Empowering performance together

Invest in your mindset. Perform at your best.

Research-based, tailored mental performance coaching for performing artists, athletes, and professionals in high-stakes roles.

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★WYS — Whatever Your StagePeople • Performance • Purpose★

What is WYS?

The mental side of your performance.

One-on-one coaching helps you prepare deliberately, respond flexibly, and stay connected to what matters when pressure rises.

Coaching philosophy

My Approach

Performance is personal. We bring our hopes, expectations, relationships, and life experiences into every rehearsal, audition, competition, presentation, and demanding workday. My approach to mental performance coaching begins with understanding you—what matters to you, the challenges you face, and what you want to develop.

Drawing on research and my experience as a musician, educator, conductor, and pastoral musician, I help people build practical skills for effective performance and lasting well-being. Together, we explore strategies for managing nerves, directing attention, strengthening motivation, working through setbacks, and responding constructively to pressure. With your input, I tailor routines for your goals and circumstances.

My coaching is informed by cognitive behavioral principles, including approaches drawn from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). We explore how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors influence one another, recognize patterns that may interfere with performance, and practice more constructive ways of thinking and responding.

I also draw on Psychological Characteristics of Developing Excellence (PCDEs), a framework that emphasizes developing skills such as goal-setting, imagery, focused attention, and coping under pressure. I value this approach because it supports ongoing growth: learning to prepare purposefully, adapt to challenges, and use setbacks as opportunities for development.

I believe growth flourishes when people have ownership in the process, recognize their developing abilities, and feel connected to others. Our work is collaborative, with room for curiosity, honest reflection, and self-compassion alongside purposeful preparation and high expectations.

I also pay attention to what happens after a performance: making space for celebration, learning from the experience, recovering, and preparing for what comes next. Your accomplishments matter, and your worth extends beyond any single outcome.

My goal is to help you meet demanding moments with preparation, focus, and flexibility while sustaining your well-being and your connection to what matters—whatever your stage.

Self-determination theory

I like to use self-determination theory as a framework for thinking about motivation, particularly the ways autonomy, competence, and relatedness can influence how students learn, practice, and perform.

Areas I most often work on with student and professional musicians

Music performance anxiety
Perfectionism
Burnout
Career discernment
Injury and sickness
Attentional control
Performance quality and enjoyment

One-on-one coaching

In person or online. Built around you.

You bring the context. Together, you and Dr. Shapard identify useful strategies and develop mental skills that support your existing artistic, athletic, or professional goals.

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Workshops & speaking

Bring the work to your group.

Workshops and speaking engagements bring research-based mental performance ideas to the people you gather — shaped around your group's goals, your context, and the moments that matter most.

Dr. Shapard partners with organizations, schools, ensembles, and teams to deliver engaging, practical sessions — keynotes, interactive workshops, and team sessions — on preparing under pressure, attention and focus, motivation, resilience, and performing with purpose.

Every engagement is tailored. The content bends toward your people, your stage, and the outcomes you're after. If there's a group learning to meet high-stakes moments well, reach out and start a conversation about what could be possible.

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Who it's for

Performing artists
Athletes
Educators
Professionals in high-stakes environments

Meet Dr. Tommy Shapard

Experience on both sides of performance.

Tommy Shapard has served as the Director of Choirs at Florida State College at Jacksonville since Fall 2017. He received his M.M. in Music Performance (Conducting) from the University of North Florida in 2016. He also holds degrees from Baylor University (B.M.E., Vocal/Choral) and Emory University (M.Div.), and completed three years of graduate coursework in Ethnomusicology at Florida State University. He earned the Doctor of Pastoral Music degree from Southern Methodist University, where his work focused on community music-making, inclusive singing practices, and the role of music in social change, particularly racial justice.

In addition to his work as a conductor and music educator, Shapard is a mental performance coach and founder of Whatever Your Stage, where he works with performing artists, athletes, educators, and others in high-stakes environments. He completed the M.S. in Coaching (Mental Performance) at the University of South Carolina in 2024 and is currently completing supervised training toward certification as a Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC) through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. His current work increasingly explores the intersection of music education, performance psychology, well-being, and the mental skills that help performers prepare, perform, and grow.

Since 2008, Shapard has also served as Associate Pastor of Music and Worship at Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church. For thirty years, he has directed choirs in Texas, Florida, and Georgia and has worked with musicians of all ages in collegiate, church, school, and community settings.

Tommy is married to the Rev. Rachel Gunter Shapard. They have three children, Drew, Kate, and Mac, and a beloved Golden Retriever, Buddy.

Client words

What clients are saying…

Performers and athletes describe the work in their own words — practical, personal, and built around the person in front of him.

“Tommy’s insights into my hang-ups and his ability to find a strategy that fits me have been so helpful. This is time well spent. He didn’t rehash the past. He encouraged me to grow now through practical skills.”

— professional musician

“Dr. Shapard is not the type to just give advice; he researches the problems I face and builds strategies to help me be better.”

— collegiate athlete

“Dr. Shapard takes the time to research, develop, and guide me in issues that I face with my sport, schoolwork, family, and social life. He highlights my strengths and guides me on how to use them to counteract my weaknesses.”

— collegiate athlete