“Developing excellence in anything takes time” ~ Wendy Lambourne
For a leader, it is crucial to understand that enabling a person for a task or a role is a job that requires patience.
You cannot turn a novice into a maestro overnight. It takes time for a beginner to understand a process end-to-end and to master the requirements of conducting that process with all its fine details. It certainly helps if a trainee or apprentice is assigned a task repeatedly till it becomes second nature to complete the task with finesse… independently.
Wendy Lambourne quotes the 10,000 hour rule by neurologist David Levitan. According to him, roughly ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve real mastery. He claims that no one has yet found a case in which true world class expertise was accomplished in less time.
Wendy further quotes Anders Ericsson who coined the phrase “deliberate practice” and says that what is required is concerted, repetitive and focused engagement with the intention of improving what is being done. Deliberate practice is in fact the key to excellence. Moreover, deliberate practice is most effective under the guidance of a coach.
The finest artisans have followed this principle. It is said that the tailors who served the great Mughal emperors spent years and years training their apprentices on the fine nuances of sartorial skill. So an apprentice would spend several years just cutting a cloth straight across and then be moved on to cutting entire ensembles. The stitching would come much later.
It certainly helps if the trainee has a high aptitude to learning what you put him through but excellence can nevertheless be imbibed into an average mind if the leader remembers some key points before enabling a person for a task or a role:
- The Leader’s intent must be benevolent, service oriented and unconditional in the process of enablement.
- The employee/apprentice/student must be willing to be engaged in the process of enablement.
- The leader must constantly think of how the trainee must be enabled with what is in the trainee’s best interest. So if the trainee has weak interpersonal skills, you engage him in tasks that require polishing this certain weakness.
- An attitude that focuses on seeing the trainee as an end rather than means to an end helps the leader to be neither too generous nor too demanding but to remain appropriate in the task of enabling excellence in the trainee.
- The leader must communicate with the trainee as per the trainee’s level of understanding.
It takes years and years to produce a Michelangelo, a Kung Fu Master, an able classical singer or a fine medical practitioner. The process of training an individual towards excellence therefore demands patience and it certainly helps the leader or the coach to understand that his own enablement takes place simultaneously to that of the apprentice.