For decades we've been exploring what differentiates exceptional leaders from other leaders. Recent research suggests the way leaders approach their development informs this gap. The concept of deliberate practice, pioneered by psychologist Anders Ericsson, explains how individuals in any field achieve extraordinary performance. Originally studied in domains like music, chess, and athletics, these principles are now being applied to executive development. The question for today's leaders is not whether they can improve, but whether they're willing to adopt the disciplined approach to get there.
Understanding Deliberate Practice
Deliberate practice is fundamentally different from routine on-the-job experience or casual skill development. While many professionals assume that years of experience automatically lead to expertise, research shows this isn't the case. In fact, studies demonstrate that professionals often plateau in their performance after just a few years, despite decades of additional experience.
Ericsson's research, spanning more than 30 years, identifies four key characteristics of deliberate practice:
- Specific focus on improvement: Practice must target specific weaknesses or skills, not general performance
- Immediate feedback: Performers must receive accurate, timely feedback about their performance
- High levels of repetition: Skills must be practiced repeatedly, often in isolated components
- Progressive difficulty: Practice must continuously push beyond current comfort zones
For executives, this means that simply doing their job, even doing it well, won't lead to exceptional performance. Leadership excellence requires the same intentional, systematic approach to skill development that creates world-class performers in other fields.
The Science Behind Expertise Development
Neuroscience research supports Ericsson's findings about deliberate practice. Studies using brain imaging show that intensive, focused practice creates physical changes in the brain. Deliberate practice increases myelin. the white matter that speeds neural transmission, in brain regions associated with specific skills (Pascual-Leone, 2005).
This neuroplasticity goes some way to explaining why some executives continue improving throughout their careers while others stagnate. The brain rewires itself in response to deliberate practice, but only when that practice meets specific criteria for intensity and focus.
Deliberate practice works by pushing performers beyond their comfort zone into the learning zone (Ericsson and Pool, 2016). In this state, the brain is forced to develop new neural pathways and strengthen existing connections. For executives, this means intentionally seeking challenges that stretch their current capabilities rather than relying on proven strengths.
Executive Applications of Deliberate Practice
Unlike musicians who can isolate specific technical skills, executive development presents unique challenges. Leadership involves complex, nuanced, dynamic interactions that resist simple decomposition into their constituent parts. However, research indicates that the principles of deliberate practice can be adapted for executive development (Mukunda, 2012).
Strategic Decision-Making: Consider how exceptional executives develop their decision-making capabilities. Rather than simply making decisions and moving on, they engage in premortems (Klein, 2007) and decision autopsies. In premortems, a leader gathers their team before a final decision is made and asks them to imagine the project has been a disaster one year in the future. Each team member writes a history of the disaster by listing plausible reasons for the failure. This process legitimizes and encourages dissent and allows the team to identify risks and weaknesses that might have otherwise been ignored. Decision autopsies are used as a systematic analysis of both successful and failed decisions to identify patterns and improve future performance.
Impact and Influence: Exceptional leaders also apply deliberate practice principles to the ways they communicate and engage others. Rather than assuming years of town halls, presentations, and meetings naturally improve their ability to inspire, motivate, and mobilize their employees, they isolate specific elements of communication for focused improvement.
One pharmaceutical executive we worked with recorded himself on stage and worked with his executive coach to analyze vocal patterns, message clarity, and engagement techniques. He identified his specific weaknesses, using too many slides full of technical jargon, rushed pacing under pressure, and a lack of emotional connection. He then practiced these elements separately through role-playing and improv exercises. His efforts resulted in 40% higher pulse ratings of his town halls.
Emotional Intelligence: Deliberate practice can also be applied to the emotional intelligence, often considered an innate leadership quality. Research by Marc Brackett at Yale University shows that emotional skills can be systematically developed through focused practice.
Take for example the consumer goods executive who struggled with emotional regulation during high-stress situations. Instead of general stress management advice, he worked with his coach to identify specific triggers and develop targeted responses. They used video analysis and role-playing to practice his responses to high-stress scenarios. By treating emotional regulation as a skill requiring deliberate practice rather than a fixed trait, he achieved significant improvement.
