Experience is Good, Right?

It sounds outrageous but, often, veteran project managers do not produce high caliber results BECAUSE of their experience.  A recent article by Kishore Sengupta, et. al. in the Harvard Business Review shows there is something wrong with the way managers learn from their experience, especially in complex, dynamic environments.  The authors conclude, “Despite their experiences with complex projects, veteran managers do not meaningfully improve the mental models they have formed in simpler contexts.”  Mental models are hypothesis about how things work and assumptions about cause and effect that we develop over time and then use to guide our decisions and actions.  Experience creates problems for performance when our mental models are wrong. 

Practice Off the Field of Play

Practicing a skill is not the same as using a skill.  Just as there is a distinction between practice and performance in activities like sports and music, you should distinguish between practice and performance in building your leadership skills.  When you are learning a new skill you will be somewhat slow, awkward and clumsy.  This is not the time to use that fledging skill in a situation where performance "counts". 

Do Some Research

One of the biggest mistakes in leadership training is exhorting a list of rules for managers and expecting them to execute successfully.  There is a world of difference between knowing what to do and actually being able to do it.  Before you assume that you have the knowledge and skills it takes to implement  rules like Google's -- check.

Start Small

When it comes to improving your leadership skills, lists of attributes and behaviors frequently aren't that helpful because they create analysis paralysis -- you simply can't keep all the advice in your head.  So, when you find a good list of guidelines, don't try to implement the whole list at once; choose one relatively small behavior to work on.

For example, "Be a good coach", includes two specific items: "provide specific, constructive feedback, balancing the negative and the positive" and "have regular one-on-ones, presenting solutions to problems tailored to your employee's specific strengths".  The general rule of  "Be a good coach" is too broad to tackle, but either of the specific items is a good place to start.  You should aim for a behavior to work on that you think you could practice and master in a matter of weeks.  Systematically work on items one at a time until you have mastered everything on the list.  Just like the tortoise, slow and steady wins this race.