it lightly. I can tell you too that I had a past in figure skating. And guess what? I couldn’t do any of the things because I was just the girl that wanted to wear the leotard. And the skirt, and I so admired, you know, while you were skating with them, I was writing them letters, hoping that I could be their fan base.
What is Peak Performer?
Jenn DeWall:
So I guess my, the closest I’ve ever gotten to Kristi Yamaguchi, I think was writing her a letter or writing her letter because they used to give you these books of like addresses to the stars. And so I wrote her a letter and then she sent me back a signed postcard. Ooh. Yeah. And she, she also sent my best friend one too. It wasn’t that special. And they actually were stamped. And I was so disheartened. Like you didn’t really personally write that, but you know, in any event, I was kind of that observer. But you were the one that actually did that. And I love that you have this message that you’re going to be able to look at peak performers because it’s not just athletes. I love that you clarify that. Yeah. We might think of a performance as athletes wanting to do their best, but all of us want to do our best, no matter where we are. What separates a peak performer from a typical performer? Maybe from me? I mean, I know one of those is time. What other things separate us?
Val Jones:
For me, my definition of a peak performer is somebody who can execute under pressure. And it applies to everything. It applies to business. It applies to finance, as it applies to marriage, it applies to relationships. If you can execute under pressure. To me, that is my definition of peak performance.
Jenn DeWall:
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Under pressure, which is the hardest time, that’s what many of us put our, I guess, might put our head in the sand or might just say, I’m ready to run. So you came up with a framework on the four Cs of peak performance that I’m so excited to talk about this because it’s based on your experience of observing all these extraordinary people. What are the four Cs of peak performance that we’re going to be walking through?
#1- Commitment
Val Jones:
So I’ll run through them really quickly, and then we’ll double back, and we’ll go, we’ll navigate through each one individually. So the four C’s are Commitment, Compromise, Control, and Course-correction. Okay. So number one, the first one, really speaks to my heart is Commitment. When people tell, when I tell people that I was headed for the Olympics and that I trained six hours a day when I was six years old, the question I get asked most often is, how did you do that? How did you do it? And it was because I had a dream. I had a dream, and I was fully committed to it. If, if your, if your listeners haven’t listened to or read Simon Sinek, Start with Why, that is a powerful book. I knew my why. I knew it’s six years old that I wanted to represent the United States of America and compete as a figure skater in the Olympics. And I think when you know your, why the how doesn’t become necessarily easy because it was never easy, but it becomes more tolerable.
It becomes a little bit more palatable. Trust me, you know, there were times at six years old, and my alarm went off at 4:30 in the morning, and I would hit it. And I would think this is nuts. I don’t know. And even at six years old, I was fully aware that none of my friends were doing this. But I knew my why. I knew my why. And so, whatever it is, if you are the CEO, if you’re an entrepreneur, if, if you’re in a marriage, if whatever it is in your life, you have to be fully committed. It’s not something in it. And especially the bigger your dream, the more audacious your dream, you can’t go at it, you know, half, you-know-what. You have to be all in. And when you are pursuing a dream of going to the Olympics, you literally have to put all your eggs in one basket.
So being committed for me was sacrificing what I wanted now for what I wanted most. And so on those mornings, when my alarm went off, and I didn’t want to get out of bed, I was like, you know what? There will come a day when I can rest, but today’s not that day. That comes later. So, sacrificing what you want now for what you want most. And the other important thing about being committed is the bigger your dream, the bigger your goal, the more outside of your comfort zone, it is, you have to accept failure as part of the process.
It’s Not Failure. It’s Feedback.
Jenn DeWall:
Now, how, how do you do that? Right? Because I know that you can be committed, but you’re also talking about performance at levels that I could only dream to aspire to. And you know, how do we stay committed when we might feel like we’re failing or someone else is faster, better, whatever we might say, how do we, how do we then, you know, persevere through that?
Val Jones:
So I feel like it’s a, it’s a mind shift because, let’s be honest. Okay. You know the day came when I said, Okay, I’m going to learn the double axel today. It’s not like I put my skates on and went out there and did it on the first try. Not Kristi Yamaguchi did that. Not Brian Boitano did that. That’s not how it works. And so if you can switch your expectation to this isn’t a failure, it’s feedback. It is feedback. So I’m not sure if Malcolm Gladwell is right in his 10,000 hours to master something. But Jenn, I can tell you, girl, I probably fell 10,000 times before I ever landed on my feet. But here’s what it was. Every time I fell, it was feedback. Did I not jump high enough? Did I not rotate fast enough? Was I- look, if you’re rotating two, two and a half, three rotations in the air in under a second, and you are, if this is my body, if you are either 1% off access, do you see that 1% off-axis, a little thing called gravity takes over. And guess where you end up? With your butt on the floor.
