What an Aikido Martial Artist Can Teach Us About Careers…Mastery by George Leonard

What an Aikido martial artist can teach us about careers.…Mastery by George Leonard.?

This book explores the relationship between mastery and any designated skill. It’s a really candid exploration of how we achieve true mastery not just in our careers but also in any area that we choose to practice the process of mastery.?

I am fortunate to be uniquely positioned to have witnessed the progression of people’s careers over many years. I have often wondered what makes one achieve a degree of mastery in their skill comparative to others in the same cohort. It’s a complex question with perhaps a more complicated answer but this book attempts to explore this precise relationship on how to hone skills in the pursuit of mastery.?

?

For those of you who read my first post: ‘Breaking the Silence with Books’, my nameless friend, who I wrote about introduced this book to me as he could see my earnest desire for growth in certain areas. I’m really glad he did. The implications on career are punchy if its lessons are adopted.?

George Leonard, attempts to reframe how we understand mastery and success and helps to elucidate why our traditional approach to mastering anything is often flawed. He applies Aikido Philosophy to reframe our understanding of how we go about achieving mastery in any arena of our choice.

I will try and uncover and unpick the key lessons from his book: Mastery, The Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfilment (by George Leonard).?

What is Mastery?

Leonard expounds that mastery is not “really a goal or destination but rather a process, a journey”. His starting position is that mastery “is available to anyone who is willing to get on the path and stay on it”. Leonard views the notion of mastery through our understanding of adopting, harnessing and executing new skills.

Leonard’s primary position is that we need to view mastery and its pursuit as a philosophy or a state of being as opposed to an achieved end.??The fundamental issue we experience in mastery is there is a “prodigious conspiracy against mastery. We are continually bombarded with promises of immediate gratification, instant success and fast temporary relief”.??Leonard argues that as a society we are “seduced by the siren song of a consumerist, quick-fix society, we sometimes choose a course of action that brings only the illusion of accomplishment, the shadow of satisfaction”.

Leonard’s argument is that there is an inevitable plateau that happens in the pursuit of new skills. It’s the engagement in this state of plateau that determines our ascendency of mastery. Leonard writes: “there’s really no way around it. Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it”. He calls this “The Mastery Curve”.

“To take the masters journey,??you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so – and this is the inexorable fact of the journey - you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere”. Elsewhere Leonard goes on to state that one needs to “practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself. Rather than being frustrated while on the plateau. You learn to appreciate and enjoy it just as much as the upward surges”.??

Personality types in the Pursuit of Mastery

He goes on to explore why most people are not on the path of mastery through the lens of three personality types: The Dabbler, The Obsessive, and The Hacker.??All three personality types engage with the plateau with various levels of commitment from The Dabbler, who engages in new skill-led activities constantly excited by the novelty only to drop the skill as soon as the inevitable plateau arises. The obsessive who energetically engages in the activity, instantly desiring perfection on the first attempt, only to give up once the plateau presents itself or the hacker who “sort of gets the hang of it” and so refuses to execute some of the more mundane requirements of mastery by “skipping stages essential to the development of mastery”.?

These character types are not clear-cut and in truth as individuals tend to oscillate between these personality types on our pursuit of mastery. “These characters, then have proven useful in helping us to see why we’re?not?on the path of mastery”.

Leonard appears to be critical of contemporary society arguing that as a society we pursue an “endless series of climatic moments” this serves to destroy our understanding of the necessity of embracing the plateau.?

Five Keys to Mastery

Having explained his position on mastery and the necessity to engage with the plateau he suggests that there are five key’s that we must adopt in order to embark on the journey of mastery. The five keys Leonard poses are the following: Instruction – the necessity for a teacher or mentor; Practice – the art of practicing for practicing’s own sake; Surrender – submission and humility and submitting oneself to the demands of your discipline and relinquishing your own hard-won proficiency for the sake of learning; Intentionality – visualising successful execution and engaging the use of will. This employs the use of mental imaging and imagination to influence the world of matter; The final key he provides is the Edge – those that institute the Edge key are “zealots of practice, connoisseurs of the small, incremental step. At the same time – and here’s the paradox – these people are precisely the ones who are likely to challenge the previous limits, to take risks for the sake of higher performance”.

Tools for Mastery

Leonard goes on to give some miscellaneous tools for mastery that will aid us in our pursuit. He argues that we must understand the principle of “homeostasis” and the innate human biological and psychological state to resist change as an instrument of survival and self-preservation. Homeostasis can be collective/organisational or individual.??Leonard provides some useful pointers in combatting homeostasis which can be explored in the section on the book titled: “Why Resolutions Fail and What to Do About it”.?

Another tool that Leonard suggests we need on the journey of mastery is energy. He gives several practical pointers on maintaining “energy for mastery” such as maintaining physical fitness, resolute and positive thinking, truth telling as an act of self-realisation, acknowledging our more negative emotions and using them for energetic purposes, setting our priorities and moving in one direction at the expense of other directions.?

Making commitments is the final tool. Despite the fact that “mastery is ultimately goalless; you take the journey for the sake of the journey itself”. Notwithstanding this, Leonard writes that we should still set “interim goals along the way” to create energy.

Having espoused his view, Leonard cautions his readers to be aware of several pitfalls that can hinder the path of mastery. He covers a broad range of items, such as competitiveness and vanity to abuse of drugs.?

Conclusion

To conclude, Leonard's book straddles the line of spirituality and practicality really well.??It is a great book for those truly interested in the idea of becoming a master of their craft. My natural suspicion and fear for books like these is that they might be hopelessly quixotic, often peddling commercial tropes to pander to an audience that want their quick fix. This book does the exact opposite. It gives a truly inspiring spiritual understanding of mastery and also practical guidelines to achieve it.?

I will conclude with a quote from Leonard that I feel encapsulates his philosophy: “…it's about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day. Year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again for as long as he or she lives”.