This article is based on a book preview in Fortune Magazine, Oct 27, 2008. The book is: Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin.
We admire great performers and often attribute their success to a unique talent they have for their particular field.
The problem is that there is no evidence that talent has much to do with extraordinary performance. In fact, a few researchers contend that the very existence of talent is not, as they carefully put it, supported by evidence. If this is true, our naïve belief in this “thing we call talent” misdirects our efforts and undermines our potential to develop ourselves and others.
Thanks to recent findings, we now have a more accurate view of how top performers in any field achieve their remarkable results.
So what do top performers do—to win the prize, earn the money, bask in the glory, get the girl, get the Standing O, and blow away the competition?
They do what scientists call Deliberate Practice (DP).
Deliberate Practice has the following characteristics:
- DP is designed to improve performance. It is highly targeted, even engineered to address particular weaknesses that the performer has. It is almost always designed and implemented by a teacher, coach, or expert of some kind.
- DP is stultifyingly repetitious. Most people practice what they’re good at because it feels good, and they do it until they get tired. Top performers practice what they’re bad at, even though it’s frustrating and humiliating, and they do it to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. They go until they break down old habits, and have to develop new ones.
- DP provides continuous feedback. Every swing of the club, every passage in the concerto, every stump speech given, every marketing tactic undertaken, every meeting run– is assessed, measured, compared, and diagnosed for improvement.
- DP is mentally demanding. The quality of our attention is more indicative of success than our willingness to endure mindless repetition. The more we concentrate on the task, the less time needed to improve.
- DP is so hard that few people have the stomach. Most of us lack the desire and the belief in self required to endure the long mental, emotional, and physical struggle needed to achieve world class performance. This is good news for some. It means that if you’re willing to put in the work, you won’t have much competition.
The bad news is that most business cultures are not using the principles of DP. It’s cheaper and less risky to stick you in a job doing things you already know how to do and keep you there. And the feedback you get may not be continuous, or useful.
Of course, this means that the opportunities for achieving advantage by adopting the principles of great performance are huge. A few companies realize that. They embed mentoring and coaching in the culture, use developmental assignments, and put people through high-fidelity simulations.
But if you want to try it yourself, there are things you should do before, during, and after the work.
Before the work: Set goals, not only for outcomes, but for how you will achieve the outcomes. Top performers focus on the process, and even on one aspect of the process.
During the work: Self-regulate. Be mindful of what’s happening in the moment. Top distance runners scan their heart rate and breathing patterns to maintain a target ratio between steps and breaths. Average runners tend to think about anything other than what they’re doing because what they’re doing is painful. Even in purely mental work, elite performers monitor what they’re thinking—it’s called metacognition—knowledge about knowledge, thinking about your own thinking.
After the work: Assess yourself against a chosen standard. Average people are content to say they did well, okay or poorly. Top performers are more specific. They measure themselves against a standard that is relevant to what they are trying to achieve. Such a standard could be their last effort, or the results achieved by a competitor, or the world record. Too high a standard is of course discouraging. Too low a standard produces no advancement.
What you do with the evaluation of your performance will determine your success. Chances are your performance wasn’t perfect, and parts of it were unpleasant. Elite performers respond by changing their approach, trying new behaviors, and getting back into the task. Average performers are more likely to avoid the unpleasant parts, and go back to what felt easy.
What you want—deeply want—is fundamental to success. Deliberate Practice is hard. It demands sacrifice now for results later. You have to want the results badly to put up with the sacrifice.
And you must believe in the work—believe that it will bring you the results you’re looking for. Without that belief, you will not have the ability to endure the difficulties. You will begin to think that you just don’t have the talent. And when you think that, you will stop working. And that will be the end of your development.
The price of top-level achievement is high. Few are willing to pay it. But most of us can learn how to use the elements of Deliberate Practice and put them to work for our own purposes.
Those who do will stand out.