It wasn’t ever a failure. It was just feedback. Until collectively, 10,000 falls later. I took all the failures and all the feedback of those 10,000 attempts. And then you land on your feet, and then you’re like, Oh, how do I do, how do I replicate that? How do I do that again? So I don’t know what it is for your listeners, but failure isn’t such a bad thing. If you can make that mental switch, it’s not a failure. It’s just feedback. And I feel like when, when you’re chasing down your goals and dreams, it’s
The feedback is, is part of the process. You have to do the right thing at the right time and in the right order, right? If you were building a house, you went and put the roof on before you poured the foundation, the right thing at the right time and in the right order. And that’s why I’m so blessed to have trained with the people that I trained with. Because to have coaches that can see things that you don’t see and know things that you don’t know to tell you what the process is.
Jenn DeWall:
I think that’s an important reminder too, that I think a lot of people we live in this place that we expect everything to come maybe faster than what we want it to, or we’d like to read a book to help that maybe it will resolve something for us, a pain that we have. And we don’t necessarily look at it from that structural perspective of like; everything’s going to have its place. You can’t just rush to one piece with you. You can’t cut corners with it. There’s no progress within that.
What Did You Learn?
Val Jones:
No, and I probably really did have to fall 10,000 times before I ever landed. And, and failure is such a shameful thing in our society. And my poor kids, you know, growing up, I have two children, and you know, we, my husband and I, never protected them from the consequences of their actions, and we let them fail. And here’s how we responded to it. They’d come home. Oh, mom. I didn’t make the team. Good. What’d you learn? Oh, mom, I didn’t do so good on the test. We’d say good. What’d you learn? No matter what happened, good or bad, whatever it was, our response was Good. What’d you learn?
And they’re young adults now. And so I had something happened in my own business that I didn’t. It didn’t quite go the way that I wanted to. And I was telling my family about it at dinner, and my daughter goes, Good. What did you learn? And I was like, Oh, and instead, the tables have turned back. The last thing I’ll say about the failure feedback loop is that if you want, as part of being a peak performer, if you want to get to that next level, and here’s a little truth bomb, and I’m not a Debbie downer, Jenn, I’m not. But here’s the truth, whatever habits, thoughts, and actions, and behaviors that got you to this point in time are not going to be the same behaviors that get you to the next level. So if you’re a million-dollar business and you want to go multi-million dollar business, you have to do multi-million dollar business things.
You have to think, act, behave and have habits. And that’s where surrounding yourself with mentors and the people who already occupied the space that you want to be, go hang out with them. Go see what they do. So I grew up, I grew up in Sacramento, and I actually left home when I was 11 so that I could go train in the Bay Area with Brian Boitano and his coach. And let me tell you, going from my rink where me and my friends trained and then seeing how Brian was like night and day.
Jenn DeWall:
How so? How so?
Val Jones:
It was. It was just the little simple things like I would just put my skates on and go out and skate. Brian would take 10 to 15 minutes. He would warm up. He would do some jogging. He would do other exercises. He had a little journal that he would journal what his training was for the day. He just thought, acted, and had different habits than my friends back home did. And when I was then surrounded by him and four other Olympians, all of a sudden, my behaviors had to come up, my rituals had to come up, my thought patterns, my habits, everything had to come up so that I could be competitive in that environment.
Jenn DeWall:
I love that message.
Val Jones:
It made me better. So yeah, whatever habits you have, if you want to get to the next level, seek out the people who already exist there and emulate don’t copy, but emulate what they do. And soon, you’ll find yourself rising to that level as well.
Jenn DeWall:
That’s such an important reminder because I think a lot of us, again, want to cut corners. Maybe we just don’t. We want that goal, but maybe not bad enough that we’re not willing to look at someone and say, yeah, I’d be willing to do that.
Val Jones:
And being committed, Jenn is hard. And it hurts. I moved away from my family when I was 11. I left my dad and my siblings. I didn’t go to high school. I didn’t date. I didn’t party. I didn’t go to dances or football games. You want to know what I did? I trained. For me, being committed means I had to train those hours, and it’s the perfect segue into our next C.
