SuperLearning: Deliberate Practice
In This Episode
Did you know that there's a specific kind of practice that allows you to learn faster and achieve more? Tune into the fourth episode in our SuperLearning series to discover how to use deliberate practice.
Transcript
Vanessa Tanicien, narrating: Hello, and welcome to the LeaderLab, the podcast powered by LifeLabs Learning. I'm your host and LifeLabs leadership trainer, Vanessa Tanicien. In each episode, my lab mates and I, distill our findings into powerful tipping point skills. The small changes that tip over to make the biggest impact in the shortest time. Welcome back to the LeaderLab. We're talking about SuperLearning, learning how to be a better learner, so you can help yourself and others acquire new skills and knowledge faster. Today, to walk us through a new skill is Dr. McKendree Hickory. As the doctor in her name suggests, she has a PhD in Industrial Organizational Psychology and is also a leadership trainer at LifeLabs Learning. Last but not least, she recently got a puppy named Epic. That's probably the thing I'm most excited about. Welcome to the show, McKendree.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Thanks, Vanessa. Yeah, I've been trying not to sound tired from the lack of sleep.
Vanessa Tanicien: Oooh. It's like, you're a new mom, but like of a furry one.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Exactly. It looks a little less like me.
Vanessa Tanicien: Awesome. So we're talking about SuperLearning. So I'm curious about the concept that we're going to be playing with today.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Yeah. I'm so excited to be here today and talk about the concept of deliberate practice. And this is all about figuring out what is it that you want to get better at and then practicing it with specificity. And it's actually one of the key skills in becoming a SuperLearner.
Vanessa Tanicien: Interesting. So tell us more.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Yeah. So you've probably heard of the stat before that it takes about 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. But what I want to share with you today and our listeners is that it's not only about the hours that you spend doing something, but how you use those hours.
Vanessa Tanicien: You've already got my attention. So if I don't need to use 10,000 hours, what might I do instead?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Yeah. So I'll share a little bit of research here by Kate Anders Ericsson, his study, Deliberate Practice, and specifically what leads to experts and excellent performance over time. Now, what he's found is that much of it comes down to deliberately practicing. So specifically focusing on a skill that you're not good at and practicing it with sustained effort. So deliberate practice works like this, pick a skill that you're trying to improve on, break it into specific behavioral units, then practice each one of those, getting feedback and coaching and readjusting along the way.
Vanessa Tanicien: Okay. So in order to deliberately practice, we need to break things down into Behavioral Units, but can you actually break down what a Behavioral Unit is?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Yeah. So you can think about it as being the sub-components of a skill. So take a skill. There's multiple small things that make us proficient in that skill. So let's take the example of say coaching. Great coaches do a lot of different things. They ask great questions. They listen really well. They provide insights. So each one of those components, questions, listening, insights is a different behavioral unit that you would want to practice in order to get really good at coaching as a total skill.
Vanessa Tanicien: So what else does the research say?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Yeah, one of my other favorite studies is by Angela Duckworth, who is most notably known for studying the concept of grit. But what her and her team found studying National Spelling Bee competitors, is that the spellers who engaged in more deliberate practice, outperformed spellers who did less deliberate practice.
Vanessa Tanicien: That feels like pretty spot on. Is there anything, a little bit juicier than a Spelling Bee Competition?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Oh yeah, this one's pretty good. So this is like Cramp and Anders. And in one study they found that 60 year old musicians who deliberately practiced about 10 hours a week could actually match the speed and proficiency of a 20 year old expert musician.
Vanessa Tanicien: What?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Yeah.
Vanessa Tanicien: So you're telling us that Nana could actually shred on the guitar?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Nana –
Vanessa Tanicien: As much as a young one.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Yes. Nana could get after that.
Vanessa Tanicien: Okay. Got it. So I get a sense of what deliberate practice is, but I want to refresh my memory here. How does this help us become better SuperLearners?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: What we want to be mindful of and what really will take us to that next level of SuperLearning is continuing to intentionally practice. So often we acquire a skill and once we become decent at it, we stop acquiring more proficiency. One thing we want to constantly be committing to is what are those behavioral units, practicing those deliberately so that we can become a super learner.
Vanessa Tanicien: Oh man. So even things that I'm already doing, I can become better at, if I deliberately practice them.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Exactly. That's like driving a car. Pretty quick you become good at it. If you want to become an excellent car driver, deliberately practice how to drive a car.
Vanessa Tanicien: Okay. Indy 500, here I come.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: There you go.
Vanessa Tanicien: Okay. I want to take this for a spin. You see what I did there? I want to take this for a spin.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Oh, I see what you did there. I think what useful place to start would be, what is a skill that you are trying to get better at?
