It’s a results driven business! He's a Choker.

“He’s a choker.” A friend said this about one of my sporting heroes.

Given the relaxed social conventions of friendship, my reaction was… let’s say, “animated”.

Setting that aside, but we will get back to it, I find the term “choker” offensive…

Calling someone a choker implies failure under pressure and is casually thrown out there as a character flaw, a defect. It usually refers to a public moment where an elite performer doesn’t deliver. But that very moment, that failure, only exists because they’re an elite performer.

You can’t “choke” on a global stage unless you’ve done the work, built the skills, and had the drive to get there in the first place. So rather than being admired for the countless times they’ve handled extreme pressure and delivered elite performances just to earn that moment, they’re mocked for the one time it got too much?

To those who casually throw around such a glib statement… They’ve probably “choked” more often than the person they’re pointing at. Maybe it’s born out of disappointment. Or maybe, in the case of opposing fans, it’s just a cheap dig.

Here’s what I told my friend, a bit tongue in cheek (yes, we’re still mates):

Everyone chokes at some point. It’s part of being human. It’s what happens when pressure overwhelms your capacity to manage it in the moment. Some people have a higher threshold or have been trained to recognise it and cope better, but no one is immune.

Choking isn’t a weakness under pressure. It’s a temporary failure to manage your thoughts and actions when the body’s evolved response to pressures and stresses kicks in.

If you’ve never achieved something so demanding, of such excellence, that your performance is under public scrutiny, so exposed, then you’ve likely never had to build the mental resilience required to perform at the highest level.

Ergo: you probably choke all the time. But no one sees it!

“Choker” is a lazy put-down. A throwaway line. A taunt from rival fans. And most of the time, it comes from people with no real frame of reference for the level of intensity, expectation, or scrutiny that can cause even the most refined skills to appear to unravel.

Skills and ability do not abandon us from one moment to the next, but mindset can.

Let’s be honest, we’ve all had moments where:

• We made a poor decision under pressure
• We couldn’t focus when it mattered
• We froze, flailed, or failed despite knowing exactly what to do, and how to do it.

That’s choking. It’s not a character flaw, it’s a skill gap.

The ability to recognise pressure, manage your emotional and physical response, and still perform, it can be trained. It can be learned, practiced, and honed.

Elite sport has known this for years. Mental skills coaches, performance psychologists, mindset training, they’re standard. Because they work. Because mindset impacts performance. Sport is a results-driven business!

So why is Business so far behind?

In sport, choking is visible. It’s televised. Sport is results and growth focused. When things go wrong, they ask: Why? What caused it? How do we fix it?

But in the business world? Choking happens quietly, invisibly.

We see the consequences, bad decisions, missed targets, poor delivery—but not the moment. Not the micro-choke. Not the mindset slip that triggered the outcome.

Salespeople, Operations teams, Admin staff and Leaders. It doesn’t matter the role or the seniority, everyone has these moments, some are coped with, some are not.

Moments where pressure distracts, mindset wavers, potential is compromised. And if you reflect honestly… you’ve felt it too.

In missed opportunities. Rushed decisions. Reactive behaviour. Stalled growth.

Unfortunately, often businesses respond to these outcomes with knee-jerk reactions, cuts, restructures, performance plans, when the real opportunity is to train mindset. Not just skills…Not just tools. Mindset.

You can’t eliminate pressure. That’s unrealistic. Pressure shows up anytime the outcome of something matters, to you or to others.

So, train for it.

Recognise the signs. Build awareness in yourself, in your people. Learn the tools to perform, to maintain clarity even when the stakes are high. Because choking isn’t a weakness.

It’s a signal.

One that says: I need help building the capacity to handle this.

And if you’re a leader, especially in high-pressure environments like sales or operations, it’s your responsibility to help your team build that capacity.

So, stop calling people chokers.

Admire how far they’ve come. Ask yourself: What support, training, and mindset tools helped them get there in the first place? Then ask...And how do I get those too?

after all…It’s a results-driven business?