In all the Olympic fever over the last fortnight, did you see Australia’s most successful Olympian of all time is swimmer, Emma McKeon?

It blew me away to learn that she won her sixth career gold medal in Paris — taking her lifetime Olympic medal tally to 14 and making her more successful than Ian Thorpe.

Scrolling through her impressive biography on Wikipedia, I was reminded of research about high performance in Olympic swimmers.

Daniel Chambliss’s study, “The Mundanity of Excellence” found outstanding performance is the confluence of dozens of small skills or activities executed consistently and correctly.

He makes the case that the little things really do count.    

Very small adjustments can produce noticeable success.

The secret is qualitative (not quantitative) improvements. Doing more of the same will not get you better results.

That’s where feedback comes into play and a coach is vital.

If you are intrigued by small acts of leadership that have a big impact and are looking for qualitative improvements, perhaps you need a coach too.