In business use deep, deliberate practise to develop skills
In order to learn a new skill we need to practise, practise, practise. Unfortunately just practising is not enough, it needs to be Deep, intentional practise. Success is seldom a result of natural talent alone, in fact many successful people seemed to have no natural talent when they began, just a desire to succeed.
Deep, deliberate practise requires specific focused attention, working on one key area of improvement at a time. This type of practise also often involves specific feedback from a skilled teacher or mentor. It is not repeating the action in a familiar way but stretching beyond your comfort zone and learning new habits or skills. Sometimes when you work on a weaknesses your overall game may suffer temporarily, until your area of weakness is improved. Deep, deliberate exercises are difficult, often repetitive, even painful and rarely fun, but allows for exponential growth. Deep practise can be designed to be fun, but it isn’t always inherently enjoyable on it’s own. It does need to be focussed and detail orientated.
The idea of deliberate practise has been popularised, along with the “10 000 to mastery”, by Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers” and Daniel Coyle in his book “The Talent Code”. The science shows that the quality and focus of your practise matters, that performance excellence is primarily the result of Deep practise and not due to some innate talent. Success stories owe much of their success to the degree to which they consistently and deliberately work to improve their performance. Deep, deep practise aims to improve our performance over time and to increase our skill, awareness and ability day by day. Get down to Brass Tacks – pay attention to the detail.
In order to improve your Deep, deliberate practise remember to:
- Measure action. Decide what you want to learn and count, or time it.
- Gain perspective. Try new positions, ideas and always get feedback. This allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the whole picture. It also allows us to see where we are strong and areas that need attention. We often have blind spots to our own weaknesses that a coach can help us with.
- Set goals (short and long term). This gives us an immediate goal and a stretch goal for the future, a north star to guide our journey.
- Own your why. Find a reason why you want to achieve your goal. Ensure the reason is your own, we don’t stay motivated when the goal is not our own.
If you want to learn how to create One Clear Message in your communication and more about Deep, deliberate practise then contact us today!
Richard Riche
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