CONSULTING
On sporting grounds or in surgery, on battlefields or in boardrooms, high performers need to be able to manage stress and optimise performance, especially in high-pressure and high stakes environments. Organisations and teams need to be intentionally and strategically set up for success. “Hoping it shows up” is not an advisable strategy!
Performance under pressure is less about what is done in the moment of pressure and more about everything that’s done in preparation for those moments. By front-loading skills and providing foundational knowledge on stress, arousal state management and high-performance strategies, your team can deliver to their highest potential for the success of themselves, their team and the organisation.
I deliver tailored programs to suit the needs of your organisation.
We address the physical performance and hard sciences aspects, or seamlessly upskill areas in human behaviour, state control and human skills (often referred to as “soft skills”). Given how tightly these areas are wound into each other it is usually a combination of both! Humans are not a bunch of individual silos working in isolation; optimising human potential is no different. Organisations make significant performance and cultural gains when they are comfortable to “optimise the grey” – the area between traditional performance silos; which is where the magic and intangibles lie for optimising human performance.
I’m as comfortable working with the Executive Leadership Team and Board to strategically set an organisation up for success and optimal culture, as I am working at the coalface to optimise performance and state control in high pressure and high stakes environments.
Our consultancy engagement might be:
- A one-off workshop for key individuals.
- A strategic review and report on your organisation’s high-performance culture (or otherwise!) and practical ways to shift the performance needle towards “outstanding”.
- Or an ongoing arrangement through a critical time period, upskilling cycle or season to provide skills, knowledge, strategies and feedback for executing in high stakes environments.
As these programs are tailored to your needs, I need to talk with key decision-makers to determine what is required, budget and time constraints and key areas for focus before I can provide pricing options. Please email me rachel@rachelvickery.com
From My Clients
Very few sessions manage to be practical, applicable and inspiring at the same time. Rachel’s was. At our yearly company retreat her personal experience as an elite athlete combined with her theoretical background as a health professional and performance expert made for an unbeatable experience. The team took away some excellent and practical strategies for handling high-pressure scenarios. And running the session online was every bit as good as in person. Rachel is a pro!
“I had the pleasure of engaging Rachel as a High-Performance consultant at both the Brisbane Lions and Adelaide Crows. Rachel worked in a one on one, and group capacity with players to help them perform under the pressures of elite sport. Her range of skills in identifying and helping remove the players’ barriers to performing at their best is as good as I’ve seen in my 20+ years in the AFL system. Rachel has a very unique skill set across the physical, mental and emotional aspects of an athletes’ preparation. I also personally engaged Rachel to help me in performing at my best as an AFL High-Performance Manager and mentored me in preparing for additional leadership roles within the industry. I can highly recommend Rachel for anyone looking to engage her in helping them to perform at their best in their chosen field of expertise.”
“Rachel has consulted to our men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams continually since 2017, working with our athletes, coaching and performance staff. Rachel has the incredible ability to quickly identify the barriers in a person’s belief system that have them “stuck”; express those barriers in a clear and non-threatening way; and help the person to find solutions. Her humor, empathy, and kindness always come shining through even when presenting truths that can be uncomfortable. The most important thing I can relay is that the changes that Rachel helps each person create in their operating systems have had long lasting and far-reaching impact on our program and on the lives of the people she’s touched. Some of her most persistent messages are now firmly embedded in our team culture, and have helped us navigate some massive challenges with great success.”
At one of our Agile Welly Meetups, we were very lucky to have Rachel join us online to talk about “Excelling in High Pressure and High Stakes environments’. It was an excellent, thought-provoking presentation and one of our most well-received in recent times. Learning about the physiology behind human behaviour was amazing – understanding the ‘why’ behind our actions, and other contributing factors to our responses in high pressure environments. We were able to take away some super practical strategies to start using not only with ourselves but to help us understand and read our clients/team mates better to get better results for them and their teams.
“We loved having Rachel present so much, we invited her back the following month! Rachel is equal parts knowledgeable and passionate, which makes for an incredibly engaging and well-researched presentation. Best of all, her content was delivered in a way that was accessible and approachable to our audience.”