“Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.”
– Malcolm Gladwell
10,000 hours of deliberate practice. This number may be “conventional wisdom” in certain quarters
1. Has it taken you five to ten years of constant slog to become good at your role on a project or in leading a team? It might take several years of learning on the job, mistakes, and exposure to various project environments. A necessary apprenticeship for budding change, project and business professionals to build and broaden their skillset.
But is the 10,000-hour rule all there is to building your expertise? Deliberate practice is engagement in structured activities created to improve performance in a domain.
2. But does the evidence support this?
Not necessarily. A meta-analysis of 88 studies of over 11,000 participants revealed how deliberate practice accounted for a small percentage of performance. Deliberate performance accounted for a higher percentage of performance in games, sports and music.
But what about business or project professionals? This study suggested that deliberate performance accounted for only 1% of performance in professions. Ouch.
Project and change professionals work on projects with similar ups and downs to small business owners. Constantly evolving environments requiring unconventional thinking and a fairly strong character! A study of 132 German small business owners reflected the small influence of deliberate practice on performance
3. So where to from here?
Conventional thinking suggests: Get a coach.
Want to improve in a sport? Or improve your professional skills, especially in areas of leadership and management? Coaching is considered a partnership. This partnership results in a thought-provoking and creative process, inspiring a client to maximise their potential, according to the International Coach Federation (ICF).
My brush with coaching was through a “Coaching for Managers” course. The trainer, Nickolas Yu, was a professional coach and was undergoing training in coaching psychology at the University of Sydney. Three full days of coaching training sounds like a tough challenge to sustain your attention. It is. Yet Nickolas held our attention for three solid days. He had training and experience as a psychiatric nurse and worked in this capacity part-time while also building his coaching practice.
We learned coaching models like the GROW model
4. In the three days of training, there were many opportunities to practice our empathic listening skills and applying the GROW model to conversations. I found that a coaching conversation is markedly different to a normal conversation. For one, a coaching conversation is non-directive. We don’t jump in to solve our partner’s problem, nor do we pass judgement on whatever decision is forming in their mind.
As a change leader, I am often in the position of coaching an organisation or team in how they can best prepare for a change. My coaching helps steer decision-makers towards strategies or workarounds to help the employees in their remit adjust to the change. From my days as an IT Trainer, I learned that participants in your training often solve problems for others in the same class. Sometimes other’s answers are more articulate than yours. By remaining silent and giving others the space to problem-solve, you are truly a facilitator.
Yet decision-makers prefer their change experts to lead on the front foot and to have an array of solutions available and ready to go, rather than take an open and non-directive role. In my experience, a Change Manager balances between the solution provider and facilitator/coach.
Now here is a less conventional idea: Self-coaching. Yes, Nickolas Yu got us to try this strange idea of “coaching yourself”. I remember feeling quite strange as he got each of us pacing up and down the classroom mumbling to ourselves. How odd is a self-coaching session, especially around others? While each of us felt self-conscious at the time, there was something powerful in the notion of being your own coach.
Can I be my own coach?
It is possible, and if you’re not averse to this unconventional approach, it is something that you can make a regular go of. You might try practising the GROW model. Or attend a coaching course so that you can become more confident in the coaching context and coaching conversations.
You can learn Socratic dialogue methods, which are clever ways to understand why someone behaves the way they do and thinks the way they think. Psychologists and counsellors use the Socratic dialogue method to understand a client motivation. Coaches also use this method, and the power of a well-timed and well-thought-out question can impact a coaching session. A single powerful question can reveal much to a client who has reasonable insight into their predicament or aspirations.
There are many books on self-coaching which are worth having a look at too. Journaling is another form of self-coaching. You can gain a little clarity by committing your words to paper and thinking through either a predicament or an aspiration. Journaling might be a smart way to get loose ends out onto paper, which is perfect before a good night’s sleep.
There are many ways for you to foster a sense of possibility and forge greater resilience. Could self-coaching serve as a small, free and important support mechanism in your career?
What is a well-known, easy to use coaching model?
The GROW model is one of the major coaching models. If you have never heard of GROW, let’s look at this model now:
G — Goals: “What is your goal for this week at work?”, or “What does a successful change look like to your team?”
R — current Reality: “What is your current reality today?” or “What is happening now about the change? What is the effect or result of this current reality?”
O — Options: “What is the range of options available to you?” or “What obstacles stand in your way of achieving the successful change you would like to see?”
W — Wrap up: “So what actions are you going to take?”
The last part of the GROW model is important. When someone has decided the action or actions they’re going to take, the coach can help the person decide on a date to review their progress. This accountability is a large part of the effect of coaching.
