Watch a great tennis player receive a hard serve and something curious happens. The ball arrives faster than most of us could follow, and yet the player seems to have time. There is no hurry in the body, no tightness in the face. The ball bounces, there is the briefest pause, and then the stroke, as if the moment had been waiting for them.
Last week I wrote about the inner game, the one played quietly inside the person carrying the decisions. This week I find myself drawn a little closer to where that game is actually played. It lives in the space between the bounce and the hit.
The finest performers seem to have more time
It is one of the oldest observations in sport. The finest players are not faster than the ball. They are simply more present to it. Their attention is relaxed and completely engaged at the same moment, and that rare combination seems to stretch the space in which they can see, choose and act.
I have felt something of it myself on the water, SUP surfing, standing on the board and waiting for the right wave. The sea is never still and the waves do not wait. When I am tense and grasping, every wave is either too early or too late. When I am quiet, the moment to commit seems to arrive of its own accord.
Pressure quietly closes the space
Leadership has its own bounce and hit. The question across the boardroom table. The email that lands at six in the evening. The call that changes the shape of the week. Each arrives, and in the instant before we respond there is a space.
Under pressure, that space quietly closes. The answer begins before the question has finished. The reply is written before the email has been properly read. We call it decisiveness, and sometimes it is. More often, I suspect, it is the noise in our own heads choosing for us, at speed, before we have truly seen what has arrived.
The game is decided in the space between
Nobody watching sees the space between the bounce and the hit. They see the stroke, the winner, the result. The same is true in business. The board sees the decision. The team sees the action. Very few see the moment just before, where the quality of everything that follows was quietly settled.
That moment cannot be forced open by working harder or thinking faster. Perhaps that is where Greater Performance really begins. Not in the stroke everyone sees. In the space between.
To explore what this means for your business, contact us for a private confidential conversation.
Alan Branagh - Founder, The Alchemists
When the pressure is high.
When the game has changed.
When the next decisions matter.
