Bob Lesser - The Peak Performance Formula: Achieving Breakthrough Results in Life and Work

Copyright 2021 by Bob Lesser.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-951412-20-3

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-951412-25-8

LCCN: 2020915639

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Design by Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

The Collective Book Studio

Oakland, California

This book is dedicated to all the bodhisattvas (parents, teachers, coaches, therapists, leaders, healers, and others) committing their lives to helping others reach their fullest potential. And to my children Satya, Sequoia, and Mischa for giving me the most special of purposes.

M y initial introduction to Bob came through Jordan Barowitz, my friend from New Yorks City Hall during Mike Bloombergs mayoralty. Hey, theres this guy named Bob Lesser. He runs a charter school in the Bronx. He keeps trying to get me to join their board and I figure I can get out of it if I raise money for them instead. Can you help? I had just started my first business. Flush with disposable income for the first time in my life, and as someone who believed deeply in education reform, I said yes.

Of course, in fundraising, no good deed goes unpunished. The prize for winning the pie-eating contest is more pie, which meant I soon found myself touring the Mott Hall Charter School, seeing Bobs work in action. Id been to plenty of charter schools before, so I wasnt surprised by all of the normal signs of a well-run, high-functioning organization. But what struck me were the people who worked there, from the principal to the teachers, administrators, custodians, and everyone else (and Bob made a point of introducing me to all of them). They were so bought inbought in to the Mott Hall mission, bought in to the Mott Hall culture, bought in to supporting and rooting for one another. It was unusual.

When Bob moved across the country and became an executive coach, it occurred to me that whatever special sauce he developed at Mott Hall probably had utility in other contexts, too. So when one of my partners in our venture capital fund asked if I knew any good coaches, I sent him Bobs way. Four years later, our venture team had become perhaps the most productive and cohesive in our entire organization (which ranges from the fund to a political consulting firm to a family foundation trying to bring about mobile voting in the United States to a casino management company, a telereligion start-up, media outlets like a podcast, a column for Fast Company, a memoir, a novel and, soon, a bookstore and public podcast studioour work can get pretty complicated, pretty fast).

Over time, other senior managers on my team have worked with Bob, too, each swearing up and down that theyve become better leaders, better listeners, and better partners than ever. Its unfortunate that not everyone can work with Bob one-on-one to learn how to become better leaders, but anyone can read this book.

Understanding your purpose, your values, your vision is something we all can figure out with enough information, the right direction, and a lot of hard work. Learning how to perform at your highest level is not something that requires a degree in psychology or a stint playing in the NBA. It means asking yourself hard questions, being honest about the answers, seeing where you need to improve and what you need to do differently, and then putting the work in to make it happen, day in, day out. This book offers a road map to do just that.

When Bob asked me to write the foreword to his book, it was a testimonial I was eager to provide. Ive seen a lot of talented people in my life learn firsthand from Bobs wisdom, his ideas, his intellectual framework. Ive seen the ways its helped their clarity, their confidence, their composure. And knowing that, it can only be good for society to see even more people benefit from Bobs wisdom, too.

Bradley Tusk

Founder and CEO of Tusk Ventures

H ow can you achieve and sustain performance at your highest level? We all hit walls in our life pursuits: personal, career, athletic, and others. And when we do, we need new ways to break through and move forward. This book will give you the keys to peak performance and show you how, when applied, they will supercharge individual, team, and organizational outcomes. This book is for anyone who wants to reach new and sustained levels of performance. In short, Im going to show you how to be a peak performer. By peak performer, I dont necessarily mean being THE best, but rather being YOUR best by consistently meeting the goals you set for yourself based on your vision of how you see yourself. You can apply this to getting your grades up in school, to nailing your first job out of college, to becoming a better parent or athlete, to making the leap into a management role in your organization, to founding your own company.

I draw from research in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and business. Moreover, I draw from my own experience as a psychotherapist and a former founder and CEO, as well as from my current role as an executive coach working with high-performing leaders. Because learning from experts is a key way to improve performance, I include interviews with peak performers from across multiple disciplines. The interviews operate on two levels. First, I identify the skills and tactics these folks use to generate high levels of performance. These interviews helped validate the research, best practices, and my own experience. Second, and just as important, they show that by consistently surrounding yourself with people who are performing at the levels you seek to reach you begin to see yourself belonging in that grouplike hey, that could be me. So I literally reached out to my network and asked them to put me in touch with people who performed at extremely high levels with passion and purpose. We all have a network of people who have mastered aspects of what we are seeking to improve upon. Im excited to share mine with you. But first, let me begin by telling you a story about a boy and a little mouse.

My journey started when I was in elementary school and read a book called Stuart Little for a report assignment. It was about a little mouse who is adopted by a family in New York City (where I was born and raised). Despite being so small he finds ways to fit in and be helpful. I loved the book so much that I wrote a fourteen-page book report. I even decorated my own cover. When I got it back from the teacher, expecting to be praised for my passion and effort, the teachers note simply said that the report was too long. That was the first of many occasions where those responsible for my growth and development wouldnt honor my potential. But like Stuart, I was all about finding ways to outperform what was expected of me.

Years later, as a young working adult trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, I faced a common dilemmashould I choose to pursue a career offering stability and a good income or follow my passion and hopefully turn it into a successful career? Through a string of jobs and career choices that attempted to navigate this dilemma I would come to find out that the decision was not so simple. The foundations to a successful life were much more nuanced. And after mostly following my interests without much thought about where it was all going, things came to a head.

In the fall of 2012, I founded a charter school to serve low-income families in the South Bronx. I was inspired to open Mott Hall Charter School by my passion for social justice and my belief that education can indeed be a great equalizer.