How Can Deliberate Practice Help You Build Your Business?

In one of our prior videos, I shared the concept of continuous improvement and how it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to transform someone from an amateur (with no expertise) to a world-class expert.

This sounds great, but it also sounds hard, arduous, and time-consuming. That’s right—it does, and it is. It takes passion and perseverance over a long period to achieve world-class expertise.  It takes what Angela Duckworth, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, calls grit.

Duckworth defines grit as “sustained passion and perseverance for very long-term goals.” In other words, grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, and day out—not just for the week or month, but for years, and working hard to make that future a reality.

In her book “Grit” (which is fabulous by the way—put it on your reading list), Duckworth explained how she studied and tried to predict the following:

• Which cadets at the West Point Military Academy would stay in military training and which would drop out

• Which children at the National Spelling Bee would advance farthest in the competition

• Which rookie teachers working in tough neighborhoods would still be teaching by the end of the school year, and of those, who would be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students

• Which high school juniors in the Chicago public school system were going to graduate

Also, she partnered with private companies and asked which of their salespeople would keep their jobs and earn the most money. In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. It wasn’t family income, standardized achievement test scores, or even how safe kids felt when they were at school. It wasn’t IQ, charming good looks, physical health, or social intelligence either. It was grit.

“It takes passion and perseverance over a long period to achieve world-class expertise.”

So is grit something that we are born with, is it a byproduct of a tougher upbringing, or is it something that can be learned? Grit is something that can certainly be learned, and the process of deliberate practice is not only the tool we use to master our craft but also the environment that can foster the growth of our grit muscle.

It’s this process of deliberate practice done over and over and over that allows us to continuously improve, grow, and realize our true potential.

“If we can embrace and fall in love with the process of deliberate practice, the sky’s the limit for what we are trying to accomplish.”

The Seahawks just whooped the Patriots on a recent Sunday night football, and in his post-game press conference, Russell Wilson described how deliberate practice helps his team make plays like the exceptional ones made to win the game. He said, “People talk about 10,000 hours to be great; I feel like I’ve spent 30,000 hours making those types of plays. You spend so much time in the offseason, with just the obsession of doing it over and over and over and over again, working at it, perfecting it. It’s not perfect, let’s do it again, let’s rep it again, let’s get it right. Those guys (his teammates) have completely bought into the process of it all, completely bought into the work ethic of it all.” He goes on to say, “I love winning. I love the process of winning. I love the process of the week (of practice). I love that more than the end result even.”

If we can embrace and fall in love with the process of deliberate practice, the sky’s the limit for what we are trying to accomplish.

So, as far as our team goes, one of the main ways continuous improvement is achieved is with the help of coaching and accountability from our success manager. Agents meet with our success manager once a week and receive feedback on the goals they created themselves and are then coached on their next steps to move forward. Along with this accountability and coaching, we provide two training sessions a week that agents are able to take advantage of. Couple this with the tools and leads we provide and the growth potential for our agents’ skills and business are constrained only by their desire to achieve them.

If you have a passion to be a great Realtor and find yourself plateauing, or just not sure what to do next to perpetuate Kaizen and stay on the path of growth in your career, give me a call to schedule a private one on one meeting. I would love to help you!