High Performance: Lessons from the Best on Becoming Your Best

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It's full of valuable principles and approaches shared by teams and athletes across professional sports, with real-world relevance to people's everyday lives. Drawing on interviews with leading athletes and entrepreneurs, they uncover the nine hidden principles that high performers use to excel: from taking absolute responsibility for their situation, to working out their non-negotiable ‘trademark behaviours’, to getting the very best out of their teammates. The mix of direct codes from the people interviewed, to descriptions by the authors and teaching moments is absolutely perfect.

Damian Hughes is an expert on high-performance sporting cultures and a visiting professor at Manchester Metropolitan University. Perhaps some is, but you'd need to read about 50 great books to get what is nicely distilled in this one amazing volume. High Performance reveals the methods the world's most remarkable athletes, coaches and entrepreneurs use to excel. From taking responsibility for your situation to finding your ‘Trademark Behaviours’, it reveals how the world’s highest-achieving people unlocked their potential – and how you can too.

There are some new anecdotes from Jake and Damian personally but with respect to the pair of them, they aren’t why I listen/read. From taking responsibility for your situation to finding your 'trademark behaviours', thinking flexibly to crafting a high performance culture, Jake Humphrey and Professor Damian Hughes identify the eight crucial steps to becoming the best 'you' possible. If this your first dabble into the “winner” genre, I’d recommend a note of caution before you start. It is such a complicated industry to work in, with many varied opinions and different leaders, but many friends.

High Performance is a cumulation of knowledge that Humphrey and Hughes have accumulated from the time that they have spent doing their podcast: High Performance. There are some tips to be found amongst the chaff but, on the whole, this book offers nothing new and is far too reliant upon the message that the lessons of sporting superstars are relevant to the average person.

I liked the sections about taking ownership and motivation, but the best part of the book is the last chapter about courage. This book will help you achieve success on y our terms - whether that's becoming a better parent, a more empathetic employer, or just unlocking a life of fulfilment, understanding and achievement. After binging the first series over a weekend, really enjoyed the varying perspectives from many different career paths.

Their first book, High Performance , was a Sunday Times bestseller and has sold over 100,000 copies.Half way through the book I was very annoyed about the concoction of stories and theories in this book.