Deliberate Practice

Deliberate practice differs markedly from what most people do when they "practice." Deliberate practice entails actively striving to stay outside of your comfort zone in order to stretch and improve yourself. It is hard, exhausting, and painful.

For example. each winter I snowboard. However, when I do it, I do not deliberately practice it. I go out and do mostly those things that I already know how to do, on comfortable runs that are not too trying, on days that are relatively comfortable weather. If I ever wanted to actually get better, I would have to go out, do new things each day, and fail at them over and over again, getting hurt each time, until I improved.

An example of deliberate practice that I am currently doing is trying to learn new leadership styles from the people I work under in the military. In comparison to simply showing up to work and doing my job, I actively try to take note of what different management and leadership techniques different people employ, and how well they work. Then I try to use some of these techniques myself. Whether this be remembering more names, using different negotiation styles, talking to people in certain ways, organizing things in particular manners, etc., I am able to deliberately practice my own skills through striving to learn more from them and stay outside of my comfort zone of what has worked in the past.

This can hold true for any occupation. Whether it be that you are a cook and want to improve through each day trying to learn new meals, figure out how to improve current ones, etc., or whether you are a driver that needs to go on new tracks, use new vehicles, or other things. The key is to never get complacent and never get comfortable. Striving to find and overcome adverse circumstances is the key to improvement.

Leadership and Management - Military and School

An interesting thing about school (specifically management classes) is that we are often told to develop ourselves as leaders. We are taught how to manage, but how to lead is often left to our own doing.

To get the terms straight before discussing further:

Seth Godin describes these in the book "Tribes" as:

1. Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done.

2. Leadership is about creating change that you believe in.

Others say management is doing things right, while leadership is doing the right thing. 

Either way, it can be noted that these terms are not interchangeable, and must be developed by disntinctly different methods.

School: No Leadership Required

• Concentration is on management. 
  
• We learn to manage by getting due dates, project requirements, teams, tests, assignments, incremental tasks to be done
  
• Even in group work, can often rely on others to take leadership roles
• Extra-curriculars such as greek orgs, sports, student groups often used as leadership experience, but no leadership is required to be a follower in any and all of these organizations

TAKEAWAY: Learning leadership at school is a choice. Nobody will make you lead, you must take the initiative.

Military: A Culture of Leadership

• Leadership starts at the lowest levels, in word and spirit
• People in positions of power often require the weakest of their subordinates to teach classes on activities, forcing them to develop as leaders or further falter
• Judged on how you perform individually in areas such as physical fitness, rifle marksmanship, personal growth (schooling, military schooling, correspondence courses, etc). These force leaders to lead by example
• Initiative and creativity often encouraged to solve abstract tasks such as developing training, completing missions using limited resources, adapting to new conditions. No specific resource, action, outcome style of management as seen and developed through school coursework
• Army Values are Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, Personal Courage. "LDRSHIP"
• Entire manual dedicated to leadership and taught at specific schooling for leadership ("Army Leadership: Competent, Confident, Agile" http://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm6-22.pdf)

TAKEAWAY: Management is under-stressed, while leadership culture flourishes

Some questions arise:

•  How can we incorporate a leadership culture into our schools and workplaces? 

Instilling a culture of leadership requires forcing people to take full responsibility for actions and assessing them as such. For this to be incorporated in schools, heavier weights must be put on group members' assessments of classmates. Opportunities must be given to challenge the status quo. Assignments must be given that force people to mobilize their classmates in an effort to create something that they believe in while working under unknown circumstances. 

Less emphasis needs to be put on incremental non-meaningful changes, and more needs to be put on allowing people to work on what they believe in. Examples I"ve seen are a business plan class that allows your group to work on creating a real business plan (Alan Fine), and an Entre class that forces you to start a small business (Steve Spruth). This could be done in any number of classes. Maybe a journalism class that requires you try to get something published, or a chemistry class that forces you to try to find a way to make something new, etc (note that I have little knowledge of these courses, so I'm sure people in those fields can think of even better ways)

• Do we need to write new books on leadership and how they affect each industry that we work in? 

Obviously not, they've already been written. We just need to apply the concepts that work.

•  Is it really necessary to build an entire culture of leadership from the line worker on up? 
  

That is the only way it will work. Otherwise tomorrow's leaders won't know how to lead, and today's leaders will be gone. If you don't force those that are not strong leaders to do leadership tasks and better themselves, you will lose some of the best leadership potential in your organization.