The key lies in developing often-overlooked inner capacities like emotional resilience, centeredness and active listening—hidden skills that can drive organizational success.

While many factors influence work-environment effectiveness, growing evidence suggests two are critical: challenge and threat. To develop the optimal environment, it’s best to assess your environment using a matrix based on challenge and threat levels.

Underlying top athletes’ outsized success is rigorous devotion to routines and practices that optimize their state of mind and body for high-level performance. This matters to effectiveness in the business domain, too, where such practices are often ignored or dismissed, even though they support one’s centeredness and capacity to maintain focus, be creative, and make good decisions, even under great pressure.