EDGE 2020: Time to achieve peak individual performance

Jamil Qureshi​

A strategic approach to recovery - created and executed from the top down by business leaders - will determine partner success in the months ahead, creating a need for peak individual performance at executive level.

In a market paralysed by sporadic spending patterns and unreliable investment forecasts, growth efforts will hinge on the soundness of executive decision-making, with performance psychology taking centre stage across Australia and New Zealand.

“There’s nothing interesting about our job titles, job roles or job descriptions, absolutely nothing - even job titles with (worldwide) in brackets,” outlined Jamil Qureshi, one of the world’s most foremost practitioners of performance enhancing psychology. “Attitude is more important than intelligence or facts.”

Speaking ahead of his opening and exclusive keynote address at EDGE 2020, Qureshi explained that for business leaders operating within the channel, peak performance is centred on optimising individual potential.

“The mistake people make is that they look at success as a comparative in that they compare themselves to other people,” he cautioned. “Success is the continued journey to optimising your potential in goals which are relevant to you. Success is always self-determined and is about how much you make the most of yourself.”

Based in London, Qureshi has helped six sports athletes reach world number one status, in addition to being appointed as the first-ever official golf psychologist to the European Ryder Cup team - influencing a record-breaking winning margin in 2006.

Qureshi has also worked with footballers from Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City, alongside Formula 1 drivers David Coulthard and Eddie Irvine, plus the 2009 England Ashes winning cricketers.

Meanwhile in business, Qureshi has helped executive teams fulfil potential across 24 countries, developing and delivering leadership programs at board-level for Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard and Emirates Airlines among others.

“There are many parallels between business and sport - performance is performance,” he added. “Whether you want to be better at work or better on the pitch, people who get to number one in the world are more often than not, motivated by what they wish to achieve, not by what they want to avoid.”

For Qureshi - who has lectured to an audience which included two former US Presidents - to act differently, people are first required to think differently.

“To optimise potential, it’s about creating an attitude and a mindset for performance for ourselves as leaders, managers, business owners and that of our teams,” he advised. “But it’s tricky though, isn’t it? Because we all think differently anyway.

“The future demands us to be different. It’s really important now that we challenge what we believe to be true, so we can create opportunities by thinking outside of the mental tramlines that we all work under. It’s incredibly important to be open-minded.”

According to Qureshi - one of a select group of external psychologists allowed to study astronauts on the 2008 NASA Space Program - communities are now out-performing hierarchies in relation to maximising human performance.

“Get people working together, have peer recognition and instead of that top-down structure, allow people to form a community based on upon what they believe to be relevant,” he explained. “It’s not change which is catching organisations out, it’s the pace of change so for project managers, it’s better to be disrupted from the inside than from the outside.

“Teams must be agile and fluid with ideas to drive the business in the most relevant way. The greatest skill needed for the future of project managers is open-mindedness. We all have a view of our clients, our internal stakeholders and new technologies - we need to challenge that more than ever before to create new possibilities.”

Qureshi will deliver exclusive insights during EDGE 2020, an invite-only virtual experience set for 10-11 November, playing host to the most influential business leaders in technology across Australia and New Zealand.

Underpinned by unique research and insights, EDGE 2020 will outline local customer investment plans, upcoming end-user projects and new partner requirements, leveraging CIO brand insights in the process.

To enquire about EDGE 2020, Australian delegates click here, and New Zealand delegates click here