#2 – Compromise
Jenn DeWall:
All right, let’s go with that. So, first C, we gotta be committed. We gotta be a peak performer, gotta be committed. What’s our second C?
Val Jones:
The second C is you are going to have to compromise. You’re going to have to give a little, to get a little, or you’re going to have to give a lot to get along. And I’m not sure what it is for your audience. Is it time? Is it money? Is it carbohydrates? Like mama likes her Oreo cookies, you know, but unfortunately, Olympic figure skaters don’t eat Oreo cookies, and they are my favorite. And how much are you willing to compromise? What only you can answer that and the amount of compromise I feel like it really is. It really does go hand in hand with your goal. Make sure that I, I feel like I’d be negligent if I said don’t compromise the wrong things, you know compromising fast food or not going out and partying or dating or going to dances. That seems easy for me.
Because I was just like, look, I have a goal, and I have a dream, and it’s bigger than my right here and right now. Yeah, it was hard. But here’s, here’s what partner compromise is. It’s giving kind of going back to commitment, giving up what you want now for what you want most, and Jocko Willink. He’s a Navy Seal. He says this all the time, that discipline equals freedom. So I’ve been an athlete. For most of my life, I’ve spent the last 13 years in the CrossFit arena. I’m doing that. I’m pretty regimented about my nutrition. In fact, I don’t even like to say diet, but here’s the thing. It sounds contradictory. Well, how can discipline equal freedom? Right?
And using nutrition as an example, I am not going to miss birthday cake with my kids. And just not like there isn’t anything that I’m training for that I would miss that. And you know, but here’s the thing. I can’t eat a whole birthday cake every day. I’d weigh 800 pounds and have diabetes. But when it comes time for my children or even my own birthday, because I know I’ve done the hard work before and have been disciplined with my nutrition, I can enjoy the crap out of that piece of cake. And it gives me the freedom to enjoy it rather than beating myself up over it. Oh my God, how many burpees am I going to have to do to burn off this cake? Or how many miles am I going to have to run? No, I don’t have to do that because I have been disciplined with it.
Jenn DeWall:
So would that be kind of your advice if, if someone is struggling to think about how do I even start with looking at where I should compromise? Like, is there a specific way that we should look at compromise? Because I think for not focused, we can very quickly say, well, I guess maybe I can give that up because I have to compromise somehow, but then it may not be the right thing to compromise. Do you have any recommendations for how you would even approach that?
Val Jones:
Well, so I feel like the easiest thing to compromise and give up, and it doesn’t matter what you want to do, but it’s this, and Jenn, I’m guilty too. Are you ready? I’m ready—social media. Get rid of it. Look at your face, haha!
Jenn DeWall:
I mean, I don’t love it. I will agree with you. I’m awful at Instagram. I’m, I’m really not great at Facebook, but okay. So compromise for you is like- why social media? Is it because you noticed that that is a deterrent to the goal? Or why, why social media?
Val Jones:
I just feel like as a society, we are always, you know, like this (head down) on our phone and understanding that when I look at other women my age or in my, in my business and they’re killing it, and I’m, and I’m comparing my beginning with their middle or their peak and it doesn’t make me feel good.
There’s nothing about social media. That makes me feel good. Because what you’re saying is somebody’s highlight reel, and it’s not, it’s not true. Or maybe, maybe it’s not social media, maybe it’s TV, maybe it’s gaming. But when you look at, when you talk about compromise and how do you decide what you can compromise, what is interfering with you? What is taking time away from you that won’t produce anything? Watching TV doesn’t produce anything. Get rid of it. If gaming doesn’t produce anything unless you’re making money off of it, right? Get rid of it. So if it’s not directly and positively impacting your goal, you got to compromise, and you got to get rid of it. That’s how,
Jenn DeWall:
I love that. It’s up to everyone. It sounds like what you’re saying is, first and foremost, you’ve got to have a real honest conversation. What are you not giving up? That’s actually keeping you stuck. And it can’t be something that you’re blaming on someone else. You have to look at your own life, your own choices, how you spend your energy, and then go from there.
Peak Performers Have Serious Habits
Val Jones:
So all the peak performers across the board are dead serious about their habits. And if you, if I was to follow you for three to five days and watch your habits.
Jenn DeWall:
Oh no! I don’t know if I’d be scared or excited.
