Deliberate Practice or Why Talent is Overrated

I recently read an article by Geoff Colvin, senior editor at large, of Fortune Magazine.  The article states that "the conventional wisdom about natural talent is a myth. The real path to great performance is a matter of choice" or "deliberate practice."

This idea resonated deeply for me. As a trainer, I am constantly interacting with people in an environment where their performance and awareness is stretched in developing their presentation skills.  Believing that you can attain the higher levels of performance can lend the stamina and investment necessary to reach this goal.

The elements of deliberate practice are each worth examining:

1) Deliberate practice is designed specifically to improve performance. The key word is "designed." The essence of deliberate practice is continually stretching an individual just beyond his or her current abilities.  That may sound obvious, but most of us don't do it in the activities we think of as practice. At the driving range, at the piano, or delivering a presentation, most of us are just doing what we've done before and hoping to maintain the level of performance that we probably reached long ago.

2) Deliberate practice can be repeated a lot. High repetition is the most important difference between deliberate practice of a task and performing the task for real, when it counts.

For example, when Tiger Woods works on chipping out of a sand trap, he drops his ball in the sand, steps on it, then tries to wedge it up onto the green.  He'll practice this shot over and over for about 90 minutes.  Yes, that is hard but the fact that it is hard increases the liklihood that your competitors won't do it, giving you an edge.

Tiger Woods may face that buried lie in the sand only two or three times in a season, and if those were his only opportunities to work on that shot, he'd blow it just as you and I do.

Repeating a specific activity over and over is what people usually mean by practice, yet it isn't especially effective. Two points distinguish deliberate practice from what most of us actually do. One is the choice of a properly demanding activity just beyond our current abilities. The other is the amount of repetition.

3) Feedback on results is continuously available. Obvious, yet not nearly as simple as it might seem, especially when results require interpretation. You may think that your rehearsal of a job interview was flawless, but your opinion isn't what counts.  Or you may believe you played that bar of the Brahms violin concerto perfectly, but can you really trust your own judgment? In many important situations, a teacher, coach, or mentor is vital for providing crucial feedback.

Why Talent is Overrated continued…

-Geoff Colvin, Fortune Magazine

Putting it to Practice: Practice crafting 5 different openings to any given presentation.  This deliberate practice over the long term develops the ability to quickly draft compelling openings with very little effort or time invested.

For further reading, check out our related posts on:

Metacognition

Feedback

Practice