Passion and deliberate practice results in great leadership

Anders Ericsson is a Psychologist at the Florida State University, conducting research into how superior performers become good at what they do. His research seeks to answer the question, What matters most in producing high performance? Is it natural talent or hard work? The simple answer usually given is that they’re both important and is talent that really makes the difference, natural talent is what matters most….. Or is it?

Great Leaders are Made more often than Born

One of the findings made by Anders Ericsson is that high performance is the more often made, rather than arising from an innate gifts, he states that:

“But it isn’t magic, and it isn’t born. It happens because some critical things line up so that a person of good intelligence can put in the sustained, focused effort it takes to achieve extraordinary mastery…… These people don’t necessarily have an especially high IQ, but they almost always have very supportive environments, and they almost always have important mentors. And the one thing they always have is this incredible investment of effort.”

He points out that there is no reliable measure for IQ and that IQ is often a poor predictor of a person will develop extraordinary ability. My personal thoughts on this born vs. made discussion are that:

• Leaders do require a right amount of the “right stuff”, traits such as passion, IQ, EQ etc.
• We all have unique strengths that can help us on our leadership journey.
• Our “born” talents and strengths play a role in placing us on the right path…… after that it boils down to hard work and deliberate practice.
• The belief that ‘leaders are born and thus some people will never be leaders’ is extremely limiting to every human being.

Looking at leaders throughout history we can find examples of those who seem to have been born to lead and just as many examples of those who were made. In the real world you cannot separate these two ways of becoming leaders. Leaders are really born and made, in some leaders the born factors are more evident and in other leaders that made factors seem to be more evident. In the final analysis, I believe that leaders are more often made than born. The ability to learn and apply life’s lessons is the key to becoming a successful leader.

“Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” – William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene V

Born or Made, Nobody becomes Great without Hard Work

Other findings from research show that nobody becomes great without hard work! In the article, Fortune, “What it takes to be great” discussing Anders’s research makes this point:

“It’s nice to believe that if you find the field where you’re naturally gifted, you’ll be great from day one, but it doesn’t happen. There’s no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice……. Reinforcing that no-free-lunch finding is vast evidence that even the most accomplished people need around ten years of hard work before becoming world-class, a pattern so well established researchers call it the ten-year rule.”

This ten year rule is supported by research done by the University of Chicago psychologist Benjamin Bloom, as the article “E=mc2 (and a lot of hard work)” from The Age states:

“it seems you have to put in at least a decade of focused work to master something and bring greatness within reach. This shows starkly in a 1985 study of 120 elite athletes, performers, artists, biochemists and mathematicians led by University of Chicago psychologist Benjamin Bloom, a giant of the field who died in 1999. Every single person in the study took at least a decade of hard study or practice to achieve international recognition. Olympic swimmers trained for an average of 15 years before making the team; the best concert pianists took 15 years to earn international recognition. Top researchers, sculptors and mathematicians put in similar amounts of time.”

Passion: Do What you Love

An article from the Wisconsin Technology Network “Are top performers born or made?” emphasizes the importance of the Passion – Practice – Performance chain in achieving worl class performance:

Deliberate practice drives expert performance. Passion provides the motivation necessary to practice rigorously. According to Professor Ericsson, top talents are able to practice long and hard and apply themselves more intensely than also-rans precisely because they are doing something that they love. If you don’t love what you do then chances are good that you will never put in the time needed to master it.

The New York Times article “A Star Is Made” discussing Anders research, reinforces the importance of passion when deciding what to persue in life:

“Ericsson’s research suggests a third cliché as well: when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love – because if you don’t love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good. Most people naturally don’t like to do things they aren’t “good” at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don’t possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better…….Ericsson’s conclusions, if accurate, would seem to have broad applications. Students should be taught to follow their interests earlier in their schooling, the better to build up their skills and acquire meaningful feedback.”

Practice: Deliberate Practice Makes Perfect

It’s not just any type of practice that makes perfect….. it’s deliberate practice that makes perfect. Anders Ericsson speaks of the importance of what he calls deliberate practice:

“It’s activity that’s explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.” – Fortune, “Secrets of greatness”

“Deliberate practice is about changing your performance, setting new goals and straining yourself to reach a bit higher each time. It involves you deciding to improve something and setting up training conditions to attain the skill.” – Anders Ericsson, The Sydney Morning Herald, “Why only the right kind of practice gets anywhere near perfect”

“Effective practice focuses not just on the key skills involved, but also systematically stretches the person’s limits.” – New York Times,Peak Performance: Why Records Fall

The article “How Do You Practice Software Testing?” from Informit.com provides a good description of deliberate practice. Dawing on Dr. Richard Restak’s book “The New Brain: How The Modern Age Is Rewiring Your Mind“, who in his book talks extensively on the topic of practice, and cites Anders Ericsson in his research.

“Restak writes, ‘[For superior performers,] the goal isn’t just repeating the same thing again and again but achieving higher levels of control over every aspect of their performance. That’s why they don’t find practice boring. Each practice session, they are working on doing something better than they did the last time.’

For example, a musician doesn’t play a scale repeatedly just for the sake of playing the scale. When I repeat a scale while playing the guitar, it’s not so I’ll learn the scale; I know the scale. It’s so I can get my fingers to know the scale. I want them to move faster and with more confidence. I’m attempting to achieve a higher level of control over my performance. If I can better develop my fingering technique on that scale, I can better control my fingering in other aspects of my playing.

The focus of that practice is not the repetition of that specific song or style of music; the focus is on improving a specific aspect of what I’m practicing (speed, technique, experimenting with pedals or amplifiers, and so on). A generic goal of practicing just to “play better” isn’t practical. To be more effective in my practice, I need to focus on one specific thing and do that thing better……. Restak also writes, “In order to achieve superior performance in a chosen field, the expert must counteract the natural impulse to gain an automated performance as soon as possible.’”

The techniques that comprise the “art of leadership”, require relentless practice and ongoing experimentation, until they become part of the leader. Each time we practice the art of leadership we need to ensure that we practice deliberately, focusing on doing things better. Improving how we communicate, influence and persuade, always improving our techniques and methods continuously.

“Practice is the only way that you will ever come to understand what the Way of the warrior is about . . . Words can only bring you to the foot of the path . . .” – Musashi

Performance: Feedback the Breakfast of Champions

At the end of the day it’s passion and deliberate practice that results in superior performance, not superior talent! Some of the examples of people who have followed their passions, practiced deliberately and achieve great performance are:

“Winston Churchill, one of the 20th century’s greatest orators, practiced his speeches compulsively. Vladimir Horowitz supposedly said, “If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, my wife knows it. If I don’t practice for three days, the world knows it.” – Fortune, “Secrets of greatness”

“Michael Jordan practiced intensely beyond the already punishing team practices. (Had Jordan possessed some mammoth natural gift specifically for basketball, it seems unlikely he’d have been cut from his high school team.)” – Fortune, “Secrets of greatness”

“Tiger Woods is a textbook example of what the research shows. Because his father introduced him to golf at an extremely early age – 18 months – and encouraged him to practice intensively, Woods had racked up at least 15 years of practice by the time he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship, at age 18. Also in line with the findings, he has never stopped trying to improve, devoting many hours a day to conditioning and practice, even remaking his swing twice because that’s what it took to get even better.” – Fortune, “Secrets of greatness“

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Passion, Practice, Performance, Management, Business, Work, Research, Talent

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