The Performance Report | Issue 01 | October 2026
Where do capable people get off track when the pressure shows up?
Welcome to The Performance Report. Every issue takes one question and runs it through three arenas: the field, the office, and everyday life. This month's question: where do capable people get off track when the pressure shows up? Each brief takes about a minute. If one hits home, the full piece is one click away.
1 | On the Field
Why Great Players Choke
A player who's made the shot ten thousand times misses it when it matters most. Talent isn't the problem. Attention is. Researchers Sian Beilock and Thomas Carr found that when skilled performers feel pressure, they start watching their own mechanics step by step. That's the derailment point. A skill that runs smoothly on autopilot falls apart once you start supervising it. In the same research, golfers who practiced in front of a camera held up better when the pressure got real.
How you fix it: Stop coaching mechanics in the clutch. Give one outside cue instead: the target, the rim, the spot. And put pressure into practice, so game day isn't the first time they feel watched.
2 | In the Office
Under Pressure, Your People Run the Old Play
You trained the new process. Everyone nodded. Then the quarter got tight and the team went right back to the old way. That isn't defiance. It's wiring. Neuroscientist Amy Arnsten's research shows that stress quickly knocks down the part of the brain that plans and holds back impulses. Work from Lars Schwabe and Oliver Wolf found that stressed people slide from thinking through their choices to running on habit. The derailment point is any moment when the new way still takes effort.
How you fix it: Decide before the pressure hits. Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer's research on "if-then" plans shows that loading the response ahead of time ("If a client pushes back on price, then I ask what changed") makes the right move more automatic right when thinking gets expensive. Rehearse it until the new play is the habit.
3 | Everywhere Else
Stop Telling People to Calm Down
Big presentation. Tryout. Hard conversation. Heart pounding, and somebody says, "Just relax." Great advice. Nobody in history has relaxed on command. Harvard researcher Alison Wood Brooks tested a different move. Before singing, giving a speech, or taking a math test, some people said "I'm excited" out loud while others tried to calm down. The "excited" group performed better. The racing heart didn't go away. Its meaning changed. The derailment point is reading that arousal as a threat. Once someone decides "I'm nervous, so this is going badly," the spiral has started.
How you fix it: Teach your people to relabel it. Same heartbeat, new name: "I'm ready." Then give them their first move.
One Rep This Week
Pick one person you lead or coach and ask them: "When the pressure's on, what's the first thing you notice about yourself?" Write down the answer. That's where they get off track, and now you know where to coach.
Built for This Work
CoreShift Assessment
Measures how someone behaves, what drives them, and their emotional intelligence, then measures all of it again under stress. You see the shift before the moment exposes it.
The CoreShift Model
An operating system for your organization, built around people. It ties daily actions to your most important KPIs, and the CSM OS puts everything in front of your leaders on one screen.
CoreShift Frontline
A short check-in built for frontline teams and delivered inside the tools they already use, so leaders see how their people are holding up shift by shift.
Become an Operator
Bring CoreShift to the people you develop. Certification and 1:1 support from Protos EQ leaders. You own your book.
Go Forward!
Pat Blakesley, Protos EQ
Sources
Arnsten (2009), Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Beilock and Carr (2001), Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Brooks (2014), Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Gollwitzer (1999), American Psychologist. Schwabe and Wolf (2009), Journal of Neuroscience.