Vanessa Tanicien: The first thing that popped into my mind is delegation. So we just got a slew of new individuals on the team at LifeLabs (again, shout out to Thu-Hang). And in order for us to be effective in having these folks add to the team, we need to be able to delegate effectively. So that's been top of mind for me.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Awesome. I love that one. It's such a challenge that so many leaders we work with have also. So if delegation is this skill, let's talk through, what are some of the behaviors that come to mind in terms of thinking about effective delegation? What would be some of your behavioral units you want to practice?
Vanessa Tanicien: So as far as delegation, in my perspective, there is preparation, making sure that I am ready to give this thing over to the human context. Folks need to know why they're doing something in order to do it effectively, having a clear timeline, as well as scope for the project so that scope creep doesn't happen. And then those pieces of feedback that need to happen. So making sure that is built into the workflow as well.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Okay. So we got prep, context, timeline, feedback. Let's pick one of those. Which one do you feel least competent in right now?
Vanessa Tanicien: Least competent? No, that's a fair question. I just was like, oh, you're right. What do I need to deliberately practice? I would honestly say providing context is something that I'd love to improve upon.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: So you want to get better at providing context. So what do you think is one thing you could do to practice, say even like 10 minutes a day over the next week to get better at practicing context?
Vanessa Tanicien: Well, I would say that since we're working remotely, it would probably make sense to try giving context in emails that I send out like, this is the reason why I'm asking for this or this is important, or I need it for this particular reason. And because I send so much email, especially now, it's a ripe place for practice.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Yeah. Beautiful. So the deliberate practice there for you is, every time I send an email, I'm going to add in a context statement, which might be a sentence or two sharing the context with whomever you're communicating with.
Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah, exactly. And I've said it, better myself.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Beautiful. And just to challenge you, who do you want feedback from on this to see, how are you doing?
Vanessa Tanicien: Who? I would probably say the folks that I'm sending these emails to. So my new person on the product team, as well as folks that I'm working with cross-functionally, I think so much tension and friction can happen in cross-functional projects because we're not sharing context. So that would be a really great place to pull feedback from.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Awesome. Well, it looks like you've got some fun things to deliberately practice over the next week.
Vanessa Tanicien: I definitely do. So McKendree, I'm so thrilled around this idea of breaking things down into these smaller bits. It feels really portable, but I want to think at scale, so as a leader, how can we help our teams use deliberate practice?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Yeah. So there's two things that quickly come to mind. I think the first one is actually not too dissimilar to what I just did with you. So the opportunity to coach your team members towards deliberate prep practice. So I could even imagine, say a sales leader who wants their team to up level a particular skill. They could pick the behavioral unit. They're all going to practice over, say the next two weeks and use one-on-ones in team meetings as a point to check in on progress. And then also thinking about stretch assignments as opportunities to add in different behavioral units of folks who practice.
Vanessa Tanicien: That's one way to sort of build it into the workflow. How can we ensure that people stick with it?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Yes. The other part that I think is important particularly is leaders to recognize, is that some of these skills around leadership don't actually come naturally. So in order for folks to learn something quickly, AKA SuperLearn, it requires this deliberate practice. Now what I find fascinating is that most of our leadership development happens on the job. So one thing leaders can also focus in on, is building in time to reflect and then deliberately practice where they want to improve. And even better, you can let people into this so you can get feedback as well.
Vanessa Tanicien: Oh, and what's so fantastic about this is that there's so few places that we can feel a sense of progress consistently, deliberate practice leads to progress. And what we know from research is that when we feel progress, that means that good old dopamine blast is happening in the brain. That feeling of satisfaction, happiness, good will. And it's one of the key factors in being engaged in the workplace.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Yeah. And that other right there is how you become a SuperLearner with that engagement, that progress and that sense of satisfaction.
Vanessa Tanicien: Okay. So if I have this clear, deliberate practice is one of the key skills of being a super learner. And in order to do it effectively, you want to pick the thing you want to get good at, the skill, break it down into behavioral units and then pick one behavioral unit to practice. To end it up, we want to make sure that we get feedback on how we're doing now. Now it's time for our leader lab listener experiment. All right, McKendree. So what are we asking our folks to try out in their laboratory of life?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: So what I would love for our listeners to do is to pick a skill that they want to improve on and determine the particular behavioral units. And then just pick one of them. Just start small focus on one simple behavior and then create an action plan for how they can actually practice it, even if it's just that 10 minutes a day. And then finally figure out who they can get some feedback from and then add other behaviors as they do.
Vanessa Tanicien: Fantastic. I look forward to all the deliberate practice in my future. Thanks McKendree for joining us.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
Vanessa Tanicien: And that's a wrap of another episode of the LeaderLab. Make sure to subscribe and share this with at least one other person so we can all benefit from being super learners, is pretty exciting. The Leader Lab is executive produced and hosted by me, Vanessa Tanicien. NeEddra James is our senior producer, and Alana Burman is our director and editor. If you'd like to hang out with us on social, go ahead and find us on LinkedIn at Lifelabs Learning and on Twitter at LifeLabs Learn. To bring training to your team, head on over to lifelabslearning.com. See you in the labs soon.
