The Power of Practice

The days are getting shorter, the air colder, and the first brushings of snow on the ground are appearing. In the Northeast of North America, it’s beginning to feel a lot like the holiday season. Thoughts of drinking hot chocolate under a warm blanket by the fire, opening gifts surrounded by family, and watching the same movies on repeat as crystallized snowflakes float down from the sky and cover the porch. It’s a beautiful time of year that allows us to close the door on this past year and open the door into the next, full of hope, promise, and opportunities.

With the approach of a new beginning, many of us set out to make new commitments to ourselves, the infamous New Years' Resolutions. You may be looking back at the past year and celebrating how you successfully managed to stick to your resolutions that have resulted in life-changing accomplishments, or, you may have yet to experience a successful year of sticking to your resolutions. Whatever the outcome, the likelihood that you will be setting goals for yourself next year is pretty high. A recent article in Scientific American states that almost fifty percent of all people set a goal for the new year. However, additional research shows that only nineteen percent of those resolutions are successfully maintained after two years. So, if you have yet to be successful in keeping your promises to yourself, to eat healthier, exercise more, lose weight, or take control of your finances, take comfort in knowing that you're not alone.

Interestingly, as we are busy deciding on new resolutions for ourselves, many companies are doing the same. According to Forbes, most companies set annual goals moving into the New Year. From revenue goals to sales goals to user growth and traffic goals and beyond, companies are gunning for some form of growth or transformation in the new year.

As Coaches, we are often recruited to support leaders and leadership teams in helping them not only to set goals for the organization, or their respective teams. One observation that we make over and over again is that successful organizations don't only focus on the desired outcomes, but also take time to identify what habits or behaviors need to be practiced or learned in order to achieve the success of those goals and are then successful at nurturing those behaviors and habits. Where many organizations struggle is not in the goal setting, or even in the identification of the necessary behaviors, but rather in the "nurturing" piece of the puzzle. This is known as the Intention-Behavior Gap and it's a common symptom in most organizations today. The reason for this is that nurturing a new behavior requires consistent dedicated practice from everyone. It's what we like to call: The Power of Practice.

By definition, ‘practice’ means to “carry out, apply,” or in other words, to do. The power to make changes, accomplish our goals, and become better leaders lies behind the practice we put in. As Bruce Lee said, “knowing is not enough, we must apply.” As leaders, we strive to be better every day. We’re constantly taking in new information, new research, and new feedback to help us move closer to where we want to be. However, where there seems to be a block, is between taking in intellectual knowledge and turning it into a behavioral practice. We have all of this wonderful information in our minds, what would be possible if we could turn all of that into practice??

“Many leaders believe that intellectual understanding is enough,” says Jennifer Long from Harvard Business Publishing, which may be because “as leaders, we generally have the intellectual capacity to quickly grasp concepts and ideas.” It’s easy to pick up new ideas and reinforce them in our minds, but for as long as it stays there, it can only have an influence in theory. Without the practice piece, real change can’t happen. Being good at picking up new information can often “lead us to mistakenly believe we also know how to execute on them right away,” though the key to being able to do this is to “practice, get feedback, refine our approach, and practice again.”

Watch "The Power of Practice" here

The fortunate, and sometimes unfortunate, fact is that we’re all really good at practicing. We’re practicing something all the time, whether that’s consciously or subconsciously. For example, when we speak down to ourselves in a self-demeaning manner, we become really good at it over time. For example, if I repeatedly say to myself that I'm worthless, fat, stupid, lazy, and so on, I become really good at putting myself down. On the other hand, if I consistently practice being gentle and compassionate to myself, I become really good at that too. What this means is that every one of us becomes the product of what we consistently practice. Who you are today and where you are in your life today is the result of what thoughts, mindsets, and behaviors you have consistently been practicing over many years.

Consistent practice is the key to behavior change, and behavior change is the key to getting different results. Through repetitive action, we physically change our neural circuitry. Practicing a new skill creates a unique pathway between the cortex, responsible for higher processes, and the basal ganglia, “responsible primarily for motor control, as well as other roles such as motor learning, executive functions and behaviors, and emotions.” The more often we repeat this skill, the stronger the neural pathway becomes, allowing us to perform with less effort and less thought over time. In other words, practice polishes the circuits we’ve created to become a habit, but without consistent practice, those newly formed habits degrade.

When setting an annual plan for your team there will be a critical period when the consistent practice of new behaviors drops significantly, which often becomes the defining period whether or not your team or organization will be successful at meeting its goals. In her book: Get It Done: Surprising Lessons From The Science of Motivation, behavioral scientist Ayelet Fishbach shares that we tend to have the highest levels of motivation at the beginning and at the end stretch of pursuing a goal. However, it's the middle period where the motivation for consistent practice wanes. This is also the period where growth slows down, which is what we know as a "plateau."

Spending time in a plateau, or periods where you see no progress or any significant improvement, as defined in the book Mastery by George Leonard, are a critical, and inevitable part of learning. On our way to being really good at what we’re practicing, we’re going to hit points where it feels like we’re making no progress at all. Being an often frustrating run-in, this is a common point of quitting. However, plateaus give us an incredible opportunity to, that’s right, practice. This seemingly stagnant phase of development is where we’re able to try out new processes and build our brain-to-movement dictionary further. While progress is the fun and exciting part, progress can’t happen without practice and the plateaus.?

We’re extremely lucky to live in a time where there’s an abundance of advice, research, and input on the latest leadership topics daily, if not almost hourly. However, the power in that research can only be harnessed when we take it upon ourselves to put it into action, or in other words, practice, which is often “hard to do.” A likely reason why a process that we all know is important, yet very few of us intentionally practice on a daily basis is because “learning something new means being clumsy at it initially, making mistakes, course-correcting, and trying again. It’s uncomfortable.” Oftentimes, it feels a lot easier to just keep doing what we’ve always been doing. I mean, things haven’t been all that bad. Maybe now’s not the time to make those changes. In fact, learning something new can often “make our work more difficult at first, causing many leaders to stop trying new things and revert to old habits.” Being able to push through that urge to revert is the boundary between good and great.?

When you do find yourself on an inevitable plateau, set the intention to practice for the sake of practice. This tip from George Leonard takes away the stress of feeling the need to achieve and instead shifts our mindset to making small improvements along the way. The focus then becomes getting a little better every day instead of trying to achieve something. Though it seems counterintuitive, by taking our focus off of the goal, we oftentimes get there faster. This process will make the plateaus more bearable, and sometimes even fun!

As we set out on the journey towards our new goals for 2023, keep in mind the power of practice. While the goals we set are the ultimate destination, the ability to practice and stay consistent in the new action we take is the vehicle that allows us to get there. When it comes to staying headstrong in the practice of practice and practicing for the sake of practicing as recommended by George Leonard, it can often be more helpful to ask yourself “How can I be 1% better in my leadership today than I was yesterday?” every day than to ask yourself “How can I be the best leader today?” The small improvements over time and the commitment to that practice is the inevitable path to achieving all our goals.?

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Level V Partners Ltd?is a boutique Executive Coaching firm by?Marcel Daane?and?Kilani Daane, a Father-Daughter Coaching Duo. We partner with providers and coaches worldwide to help you raise the bar in how your people work and perform together so that you can focus on what matters most, your company's bottom line.

Using a full suite of psychometric assessments, leadership and culture surveys, customized workshops, and coaching programs, you can find comfort in knowing that Level V Partners has a solution for every level of your organization that helps your people work even more effectively together no matter where they are based in the world.

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