More experienced coaches may use more complicated models. Or they may eschew coaching models for more freeform conversations with their clients. As Nickolas put it, less use of “muscular” models and coaching approaches and more fluid yet just as effective empathic conversations.
What about journaling?
Journaling might not be something you consider when you think about coaching. Yet journaling is an effective way to get to the bottom of your thoughts and feelings about a given topic. Benjamin Franklin kept a virtues diary. In his virtues diary, he would focus on a particular virtue for at least one month. In doing so he maintained a laser-like focus on trying to improve himself in one narrow facet of human nature.
In his book The Effective Executive, management guru Peter Drucker suggested that executives keep a diary of decisions they have made 5. Why? The executive can use their diary to review the decisions they made months ago. In doing so, they can see the thought process and assumptions underpinning each decision. By reflecting on these facets of each decision, they can mature their thinking in light of the realities they faced after making each decision.
Psychologists are advised by clinical teachers in their profession to keep a reflective journal. This journal de-identifies clients and is more about the psychologist’s feelings and approaches in a professional capacity.
Documenting their thoughts and feelings about professional practice is a way to debrief. Committing to paper helps you think about professional goals, habits and preferences. How much clarity and focus can you achieve in ten minutes of writing?
Journaling doesn’t have to be a lengthy download onto a page either. What about the simple act of writing only three things that you are grateful for today? Your “three things” is an unusually effective way to reappraise a very bad day at work. I know this from repeated experience.
Journaling may be a great way to coach yourself. If you’re facing a predicament you could have at least three ways to answer your questions. Each way is a method used by executive coaches:
- The GROW model;
- The “miracle question”: If you woke up one morning, and a miracle happened and your goal was achieved, what would be different? 6
- The “friend question”: What advice would you give to a friend?
Self-coaching: the why and how
Is there evidence to support the two self-coaching options in this article? Yes.
Alan Carr and his team from the School of Psychology at the University College Dublin conducted a meta-analysis of 347 studies involving over 72,000 participants. This huge study included clinical and non-clinical populations across 41 countries 7. The analysis looked at the effectiveness of various positive psychology interventions. These interventions included journaling and doing exercises to create an optimistic outlook. The latter activity referred to describing “one’s best possible self”, although this activity might also apply to self-coaching. Gains in uplifted well-being were sustained even several months after regular practice.
Pick a regular part of your week where you have ten minutes to focus your attention. For self-coaching, it could be on the drive to the shops by yourself. As awkward as self-coaching may seem, no one is around to notice.
“So what is your goal for this next week at work?”
If anything, using the GROW model helps focus your mind on what you want to achieve next. Or help you talk through mixed emotions about a work-related circumstance.
For journaling, it may be on a late afternoon on a Friday. This way you can download your feelings about the challenges for the week. Or list “loose ends” to help clear your mind for the next week 8.
Can you see the merit of self-coaching and journaling for better performance? Regular practice in these affirming activities is straightforward and enjoyable. Deliberate practice (and the 10,000 hours assumption) have a small part to play in your career. Can self-coaching methods play a greater part in uplifting your performance on projects?
My book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now. You can also check out my online course on Change Management.
References
1. Gladwell M. Outliers: The Story of Success (Paperback).; 2021.
2. Macnamara BN, Hambrick DZ, Oswald FL. Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions: A Meta-Analysis. Psychol Sci. 2014;25(8):1608–1618. doi:10.1177/0956797614535810
3. Keith N, Unger JM, Rauch A, Frese M. Informal Learning and Entrepreneurial Success: A Longitudinal Study of Deliberate Practice among Small Business Owners. Appl Psychol. 2016;65(3):515–540. doi:10.1111/apps.12054
4. (1) The GROW Model for Coaching by Sir John Whitmore — YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK4_kAObZwQ. Accessed August 21, 2021.
5. Peter Drucker — The Effective Executive (3).pdf. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxzYWppdHRvdXJpc218Z3g6MjQ1N2M2OGQ4YWIwOTcyYw. Accessed August 28, 2021.
6. de Shazer S. THE MIRACLE QUESTION Steve de Shazer ( BFTC ). 2000:2–3.
7. Carr A, Cullen K, Keeney C, et al. Effectiveness of positive psychology interventions: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Posit Psychol. 2020;00(00):1–21. doi:10.1080/17439760.2020.1818807
8. Syrek C, Weigelt O, Peifer C, Antoni C. Zeigarnik’s Sleepless Nights: How Unfinished Tasks at the End of the Week Impair Employee Sleep on the Weekend Through Rumination. J Occup Health Psychol. 2016;22. doi:10.1037/ocp0000031