DELIBERATE PRACTICE FEEDBACK

If you have not seek this kind of feedback, it is absolutely a feedback like none other. And more than that— it is the kind of feedback that according to Eric Anders makes for true expertise. This is what he wrote about in his classic work, The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (2006) and it was there that he identified the 10-year rule (the 10,000 hours of deliberate practice) that enables one to reach expertise.

“The core assumption of deliberate practice is that expert performance is acquired gradually and that effective improvement of performance requires the opportunity to find suitable training tasks that the performer can master sequentially—typically the design of training tasks and monitoring of the attained performance is done by a teacher or a coach. Deliberate practice presents performers with tasks that are initially outside their current realm of reliable performance, yet can be mastered within hours of practice by concentrating on critical aspects and gradually refining performance through repetition after feedback. Hence the requirement for concentration sets deliberate practice apart from both mindless, routine performance and playful engagement, as the latter two types of activities would, if anything, merely strengthen the current mediating cognitive mechanisms, rather than modify them to allow increases in the level of performance.” (2006, p. 692)

Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea of the 10-year rule in Outliers as did others. The idea is that mere practice is not sufficient, it rather takes a very special kind of practice. Anders call it deliberate practice and set forth the criteria for that very special kind of practice in the above paragraph.

1) Designed to improve performance.

2) The action is repeatable.

3) The action is sharply defined.

4) Feedback to it is continuous.

5) The action is a stretch: beyond current

6) Action requires focused concentration.

7) Action is not easy, not inherently fun.

I bring this up because over the years we have developed a very unique kind of feedback, Deliberate Practice Feedback. For years we have used this in Trainers’ Training as we have identified the required skills for being an effective presenter as well as a whole set of sub-skills. It is the sub-skills that enable a person to practice over and over under supervision that allows one to stretch beyond current skill level to the next level, progressively moving toward expertise.

As recently as last week we discovered how we could to do this kind of feedback in learning the coaching skills. Because we have more than a dozen sub-skills for each coaching skill, we are now able to provide deliberate feedback for them. What’s unique about the feedback is that it is

given in real time and the person is given in that very moment, a chance to do it again. We think of it in the same way that a movie director wants to get the scene right and so does a “Take 2” or “Take 3" etc. until the production reaches a required standard.

If you were to join us in NSTT or in ACMC, you will find that from time to time the trainer or benchmarker will make an interruption, ask if you got the response that you wanted. If not, you would then get some feedback to shape what you did and then ask you to do a “Take 2.” This would repeat 2 to 4 times. The design is to bring to conscious awareness what you are doing, how you are doing it, and the effect its having. Then with that, giving you a chance to do some deliberate practice around a sharply defined action that’s part of expertise.

I am writing about this also because in just two weeks from now we begin NSTT in Colorado for 2018. Nowhere is there a trainers’ training that has developed as extensive a list of sub-skills and offers continuous and in-the-moment feedback during the presentations. If that is of interest to you, I have attached an Application Form and a Brochure of NSTT.

Reference: Ericsson, K. Anders; Charness, Neil; Feltovich, Paul; Hoffman, Robert. (2006 Ed.). The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.