Val Jones:
Habits of a peak performer, I’ll say, you know, for an average person, for lack of a better word, the habits of an Olympian versus the habits of just, you know, the weekend warrior could not be any further apart. And so, not only does discipline equal freedom but when you are consistent with your habits, consistency equals momentum. Consistency equals momentum. So whether your goal is a business or a relationship or finance or whatever it is, look at your habits. If you’re, if whatever your habits are not contributing to the positivity of that goal, get rid of it, be consistent, be consistent about it, and be disciplined about it.
Jenn DeWall:
Yes. I love this! We’ve got to be consistent. And if I said the other thing, it sounds like no more excuses! If you watch TV for the last three hours, can you really be mad that you didn’t get a new client or that promotion if you’re not doing anything to invest or lose whatever your goal is, but it sounds like there’s that piece— there are no excuses. You just have your lane of choices, and you’ve got to choose which ones you go down.
Val Jones:
Exactly. Do you want to know what you should never compromise, Jenn?
Jenn DeWall:
Yes. Yes, I do. Yes. I do.
Val Jones:
Never, ever, ever compromise your morals or your ethics. That is a slippery slope that you do not want to go down, which brings us perfectly into the next C, which is control.
#3 – Control
Jenn DeWall:
Control. All right.
Val Jones:
And Jenn. It’s not control over anyone or over anything. It is over yourself and your emotions. I don’t know if this is the word, the “peakiest” of peak performers I know, and have had the privilege to work at work with are Navy Seals. They are in a very heightened state. The very lives of themselves and their teammates are at risk. You want to talk about performing under pressure, but they are all cool, calm, and collected. Every single one of them. They don’t get rattled. Now, if you do not have control over yourself or over your emotions, I believe that this is a skill that you can actually learn.
I think some people are blessed with more control than others. But it is something that you can learn. And I like to tell this story, and here’s how I learned it. After I blew the qualifier for the, I believe it was the 1986 nationals, I came back to the rink, and Brian [Boitano] said, Val, there, there are two kinds of skaters. He said there are great skaters. Now I’m gonna pause here. Brian was a great skater. In the seven years that I trained with him. I think I may have seen him fall. I can only count on maybe one hand. He is by far the best executioner and the best, like his technique is irritating to me. Perfect.
Jenn DeWall:
And we’re talking about Brian Boitano because we don’t get to call him Brian, right?
Val Jones:
So then he goes, and he’s like, so there are great skaters. And then there are those that skate great. Well, guess what? I skated great. The poor judges never knew who was going to show up on the ice that day. Was it going to be Val who was on fire, or was it going to be Val whose fanny is on ice. So after blowing the 86 nationals, I have to, I have to stop and tell, just educate a little bit. So most of the jumps in figure skating, you enter into going backward except one, the double axel you enter into going forward. So I think it was a little bit of a mind screw with me because I could see where I was going and it kind of freaked me out when a figure skater goes for an intended jump. Say the double, double axel, and doesn’t complete the rotation. The intended rotation is called popping.
Instead of doing a double axel, I would only do a single axel. Okay. So I popped it. So I popped, I popped my double axel, which costs me the trip to the nationals that year. And so my coach says, we’re going to do 100 double axels today. If you fall, that’s fine. If you touch down with your arm on ice, that’s fine. I don’t care if you fall out of it. That’s fine. But if you stop, you’re going to start over. Jenn, I had to start over, not once, not twice, but three times. I was there for nine and a half hours that day. Wow. And I was the closest that I ever came to a condition called rhabdo. I couldn’t walk for two weeks. Here’s the thing why I tell that story. I gained control over my mind in that, and for the rest of my competitive career, I did not pop a double axel again, in competition ever. And the panic and fear were trained out of me. Fear and panic can be trained out. It doesn’t go easy, but it can go, but you’ve got to have control over your emotions. And that’s what made Brian a great skater and made me only a skater who skated great.
Jenn DeWall:
But that’s a really powerful story because I think there is still the piece where gosh, if I think about my temperament at that age, I imagine that if my coach said that I needed to try that, I’d be like, I’m done. You know that is the breaking point where my emotions absolutely would have gotten the best of me. How do you remind yourself that you get to stay in control, that you are the one that controls it? Do you have any tips for your peak performers and how you remind them that they always get to choose that?
