The Zander Letter
Robin van Persie realised that turning around his performance was in his hands alone: ‘High performance is partly about how you respond to pressure – and it took me some time to realise that I was in control of my reactions.’
You might think that’s easier said than done. But van Persie came up with a method:
“I wasn’t satisfied, I wasn’t happy. It was going OK, but not good enough. So I started to write a letter to myself about what I wanted to achieve at the end of my career, and how I was going to take responsibility to achieve them … I realised I needed to stop reacting in the manner I was. I should stand above it and respond differently.”
The method was clever – it drew van Persie’s attention away from the things he couldn’t influence, and towards the things he could. Although van Persie might not have realised it, he was using a tried-and-tested approach known as the Zander Letter, which takes its name from the conductor Benjamin Zander. In his position as a professor at the New England Conservatory of Music, Zander was frustrated by a persistent problem: students fell into a state of chronic anxiety over the measurement of their performance, and so were reluctant to take creative risks.
One night, he decided to find a solution. After much discussion with his wife, the therapist Rosamund Stone Zander, they decided to try something radical. They would give everyone an A at the beginning of the course. All the students had to do in return was write a letter. It must begin: ‘Dear Mr Zander, I got my A because …’. It then had to describe, in as much detail as possible, how they came to achieve this ‘extraordinary grade’, as though it had already happened.
Zander later said that the letter worked because it made the students ‘place themselves in the future, looking back, and report on all the insights they acquired and the milestones they attained during the year, as if those accomplishments were already in the past.’ Zander argued that this method helps people to remove the barriers to achievement – and to embrace the responsible outlook that would get pupils a real A, rather than one awarded automatically.
For van Persie, writing the letter was transformative. In the months after her wrote it, he realised his career was looking up, and within a few years, his performance had transformed. ‘I truly became a top player in the years that followed,’ he told us – an understatement from a man who won the Premier League’s Golden Boot two years in a row and is one of Arsenal’s all-time top scorers. After writing the letter, van Persie began to look at his own reaction to setbacks and ask: What can I control? Is complaining going to help, or should I focus on the things in my hands?
At twenty-four, van Persie was finally ready to understand the difference between fault and responsibility. ‘Just in time,’ he laughed.
High Performance Pit Stop – The Zander Letter
The Zander letter can help you, too. Write yourself a letter dated twelve months from now. This letter should begin with ‘Dear [Your name here]’, and should detail how, precisely, you achieved a goal that you currently have.
This visualisation of your success should not include any future tense. Phrases like ‘I hope’, ‘I plan to’ or ‘I will’ are not allowed. Instead, write the letter as if those accomplishments are all history, and that you’re looking back at them from a distance. Be as detailed as possible, and identify the practical steps you took, and the decisions that you alone were responsible for.
At the end, you’ll have a rough map to taking responsibility for your life over the next year. What lessons can you learn from the letter? What will it make you do differently?
