PerformanceManagement
There’s one question we all ask when we witness greatness: When the expert pianist hears a complicated piece once and can immediately play it. When the Olympic divers perfectly synchronize their tumbling off the platform. When the veteran colleague closes yet another tough sale.
We observe them with awe and ask: “How do they do it?”
We usually ask this question rhetorically. It’s more of a statement of wonder than an actual query. But, it really is a good question to investigate.
How do they do it? How exactly do elite performers master their craft?
And, what lessons can we learn from these elite performers that will allow each of us to reach expert level excellence in our professional skills?
This question resonates in today’s business environment.
In the life sciences sector, organizations are increasingly focused on elevating their talent to elite levels of performance and making their “best even better.” The pursuit of mastery isn’t just about improvement; it’s about achieving consistent excellence. More importantly, this requires us to be able to perform regardless of the circumstances around us or the situation in which we find ourselves.
From the psychological literature, we define skill mastery as an individual’s ability to perform a skill to an elite level across situations, contexts and pressures. This definition is crucial because it emphasizes consistency and adaptability, not just peak performance in ideal conditions.
So, how does someone achieve mastery within their own performance context(s)? Let’s outline three core phases of development that are essential to achieving mastery in our work.
Drawing from Anders Ericsson’s seminal research, we know that achieving mastery begins with deliberate practice. To illustrate these principles, consider a soccer player working to master penalty kicks — a skill that, like many business capabilities, requires precision, consistency and performance under pressure. Within the deliberate practice phase, there are four main components to incorporate:
Quality repetition: While “practice makes perfect” is a common phrase, the reality is more nuanced. Practice makes permanent — whether perfect or not. For the soccer player, this means not just taking hundreds of penalty kicks, but ensuring each attempt is purposeful and focused on improvement.Similarly, in business, without focused, intentional practice, we risk becoming very good at doing something very poorly. Elite performers understand that each repetition should be purposeful and aligned with specific performance goals or benchmarks.
Establishing clear benchmarks: Before beginning the journey to mastery, we must define “what good looks like.” For our soccer player, the benchmark is clear: consistently placing the ball in the corner of the goal.In business, consider a sales professional aiming to master handling customer objections. The better they define their benchmark, or the standard to which they aspire to improve their skill, the more intentional their practice and repetition becomes. To which these benchmarks serve as crucial navigation points for guiding practice efforts and measuring progress to one’s goal(s).
Realistic settings: The environment in which we practice significantly impacts our ability to transfer skills to real-world situations. The soccer player practices penalty kicks on a regulation pitch, with a real goal and goalkeeper — not just shooting against an empty wall.Similarly, in business, the closer our practice setting mirrors our performance context, the more seamless this transfer becomes. A sales professional practicing objection handling should do so in conditions that closely simulate actual customer interactions.
Nuanced feedback and coaching: Without effective feedback and coaching, the path to mastery becomes significantly more challenging, if not impossible. The soccer player needs to identify an experienced coach who can provide nuanced feedback about technique, approach and execution — specifically, someone who understands the subtle differences between a good penalty kick and a great one.In business, the same holds true. A sales rep who endeavors to elevate their objection handling to mastery levels needs to identify the “right” coach who can provide them targeted, even “nit-picky” feedback on how and where they can improve.
It’s important to consider two additional elements that are vital for this feedback and coaching to take root:
The learner’s coachability is critical for achieving mastery. Achieving mastery requires that we are open to hearing feedback when provided, seek the feedback we need when it’s not readily available and apply the information we discern to be valuable quickly and consistently. These are the cornerstone behaviors of a highly coachable person and an accelerant in our path to mastery.
Identifying the right coach is paramount. Just as a soccer player needs a coach with penalty kick expertise, feedback from someone who hasn’t achieved proficiency or expertise in the business skill we’re trying to improve will lack the nuanced insights necessary for advancing to elite levels of performance.
In both practice and research, we see many individuals stop after the deliberate practice phase, believing they’ve achieved mastery. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. True mastery requires pushing beyond initial success through overlearning.
The goal of overlearning is to achieve automaticity — the ability to perform and execute a skill automatically, or as second nature, without the need for extensive conscious thought or processing. Consider our soccer player; during deliberate practice, they might successfully place the ball in the top corner once, which is certainly an achievement. However, overlearning asks a more demanding question: “Can you score in the top corner five or 10 times in a row?”
In this phase, the goal is to practice beyond the point of proficiency. This continued practice serves two crucial purposes. First, it helps free up cognitive resources that we can dedicate to other areas of our performance. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it allows us to retain our skills over time.
Research demonstrates that overlearning significantly enhances skill retention, which is critical for both near and long-term performance and execution. It also helps protect against skill decay. We’ve all heard the phrase “if you don’t use it, you lose it,” and this is particularly true in a skill development and mastery context.
The final phase in achieving mastery focuses on generalizability — the ability to transfer and perform a skill across a wide range of situations, challenges and environments. While deliberate practice builds the foundation and overlearning creates automaticity, adaptive learning is where true mastery emerges.
Through the first two phases, we develop the ability to execute our skill at high-caliber levels. But mastery demands more: What happens when obstacles, pressures or challenges come our way — can we still execute?
Let’s think back to our soccer player. Through deliberate practice and overlearning, they’ve developed the ability to consistently place penalty kicks in the top corner of the goal. But can they maintain this excellence in a playoff game when everything rides on their shot? With opposing fans screaming to break their concentration? Under the intense pressure of a World Cup final?
This is where adaptive learning becomes crucial. This phase deliberately incorporates complexities, obstacles and pressures into the training environment. It requires individuals to practice in different settings, ensuring they can generalize their skill and perform regardless of the situations they face.
In business contexts, this principle is equally vital. Consider our sales professional who has significantly elevated their ability to handle objections through the first two phases. Now, adaptive learning asks:
Can they execute this skill with a top-performing customer?
Can they adapt when they have three minutes instead of 30 with a customer?
Can they perform when dealing with multiple stakeholders simultaneously?
This is where true mastery lies: Executing a skill to the highest levels while maintaining this excellence regardless of the situation, setting or challenge faced. This is elite performance.
I wish it was, but the path to mastery is neither simple nor quick. It’s intentional, systematic and often tedious, especially in the early phases. Through the progressive phases of deliberate practice, overlearning and adaptive learning, individuals can develop skills to truly elite levels. Each phase builds upon the previous one, creating a comprehensive approach that results in consistent, highlevel performance across any context.
What separates good performers from elite ones isn’t just their ability to execute well in ideal conditions, or even to do so automatically. It’s their capacity to maintain that level of excellence regardless of the circumstances. This is mastery in its truest form — the ability to perform at the highest levels, consistently and adaptably, no matter what challenges arise.
For organizations aiming to develop truly elite performers, understanding and implementing these three phases into training and practice settings — and in the flow of day-to-day work — is crucial. It’s not enough to simply practice; the path to mastery requires structured, progressive development that builds from foundational competence through automaticity and ultimately to adaptive excellence.
Jake Weiss, Ph.D., is president & CEO of Coachability Consultants. Email Jake at jake.weiss@coachabilityconsultants.com or connect through https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-weiss-ph-d-a6a92aa3/.