Val Jones:
Well, I’m only human. You know, I don’t always execute everything well, but I have to remind myself that, that, you know, like, let’s take COVID for you. Like, this is a very real thing that we are still in. The only thing that you can control over is your attitude and your work ethic. That’s all you get to control over. And so when I feel myself sliding to a point where I’m trying to control other than those two things, I kind of have to, you know, whack myself in the head and be like, Okay. I can’t control that. And you see, that’s where Tonya [Harding] lost it.
Jenn DeWall:
There are so many things I want to add to that, but I won’t, Tonya, Tonya Harding. That’s what we’re talking about. People that may not be as familiar.
You Can Only Control Yourself
Val Jones:
Yeah. She and her team allegedly. Well, she didn’t, but her husband at the time and her bodyguard whacked Nancy Kerrigan in the knee with a, with a bat or something. Yeah. Like a pipe or something, you cannot control the outcome. And I know that that sounds counter-intuitive. You can train, you can control your attitude. You can control your workout ethic, but you cannot control the outcome. And that is where Tonya lost it because she or her team tried to control the outcome. Now I’m going to be completely transparent with you and your audience. There were times that I skated, and I should have won, but I didn’t. And there were times that I skated that I did win and I shouldn’t have. You can’t control the outcome. You can only control your attitude and your work ethic. That’s it. That’s all you can control. And so, as you’re traversing to your own, the path to, to your peak performance, ask yourself, am I controlling those two things? It’s it doesn’t have to be any harder than that. Cause anything outside of your work ethic and your attitude you really don’t have control over.
Jenn DeWall:
I think that’s a really powerful point that you just made that we have to detach. We can do our best to get to that outcome, but we can’t control it. We can make sure that we make the choices, but we can’t control them. Like things will always change.
Val Jones:
The only thing that you can do. And I’m not a Debbie Downer, I’m not, but here’s what I know to be true about life. If you have a heartbeat at some point in time, you were going to experience pain, heartbreak, disappointment, and fear. And here’s what I try to do when I am facing those. I asked myself, how does my best self show up at this moment? What would the very best version of me look like in this scenario? Or in this situation? Do that.
Jenn DeWall:
I love that. So acting, you know, from the person that we want to be, maybe not necessarily who we are today, but who that person is, that’s accomplished that goal or strategy or whatever the task is at hand.
Val Jones:
Yeah, because things will go wrong. Things will go wrong. It’s okay. We talked about failure earlier, but how does my best self handle that?
#4 – Course-Correction
Jenn DeWall:
Yeah. So what happens? So your fourth C is course-correct. So is that, is that what we’re saying? When things go wrong-
Val Jones:
Do you see what I did there? It was a perfect segue. So here’s what I know about peak performers. All peak performers are they’re extremely and highly self-aware. They know when they are going off track, and they can make a small minute adjustment to get back on track. And so eventually, in that double axel or in that jump or whatever, if I was back to that 1% axis pull, Oh, I was able to figure that out and correct. And I can only tell you how hard it is to correct when you’re turning three revolutions in under a second, but it is possible. And I’ve worked with other Olympic athletes. I’ve worked with luger and Oh my gosh. Like the amount of course-correction that athletes make are truly, truly incredible, but it applies to anything. You don’t have to be an athlete. If, if your marketing plan isn’t going? Course-correct. Are you a speaker? And all of your, all of your keynotes got canceled- course-correct. Your parenting tactic isn’t working, then course-correct. Like there’s not a single thing that I can think of where it doesn’t apply. Like course-correction is so critical, right? They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over expecting a different result. Well, stop, do something different, figure it out.
Because honestly, the truth is the path to success is never a straight line. As much as we want to think that it is, it’s just not and everything you do. And now we’re back to that habits. Do you see how everything, everything you do is either bringing you toward your goal or pulling it away from you? So I had written on, on a little index card, you know, being thin and figure skating is a big deal. And so I had written this on, on a little index card, and I kept it on my fridge for a year. And it said, is what you’re about to put in your mouth, bringing you towards your Olympic goal or away from it. And I have that on my fridge for years because, as an athlete, I had to fuel my body with good nutritious things. So in the spirit of you can only control your attitude and your work ethic as you were working towards your peak performance, which is what you’re doing, bringing yourself to your goal or away. I mean, it’s a yes or no, right?
