#40: The Mental Game of Leadership with Dr. Angie Winter

Do you struggle with staying focused and achieving your goals because of both internal and external pressures to fit into a specific mold? Our guest today is Dr. Angie Winter, a Senior High-Performance Consultant and Certified Change Management Practitioner at HigherEchelon, Inc. She specializes in mental performance coaching, working with individuals and organizations in sports and both government and private sectors to improve their leadership, cognitive abilities, and overall performance. 

In this episode, Dr. Winter shares her philosophy of high performance, which centers around the importance of authenticity and emotional processing. She emphasizes the benefit of feeling and discussing our emotions to encourage better performance and provides insights on how to help individuals overcome challenges such as lack of confidence, impostor syndrome, leaving one’s comfort zone, and ineffective time management. 

Dr. Winter earned her master’s degree in Sport and Exercise Psychology from California State University at Fullerton and a Ph.D. in Sport and Exercise Psychology from Michigan State University. She is also a certified mental performance consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) and an Associate level coach through the International Coaching Federation (ICF). 

Join us as Dr. Winter shares her expertise on improving your mental fitness and achieving your goals through authenticity and confidence. 

Key Points: 

1. Focusing on authenticity in Dr. Angie Winters’ philosophy of high performance.
2. The benefit of feeling, processing, and discussing our emotions in encouraging better performance  
3. How to help people beyond some of the challenges that get in the way of one’s mental fitness: (1) the lack of confidence, (2) Impostor’s Symdrome, and (3) ineffective time management 

Episode Highlights

• [00:00] Introduction
• [03:54] What inspired Dr. Angie Winter to pursue performance psychology
• [09:59] How she would coach her younger self
• [12:39] What inspired her to broaden her work beyond sports
• [19:05] What drives Dr. Angie Winter through her work
• [19:48] The focus of authenticity in Dr. Angie Winter’s philosophy of high performance
• [25:08] Having the balance of masculine and feminine voices in each individual for mental fitness and high performance
• [26:09] The issue of managing confidence as one of the biggest challenges in the way of an individual’s mental fitness
• [33:23] Other issues commonly encountered in the realm of coaching
• [38:42] Defining success
• [40:47] Helping people get outside of their comfort zone
• [42:43] On leadership
• [45:43] Advice for people who want to be more focused on their goal instead of worrying
• [48:48] Book recommendation for the listeners 

Resources 

• The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle 
  https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Code-Secrets-Highly-Successful/dp/1847941265

• HigherEchelon: https://www.higherechelon.com/human-capital-services/