As a musician (viola player to be precise) I remember when I started doing performances during my all important final year at music college. Like other dedicated musicians I put in the painstaking hours practising my recital repertoire. There were several ‘tricky’ passages in my music which I concentrated on until I could play them fluidly. When it came to my first recital, I remember putting on the performance of a lifetime and coming off frustrated that I had fluffed (technical term for playing a section wrong. It was an easy passage. So I talked it over with my viola tutor saying, “I don’t get it!! I practised and practised until I got it right and look what happened, I messed up the easy bit!!” My tutor just replied simply and with a wry smile, “You now need to practise until you can’t get it wrong.”
As L&D professionals we are familiar with the Conscious Competent/Unconscious Competent model of how we learn. What I learnt from that experience that has stayed with me, is that when you are under pressure it is sometimes the bits you least expect to, where you will make a mistake and it is those bits that need extra attention until you just can’t get them wrong, regardless of pressure.
In the fast moving world in which we work and live, how can we help our staff practise so they can’t get it wrong?
This is where the work we do with them on the job is so absolutely crucial and we will shortly be serving up 10 top tips to help you embed learning so they absolutely can’t get it wrong!
Good article Wendy. 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert according to Gladwell. Not enough managers practice being good managers.
Absolutely Adi a great book for those who havent read it yet – Malcolm Gladwell “Outliers”