Jenn DeWall:
Yes. Yeah. Again, thinking about taking that responsibility, I love how you brought that back to reinforcing commitment. Yeah. The Olympics is where I want to be. Is this bringing— is eating this, knowing that nutrition is so important- going to help get you there? And if it’s not, why in the heck am I doing that?
Peak Performers Lead from the Back
Val Jones:
Yeah. How much time do we have time for like one more story?
Jenn DeWall:
Yeah, we do. Absolutely. Let’s do it. I want to hear it.
Val Jones:
So in course-correction, this is going to be different. Have you heard somebody in the corporate settings say, Oh, good leaders, they lead from the front—have you heard that?
Jenn DeWall:
Absolutely.
Val Jones:
Val says no lead from the back. And here’s that story. This is actually in my book called Sharpen Your Edge, which was just released last November.
Jenn DeWall:
Congratulations!
Val Jones:
Oh, thank you! So my husband and I went to Banff, Canada, right before COVID hit last year. And as part of our trip, we took a dog sled tour. And the lead musher started to explain what the trip was going to be about. And he said, okay, first thing as a Musher, you have to know your animals intimately, individually, and then as a team. You have to know your animal’s strengths. You have to know their weaknesses. You have to be able to detect when they’re tired, fatigued, hungry. When they have to go to the bathroom, when they’re injured, when they’re, there’s plain bored. So he goes on and says, his, the first two dogs are the lead dogs. They are the best. They can find the path when sometimes the musher can’t; they are also very acceptable to instruction. So if the musher tells them to go a different way, they’re going to do it. The next two dogs are called the pacer dogs. They set the pace for the team.
Now you cannot run a trail at the same speed. You have to slow down. You have to speed up when it comes to a hill. And those dogs can also know each other when each other is tired or bored or fatigued or injured. And then he tells us the last two dogs, which are your strength dogs. Now, these dogs, I only, I’m only five feet tall. I almost looked at them right in the eye. I mean, they outweighed me by like 50 to 75 pounds. They were huge. And they are the strength dogs. They’re the brute dogs. They pulled the most weight. The musher said that if you come to a hill, you are supposed to jump off the sled and run with the dogs, run with the team.
If you did not, your strength, dogs will look back at you to like, wonder what it is you’re doing. Why are you not running with the team? So my husband went first. I went second. Soon enough. We come to an incline of pretty, actually a pretty steep Hill. And I thought I don’t know this man very well. I don’t know if he was just joking or not. Because it seems kind of funny that the dogs would know if you were on the sled or not. And I thought to myself. I am five feet tall, 120 something pounds. Right. That dog is not the dog that outweighs me by 50 pounds. Right. He’s not going to know. Well, sure enough, Jenn, my male strength dog, his name was Kenai. He gave me a dirty look that I swear if looks could kill. I would be dead. He didn’t know that I wasn’t running with the team.
And I was torn between laughing. So like I was laughing so hard, my stomach hurt, but I also wanted to jump off the sled and run, like I was Usain Bolt, because I didn’t want Kenai to bite me. And so that is what so, and here’s what, here’s how I came up with this theory of leading from the back. If you were leading from the front, how do you know what your team is doing behind you? How do you know when your team is fatigued or hungry or has to go to the bathroom or bored or injured? You don’t know, but if you are leading from the back, you can see your team. You can keep an eye on them and where we’re going to pull it all back in if you need to if you identify that. You can course-correct.
Jenn DeWall:
Oh my gosh. I love that story really about leading from the back. That is such an important, like ending story, to think about how we want to show up as leaders. You shared the four Cs today to commit, to compromise, to control, and course-correct. Well, how do people get in touch with you?
Val Jones:
You can reach me at www.ValJonesSpeaks.com, or my email is Val@ValJonesSpeaks.com.
Jenn DeWall:
Oh my gosh. So send her emails, go to her website. Val, thank you so much for coming to coming on the show today and helping our leaders find their peak performance.
Val Jones:
I’m so happy. I, I hope, I honestly hope that you and your listeners be, do and have everything you want in life. Go after that big audacious dream, and mostly find the champion in you.
Jenn DeWall:
I love that. Thank you so much, Val!
Jenn DeWall:
Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s podcast episode of The Leadership Habit. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Val Jones. And if you want to connect with her, you can head on over to valjonesspeaks.com. If you found a lot of value in this or, you know, someone that wants to be a peak performer, don’t forget to share this episode with them. And of course, please, we grow our influence by reviews. So if you can, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service! Until next time!
