Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, talked about 10,000 hours of practice to achieve success and this clearly resonates with Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite, as you can see in his blog.
10,000 hours also resonates with Matthew Syed, English number one table tennis player for many years, whose book Bounce proposes that it’s practice, not talent that enables us to acheive success.
The concept of 10,000 hours comes from Anders Ericsson, an American psychologist, who carried out extensive research into the factors underlying outstanding performance. It’s not just the 10,000 hours that are important. The quality of the practice is also important if we really really want success.
So quality of practice is key to success. Here are three sets of coaching questions to help you ensure the quality of your practice is supporting you in your career success:
1. How clear are you on your end goal and the next step in your career? How clear are you on what you need to do to get to the next step? How are you stretching yourself outside your comfort zones?
2. Are you getting the quality feedback you need to help you get closer to your goals? eg mentors, training, coaches, line manager, customers
3. How often do you see failure as evidence that you’re improving? (or do you let failure lead you to dispondency and thoughts about giving up?). How do you use failure to get closer to success?
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