By Mike Hoban
“How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” the old joke asks. “Practice, practice, practice” was the rimshot response. And with the 2010 winter Olympics now over, it’s likely there are many medalists who appreciate the investment of the grueling hours, the physical pain and the sleep deprivation of practice, practice, practice. Talent and determination are necessary bases upon which to build, but it’s practice that creates competency, more practice that creates mastery and even more practice that creates performance that’s not just world class, but the world standard.
Several recent best selling biz books have also echoed the theme about the importance of practice, practice, practice. The Outliers - The Story of Success, by Malcom Gladwell, Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, the popular and ubiquitous Fortune magazine writer, and The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle have all proffered the theme of practice as a key to success. EQ evangelist Daniel Goleman also has written about the topic and a new term “deliberate practice” has become the popularized version of the old “perfect practice makes perfect” aphorism.
What is “deliberate practice?” Colvin, in one of his Fortune articles, describes it this way: "It's activity that's explicitly intended improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one's level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition." In other words, it’s not just practicing what you are already doing well, it’s practicing those things you don’t do well. One article compiles many of the insightful pieces on this topic from the last several years.
The outcomes of practice permeate our daily lives. Most of us fly commercial airplanes regularly. Can you imagine getting on a flight and finding out the pilots have not been required to have practiced many takeoffs and landings and have never stepped foot into a flight simulator? And would you be able to sleep well at night if you knew our armed forces had never drilled or practiced mock attacks? Practice is a no-brainer for demonstrated and sustainable performance in those and most other arenas. How about in the arena of leadership skills?
Management and leadership training courses are often skill-based, meaning participants need to have more than a cognitive understanding of a skill—they need to demonstrate it. And most managers and leaders in the business world would violently agree that it’s not enough for a pilot to simply understand the principles of executing a safe and smooth takeoff, s/he needs to have the opportunity to practice the procedure prior to trying it with people on board.
Yet, some of those same managers in leadership training sessions display an offputting reaction to finding out there will be a skill practice involved in learning about delegation or coaching or whatever the topic is. “That’s role playing – I can’t role play!” is what we often hear. But if the skill practice has a well crafted and pragmatic design, we find that once they begin, most leadership course participants find the experience useful and almost – cringe – enjoyable. But they have to first get over their often preconceived view that practicing a leadership skill is somehow different and less useful than practicing some other type of skill, be it an athletic skill or learning a language. And they usually do get over it when they get into it.
So the good news is that there is less resistance to classroom leadership skill practices in the last few years, especially when that practice is positioned as analogous to other types of “real” skills that require practice. Practice, practice, practice in leadership classes won’t get someone on the stage at Carnegie Hall but it would certainly help someone manage the business at Carnegie Hall.
Mike Hoban is a senior consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI).
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