The Four Stages of Executive Deliberate Practice
Leaders can follow these four steps to work on their leadership development using a deliberate practice mindset.
Stage 1: Skill Identification and Assessment: Many executives have limited awareness of their specific developmental needs. Comprehensive executive assessment, 360-feedback, behavioral analysis, and performance data help identify precise areas for improvement. This stage requires brutal honesty about current capabilities and gaps. Incompetent performers are often unaware of their deficiencies (Dunning & Kruger, 1999). As such, this means self-assessment alone is insufficient. External feedback and objective measurement are essential.
Stage 2: Skill Decomposition: Complex leadership capabilities must be broken down into component skills that can be practiced separately. For example, strategic thinking might break down into pattern recognition, scenario planning, systems thinking, and competitive analysis, each requiring different practice. This decomposition allows executives to focus intensively on specific weaknesses rather than trying to improve everything simultaneously. Research shows that divided attention significantly reduces learning effectiveness, making this focus crucial for leadership development.
Stage 3: Structured Practice: Each component skill requires specific practice activities that provide immediate feedback and progressive challenge. This might involve simulation exercises, case study analysis, or recorded practice sessions with expert feedback. The key is creating practice with sufficient stretch and intensity for leadership growth while being relevant to the executive's real world context.
Stage 4: Integration and Application: Finally, component skills must be integrated back into comprehensive leadership capabilities and applied in real-world situations with continued feedback and adjustment. This stage tests whether isolated skill development translates into improved overall performance.
Common Misconceptions About Executive Development
Several myths prevent executives from adopting deliberate practice:
Myth 1: Experience Equals Expertise Many executives assume that years of experience automatically create expertise. Research shows this isn't the case. Only specific types of challenging, feedback-rich experience drive improvement.
Myth 2: Leadership is Art, Not Science While leadership involves creativity and intuition, the underlying skills can be systematically developed. Even artistic domains like music and painting benefit from deliberate practice of technical fundamentals.
Myth 3: Adult Learning is Limited Neuroscience research demonstrates that adult brains remain plastic and capable of development throughout life, provided the right conditions for learning are created.
Myth 4: Natural Talent Determines Outcomes Ericsson's research across multiple domains shows that deliberate practice, not innate talent, is the primary differentiator between good and exceptional performance.
The Upsides and Challenges of Deliberate Practice
Leaders and organizations that embrace deliberate practice for executive development create competitive advantage. Disciplined skill development is a key differentiator between good and exceptional companies. The compounding effects of deliberate practice mean that small advantages in leader capability expand over time. Executives who consistently apply these principles don't just improve incrementally, they can achieve breakthrough performance that separates them from peers who rely on experience alone.
That said, deliberate practice for executives faces some unique challenges. Unlike music or chess, leadership involves multiple, interconnected capabilities that are difficult to isolate and practice separately. Performance feedback is often delayed, subjective, or politically influenced, making it difficult to get the immediate, accurate feedback that deliberate practice requires. Additionally, senior executives face enormous demands on their time and attention, making sustained focus on skill development challenging. Some organizations resist the time and resources required for serious executive development. Despite these challenges, research supports the effectiveness of deliberate practice when adapted thoughtfully and thoroughly to executive development.
Future Directions
Emerging research in virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and simulation technology offers new possibilities for executive deliberate practice. These technologies can create realistic practice environments with immediate feedback while allowing executives to experience challenging scenarios safely. Additionally, advances in neuroscience and biometric monitoring provide increasingly sophisticated ways to measure skill development and optimize practice.
Conclusion
The principles of deliberate practice offer executives a scientifically-grounded approach to achieving exceptional performance. Rather than hoping that experience and intuition will lead to improvement, leaders can adopt the same systematic development approaches that create world-class performers in other domains.
This isn't about working harder, it's about working more intelligently on skill development. For executives willing to embrace the discipline and discomfort that deliberate practice requires, the potential for breakthrough performance improvement is extraordinary.
The question facing today's leaders isn't whether they can develop standout capabilities, but whether they're willing to adopt the intentional, systematic approach necessary for achieving them.
References
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