“Practice, practice, practice”…”Practice makes perfect”…. familiar sayings within our culture, and they have been further popularized with the attention given to the 10,000 hours rule of deliberate practice to becoming a master in one’s chosen field. There is a good reason behind these saying, when we practice a skill, make mistakes, learn, and apply new learnings, we become better at what we are doing.
Athletes are great examples of practice makes perfect, and it’s through consist practice that enables them to progress in their sport. But how often do we practice within our place of work? Well like most, not often enough, yet we are expected (and hopefully you want to) to continuously improve our skills and improve our performance within the workplace.
Like great athletes, great teams within organizes know this secret to performing well, and it’s a skill I learned early in my career when I worked in sales and marketing.
When it came time to pitch a new client, each person on the team would spend time alone reading over the pitch deck word-by-word, several times, paying close attention to their part of the presentation. Then we would practice by reading out loud, to ourselves, and then meet as a team to practice. Once those practice sessions were completed it was time to gather people into the boardroom and practice in front of a live audience. The audience members would ask challenging questions, allowing us to practice making quick adjustments to our presentation as we presented ( note: this is very different than “winging it”).
Overtime, this method of practicing for important sales presentations became a standard way of preparing. It gave each person on the team a grounded sense of confidence when it came to pitch-day, enabling them to present creative and strategic solutions to our potential new clients. We were always able to address challenging questions and comments that often surface during the presentation.
How often did all this practice pay off for our company? Well when I left the business we had a close rate of nearly 90%. Not bad, and it prove that practice does make “nearly” perfect.
So as we enter 2015, set aside some time for quality practice. It could be anything you do that you want to become better at. You will soon start to see an increase in your performance, and a great sense of engagement in the work you do.
All the best in achieving your highest performance.
Paul
Image courtesy of Worakit Sirijinda at FreeDigitalPhotos.net