BY: Geoffrey James
Once you've mastered a skill, it becomes automatic. Here's how to get it right, without the pitfalls.
Mastering a skill requires both theory and practice. Theory is
important, because if you're all about the "doing," you'll waste energy
doing the wrong things. And practice is important because, well, you
can read 50 books about sales (for instance) and still crash and burn on
your first customer call.
According to best-selling author Greg Wingard (The Red Bucket Strategy and Guaranteed Success),
your mind goes through six specific stages when mastering a skill–three
in the “theory” segment, and three in the “practice” segment.
The Theory Segment
- Unawareness: You are unaware that there is a skill to be learned.
- Awareness: You realize you need to learn that skill.
- Clarification: You understand what you need to do differently.
The Practice Segment
- Awkwardness: You attempt the new behavior and find it difficult.
- Familiarity: The new behavior is easier but still not automatic.
- Automatic: You no longer think about the behavior but simply do it.
It's when you reach that sixth stage that you have mastered a skill.
Up until that point, the skill requires requires constant and
consistent practice. After that point, however, the skill is automatic,
like riding a bike. You may get a bit rusty, but the skill is always
there for you to draw upon.
For example, when my father, who played concert piano, went back to
college in his 40s, he spent three years without access to a piano. But
when he graduated and finally bought a piano, he was back where he'd
been as a pianist within about a month.
That's a personal example, but the same is true in business as well.
Your value in the business world is directly tied to the number of
skills you've been able to master. It's those automatic skills that
represent your value over your competitors–who are hopefully struggling
with the hurly-burly of steps 1 through 5.
The amount and time and effort it takes reach mastery varies according to the complexity of the skill.
Suppose, for instance, that you want to change a habitual negative
thought (like “I’m not that good with people”) to a positive alternative
(like “people really like me when they get to know me”). That kind of
change can be accomplished in less than two weeks, simply through five
minutes of daily affirmations.
By contrast, changing something major, like your eating habits, can
take a commitment of an hour or more a day for six months to a year, or
even longer. The reason that so many people never master their diet is
that they never reach the point where healthy eating is automatic.
What You're Up Against
Practicing a new skill until you reach Stage 6 requires single-minded
focus. Unfortunately, that kind of focus is difficult to achieve in
today’s business word for two reasons. First, there's the problem of
distraction. Life is full of interruptions constantly vying for your
attention.
Second, most people over-commit. When people attempt to make changes
in multiple areas of their life, it becomes difficult or impossible to
focus on a single change long enough to reach stage 6.
Think how many times you've heard somebody say: “Starting tomorrow,
every day I’m going to run three miles, lift weights, drink eight
glasses of water, stop smoking, stop drinking coffee ... and eat 50
percent less fat.”
Yeah, right. I'm sure that will happen. The likelihood that
anyone can keep up that regimen for more than a few days (let alone
reach stage 6 on any element of the regimen) is practically nil.
To overcome distraction, set aside a very small amount of time each
day–hopefully less than 10 minutes–to focus on the change in behavior
that you seek. If it's more time than that, the reality is that other
priorities will probably intrude.
To overcome the pesky problem of over-commitment, pick a single skill
that you wish to master and then focus on that until it becomes
automatic. Then move to the next skill.
5 Important Steps
If you want to change a certain behavior, use these steps to make
create a practice regimen that, over time, will make it automatic. With
that in mind, here are five simple steps to carry you through all six
stages:
1. Script the new behavior. Write down exactly what you’d
like your new behavior to be. Be specific and make it quantifiable.
Example: I will make 10 cold calls every workday prior to 10am.
2. Practice it ... perfectly. The homily “practice makes
perfect” is itself imperfect. In fact, “perfect practice makes
perfect.” To hard-wire a behavior, you must push yourself to repeat it
religiously–and correctly.
3. Rebound and fix. You will probably stumble and forget at
first. Pick yourself up and keep going. Don’t let a temporary setback
turn into an excuse to fail. Stick with it, despite setbacks.
4. Accelerate through mental rehearsal. The behavior will become automatic more quickly if you take extra time to imagine yourself doing the behavior, thus creating a positive outcome.
5. Make it part of your identity. Turn the behavior into a
character attribute that’s part of who you are and what you value.
Example: "I’m the cold-calling champion of the region."
Follow those steps successively for each skill. Over time, your breadth of mastery will exceed your highest expectations.
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\SOURCE: www.inc.com0
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