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.

Old Dogs, New Tricks

With today’s dizzying pace of change and the need for constant innovation, the willingness and ability to learn quickly may be the single most important characteristic for success.  The research on high-level performance has a secret about how to motivate people to learn -- and it is remarkably simple.

International-level soccer players have birthdays in January, February, and March at a much higher rate than would be expected by chance.  The statistics are dramatic – what would cause such an anomaly?  The cutoff date for participation in children’s soccer leagues in Europe is December 31.  This means that youngsters born in the early months of the year are slightly older and therefore faster, stronger and more agile than their teammates and competitors.  That slight advantage leads to early success at the game, with more playing time, attention from coaches and encouragement by parents.  But, most importantly, that early success creates “rage to master” -- a desire to succeed and work hard that drives the future world-class performers to put in the time and energy it takes to reach the highest levels of performance. 

So what do soccer players have to do with learning in organizations?  We can see in their experience a fundamental truth about all human beings -- we like to do things that we are good at; we do not like to do things that we are bad at.  People are not reluctant to learn, they are reluctant to fail.  Of course, learning by definition requires failing – imagine a child learning to walk.  The secret is to structure the learning and practice so that there will be more success than failure. 

The Prodigy Method teaches people several different techniques for creating development and practice strategies that are inherently motivating.  Some of these are:

• Critical stretch - attempting something new that is slightly out of your current range of abilities, but not so far that you can’t master it quickly. 
• Sequencing - mastering simple skills first and moving to increasingly difficult and complex skills
• Root cause analysis – identifying the precise skills to practice that will have the biggest impact on performance

You can see the principles of critical stretch and sequencing executed brilliantly in most video games.  They take the player systematically to increasingly more challenging activities, but only after they have mastered the current level of play and are likely to be successful at the next level of play - that is why they are so addictive.  We can teach people how to use these same principles to structure their learning in organizations so that old dogs eagerly learn new tricks.  

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.