Deliberate Learning at Annual Meeting

Happy Annual Meeting Month!

For my business, I do a lot of study around what makes people we admire as experts, experts.

Myths:

• They were born with that special ability…
• If they did something long enough, they were bound to become experts…
• They just tried harder; all it takes is effort…

In reality, people are labeled as having ’natural talent’ or being ‘gurus’ in their field only after they have achieved their level of accomplishment. It is rare, if ever, that someone is labeled in that manner before they master their skills. Real masters own and are self-accountable for their vision, learning, practice, and improvement over an extended period of time. While they all seek out and are aided by coaches, mentors, and existing experts, it is their Deliberate Practice that sets the few apart from the many.

Anders Ericsson was the pioneer in researching and writing on what he termed “Deliberate Practice” through the 70’s and 80’s. In fact, if you’ve heard of, or read, well-known books such as: Atomic Habits by James Clear; Mastery by Robert Greene; Grit by Angela Duckworth; Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (although he kind of bastardized the research…); The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle; Deep Work by Cal Newport; or Mindset by Carol Dweck, they were all built on the back of research conducted by Ericsson.

In his book Peak, Anders outlines the fundamentals of deliberate practice:

1. It requires a field that is already well developed (like ours!).
2. It takes place outside one’s comfort zone and requires a student to constantly try things that are just beyond their current abilities.
3. It requires skills that others have already figured out how to do and for which effective training techniques have been established.
4. It involves well-defined, specific goals and often involves improving some aspect of the target performance, not some vague overall improvement.
5. It is Deliberate - it requires a person’s full attention and conscious actions.
6. It involves feedback and modification of efforts in response to that feedback.
7. It both produces, and depends, on effective mental representations.
8. It nearly always involves building or modifying previously acquired skills by focusing on particular aspects of those skills and working to improve them specifically. Over time, this step-by-step improvement will eventually lead to expert performance.

As a final point on these fundamentals, the most significant driver of developing expertise is the amount of time spent in solitary practice. Experts are not built in training events or at conferences; they are developed by a consistent and frequent cycle of implementation, self-analysis, feedback, learning, implementation, self-analysis, feedback, learning, implementation, etc., of what was learned in training events and at conferences.

Read my notes on Peak (FPP Library)

Advisors have two choices when they come to Annual in a few weeks: Show up and see what they absorb; or go focused on their specific learning priority and be purposeful in finding the right messages in right sessions. With that in mind, attached is a simple tool I built for you to use with your advisors to help them be deliberate in their learning and growth at Annual Meeting.

Open the Annual/Regional Meeting Learning Tool (FPP Tools)

Next week, have them complete page one and review it with their mentors before coming to MKE. Immediately after Annual Meeting, have them complete page two, review it with their mentor, and use their mentor as a coach/accountability partner to fine-tune and implement their plan. This is their first step in beginning the process of “Habit Stacking”, per James Clear.

This mindset is relevant, not just for your U5’s, but for your career advisors, Ensembles, PCG advisors, your Network Office team, and YOU - if they're there to grow, help them be deliberate, not just a passive participant.

If there is any of this that you or your team would like to talk through, or strategize on how to best implement, send me a note, I’m here to help you make an impact!

Think Differently,

Steve