Loop's Growth Athletes Slow Down to Speed Up
Loop's ‘Growth Athletes Program’ is using moments of calm and reflection to equip teams to thrive in the high-pressure environment of a fast-growing scale-up.
At Loop, we're on a mission to provide the world's best earplugs.It’s fast-paced, high pressure and actionpacked. And challenging. Developing the resilience and growth mindset to not just survive, but thrive, in this dynamic setting isn't something that comes naturally. It takes dedicated practice, training, and intentional moments of reflection. This is why we’ve introduced the Growth Athletes Program.
What is the Growth Athletes Program?
To create the Growth Athletes Program, we partnered with Human Performance & Leadership Coach Iraïs Browaeys. This program is designed to equip our team with the skills to flourish in our fast-paced environment. The six-month program consists of five ‘pit stops’, each one focusing on a different area: Mental, Physical, Agility, Emotional, Purpose.
These five pit stops combine inspiring learning sessions with practical application and will be explored over the next 6 months. Each session and their themes will link up to equip our team with the skills to flourish in our fast-paced environment.
Getting to grips with our growth mindset
Our first Pit Stop was all about the power of a Growth Mindset. We learned to reinforce ourselves before pressure by mastering our energy, adopting a growth mindset and visualizing every step of the way. As Irais herself says, “A fast-paced work environment full of change and pressure can be tough, but building our resilience helps us meet those challenges.”
We spent this interactive session becoming more resilient in three key ways:
1. Stronger: reinforce before pressure
Loop is a high-performance environment. We move quickly. Keeping up with the demands of a fast-paced work environment paradoxically requires moments of quiet and reflection. These habits build mental resilience by focusing on small steps towards big goals and mastering energy management. Just like in Formula 1, the quality and frequency of your pit stops will determine whether you’ll get to the finish line and in which position.
2. Better: resist under pressure
Focusing on results won’t always get us where we need to go in the long term. For sustainable wins we need to shiftour focus from short-term results to progress and improvement. This means remembering your ‘why’ and focusing on what you can control.
3. Faster: Recovery after pressure
There are two rules of top sports: recovery is as important as performance and you can’t win them all. By keeping this in mind, we’re able to build in habits that support our recovery. Implementing strategies like shorter meetings, displaying marks of recognition and celebrating wins – big and small all help us build recovery into our workflow.
Reflecting on our first pit stop
The most important takeaway from our first pit stop? In order to speed up, you have to slow down first. This is a big reason why, for the third year in a row, Loop offered all employees Live Fully Fridays. Every employee got the afternoon off in July and August to recover and recharge. They were encouraged to spend that time on something that boosted their energy or spiked their creativity. This could be reading a book, walking in nature, cuddling with loved ones (particularly the furry ones), working out or taking a nap.
As co-founder Maarten Bodewes explains, "We're consistently focused on managing workload and improving well-being. The Growth Athletes program, alongside our revamped Strategy Week, Live Fully Fridays, and Meeting-Free Wednesdays, aims to give us more space and equip us to handle a challenging work environment."
What's Next for our Growth Athletes?
This is just the beginning of our Growth Athletes journey. Future sessions will cover physical health, agility, emotional well-being, and sustaining motivation.
And it fits with the overall ethos of Loop, to “empower people to live life at their volume.” We do that with our products, and how we work; we're not just changing how people experience sound: we're revolutionizing how we approach work and personal growth. Because investing in our team's well-being benefits everyone.
Do you have what it takes to be a Growth Athlete at Loop? Check out our open vacancies.
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