Grow and lead for all of us

practice

What are you practicing today? [September 2011]

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What’s the one thing you can do today…and tomorrow…and the day after that…to be a better leader?

There may be no more important question to ask.

And it’s not as simple as it sounds. I’m asking you to identify the one action that, if practiced every day, will have the largest impact on your capacity to make a positive difference in the world through people. Yes, we’re talking about leverage, and of a very particular kind: leverage through practice.

We don’t talk a lot about practice in organizations. Sure, we use the term “best practices,” but not in the same sense as we practice sports or the performing arts. So let me define the word “practice”–more specifically, deliberate practice–with some help from Geoff Colvin, author of Talent is Overrated. A deliberate practice is one with the following attributes: [Read more…] about What are you practicing today? [September 2011]

Practice, Fakers and the Sincerity Police, Part 2 [March 2008]

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Practicing leadership is tough. It involves both learning something new and unlearning something habitual. Thus many leaders find practicing itself to be uncomfortable if not painful.

Last month we explored one upshot of this: Fakery, which is when people say things that are completely out of alignment with what they think and feel inside.  This led to a simple injunction: Don’t be a Faker. 

This month, we look at different phenomenon: the Sincerity Police, which you’ll recall are those critical voices inside and outside of you saying that unless you are 100% sincere, you are being fake. These voices are a tremendous barrier to practice and, therefore, to more skillful leadership. That’s why I advise:

Accelerate past the Sincerity Police

Contrary to popular assumption, I believe that sincerity in communication is not all-or-nothing. At any given moment, we can be 100 percent sincere or 0 percent sincere, but these are not the only options. Sincerity actually exists along a spectrum. This is because human beings are complex. Although we live in the present, we hold within us both the legacy of our pasts and unrealized intentions for the future. [Read more…] about Practice, Fakers and the Sincerity Police, Part 2 [March 2008]

Practice, Fakers and the Sincerity Police, Part 1 [February 2008]

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Last month’s issue highlighted the importance of practicing leadership every day. We looked at the Rule of 300/3000: 300 repetitions produce bodily memory. 3000 repetitions allow you to fully embody the new skill. This is as true for becoming competent at difficult conversations or framing decisions strategically as it is for learning to drive a stick shift car. Thus, I advised: start practicing today.

Now, here’s the rub: practicing a skill, particularly something new, is frequently uncomfortable and sometimes darn painful. A major reason Americans fear public speaking more than death is that most of us have little practice at it, and most of the practice we do have is as beginners. This is true of so many activities, even those we look forward to with excitement. I remember how thrilled I was a decade ago to take classes in swing dancing, first in Ann Arbor, then in San Francisco. The energizing music, the elegant moves, and the romantic environment-all of it felt hip and fun. It was also a chance to get a taste of an earlier era. Yet my actual experience in class was about 85 percent embarrassment at my own awkwardness and 15 percent glee when my dance partner and I actually pulled off a move. This was on a good day.

I remember this experience when I ask the leaders I coach to try something new. As with swing dancing, most shifts in leadership behavior involve both starting something new and ending something habitual. Consider, for example, someone who has made a commitment to negotiating around interests rather than positions (as described in Getting to Yes and its successor books). He not only has to learn to assess his interests, listen for others’ interests, and speak from a place of win-win. He also has to unlearn his old habits of unconsciously identifying with narrow positions, listening for whether or not the other person supports his position (and what it will take to persuade them), and speaking from a place of win-lose. These habits are neither minor nor new. [Read more…] about Practice, Fakers and the Sincerity Police, Part 1 [February 2008]

Practicing Leadership: The Rule of 300/3000 [January 2008]

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Recently I introduced my coaching clients to a principle I call the Rule of 300/3000. It is one of the most important and least discussed principles in leadership development. I didn’t invent the concept. I heard about it from Richard Strozzi-Heckler’s book Leadership Dojo and then coined the expression. Here it is:

The Rule of 300/3000

  • If you want to get good at something, you need to practice doing it over and over again.
  • To be specific, it takes 300 repetitions to develop a bodily memory of a skill and 3000 repetitions to fully embody it.
  • Therefore start practicing right now.

Example: learning to drive stick shift. When you first learn to drive a manual transmission car, shifting from first to second gear (or from second to third) is incredibly challenging. When do you push your left foot down? Can you time it with your right foot? When do you move the gear? Does your hand even know which gear is where? Coordinating these movements is hard. As a result, initial attempts typically produce a combination of stalls, erratic acceleration, and multitudes of disturbing sounds coming from who-knows-where in the car. Do you know anyone who skipped this step in learning stick shift? I don’t. This is why some people give up and switch to an automatic. [Read more…] about Practicing Leadership: The Rule of 300/3000 [January 2008]