Leadership is a Sport?

Leadership is often referred to as an art and a science, but is it a sport? A sport is an organized, competitive, and skillful physical activity requiring commitment and fair play. Well, maybe it's not a sport... but, can it be practiced like a sport? One of the surprising findings from research on world-class performers is that the difference between the good and the great is in their brains -- not in physical abilities. It is a seemingly superhuman ability to process information that produces tennis players that know where their opponent's ball is going to land before the ball leaves the racket, firefighters who "know" the floor is about to collapse, but have no idea how they know and chess players that can play multiple opponents simultaneously - while blindfolded.

The Science of High-Level Performance
Experts don't know more, they know differently. If ALL world-class performance is a function of changes in the brain, can you develop leadership skills like an athlete develops sports skills? Anders Ericsson and others have been diligently pursuing the alchemy of excellence in their research on the acquisition of high-level of performance. Popular writers, such as Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, Geoff Colvin in Talent is Overrated and Daniel Coyle in The Talent Code have described the processes by which the extraordinary abilities of world-class performers are created. Created - not born. The research shows that the process is pretty much the same regardless of the domain of performance, be it sports, science, or occupations. Nearly all people who reach the highest levels of performance get there with 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice". Deliberate practice is effortful study which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one's competence. It is easy to see how a special practice method would apply to sports, games or arts -- we are used to thinking of practicing these things. But, does it apply to leadership?

Practicing Leadership
I have been teaching managers how to use deliberate practice for over three years. Not only can you use it to build leadership skills, but the practice can easily be done as part of your regular job duties. To use deliberate practice you need to break leadership down into a practicable segment, create a practice plan that you can repeat, and monitor your performance until you can execute that leadership skill perfectly. The Prodigy Method training provides leaders with these practice segments and techniques. But think about it - leadership training classes are full of processes and techniques (e.g., for problem-solving, giving feedback, making presentations, etc). It is these processes, and techniques that we master with deliberate practice. Check out prodigymethod.com to learn more about how to use deliberate practice for leadership skills and see some examples.

For most of us, deliberate practice is not about becoming a world champion. But, in today's world, I don't know anyone who couldn't benefit from learning faster and reaching a higher level of proficiency. Leadership may not be a sport, but the research on learning is clear -- you can practice it like athletes do and at least double or triple the speed of learning.