You may think you are doing all of the right things. You coach. You let your team members make mistakes. You show them the “right way”. But is it enough?

The combination of learning from experiences — your own or others, trying new ways to get something right, and willingness to persist while remaining open-minded can be boiled down to some terms we are all quite familiar with: coaching, practice, and endurance. A recent analogy to the well-known tale of the three little pigs gives insight to how this combination can truly mean the difference between surviving and thriving. The article, focused on financial investment behaviors, could quite easily be applied to how we survive and thrive in sales.

According to a recent survey by A Sales Guy and published in Forbes, those who exceeded their sales quotas consistently over a 3 year period were 32.5% more likely to be coached than those who missed quota. Clearly, these salespeople know a good thing when they see it. They see that coaching worked for them and so they continue to be open to feedback and practice. But what about those who did not exceed their quotas? What about the salespeople who were trying to build their careers with hay and weak foundations? The survey suggests that it should not be assumed that these people do not want to be coached toward improvement. In fact, although 82.1% of sales leaders say they coach their salespeople, only 48.2% of salespeople report they are getting coached. Further, according to the report, 66.1% of those people who weren’t coached say they wanted to be.

This leads us to question what we are doing as sales leaders. If you are a sales leader, do you feel you are providing the coaching your salespeople demand? A whopping 40.3% of salespeople don’t believe their sales leader is committed to their personal development. If you fall into this bucket, what can you do to make a shift way from a traditional selling culture focused on a monthly push for numbers and instead comment yourself to truly improving your salespeople?

Today’s workforce is more employee-centric than ever. Employees need to know why they are working, what they are working for, and how their development will be valued now and in the future. Further, as employers, we are dealing with the stress of managing this new employee-centric culture while still grappling with a growing diverse and remote workforce. How can we be all things to all people? There is an answer: technology. Technology alone will not turn your apathetic salesperson into a super-seller but technology in combination with human intervention at the right time and in the right ways, may be exactly what you need. The concept of “Human-Technology Symbiosis” is what sales leaders and leaders in general will need to embrace in order to motivate their team members to a state where they recognize that they are being coached and that the commitment by the manager is not perceived but is real and quantifiable.

At Rehearsal, we strive for human-technology symbiosis. We have designed a video-based platform that lets people practice, receive feedback, and enter into a coaching look. The platform let’s this all happen virtually BUT it keeps the human element at the forefront. We see faces, hear tones, watch motions. Managers are expected to respond thoughtfully through either video or text. And those thoughtful comments instantly convey the commitment our people look for in a good manager, leader, or mentor.

Start. That’s it. Seems too easy, right?

In this article by habit and practice expert, James Clear, we learn that the process of pursuing excellence results in a set of rewards that may actually be more valuable than those received once you’ve achieved it. The article describes an exchange that James Clear had with tennis pro, Lindsay Davenport. James had the opportunity to ask her a question at an event and he focused his opportunity on how she’s learned or changed from rising the ranks of professional athleticism. She responded first with the concept that fame makes you grow up faster than you may otherwise; but then she described how the path to achieve greatness taught her how to be the best she could be at her craft. James goes on to talk about why simply starting something new — as she did at a young age of 15 years old — can be the best and biggest decision you may ever make toward your pursuit of happiness and betterment because without trying you’ll never know if you have the skills and talent required to be great. Once you are in the game, you can make the decision whether or not to persist and practice and ultimately find yourself achieving things you never thought possible. As James closes the article, he quips “Life is not a dress rehearsal” and we agree. Today, start something new and tomorrow practice it again and — in this life —- you may become something more than you ever imagined. Thanks, James.

Written by Robert Pool, Ph.D.

Everyone has heard of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule: You need 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at anything. It’s pretty intimidating if you stop to think about it. That’s 4 hours a day, 20 hours a week, 1,000 hours a year—for 10 years. Who has that sort of time? I don’t. You probably don’t either.

On the other hand, best-selling author Josh Kaufman published a book a few years back that promises you can “learn anything” in just 20 hours. Not 20 hours a week for 10 years, or even 20 hours a week for 1 year. Just 20 hours total. You’ve got 20 hours, right?

And what’s really interesting is that both of these claims—Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule and Kaufman’s 20 hours—are talking about exactly the same thing: deliberate practice. We’ll talk more about that in a minute.

But first: Which claim is right? Is it 10,000 hours or 20 hours? Strangely enough, as long as you interpret the two claims correctly, they are both right. What’s more, once you understand what is going on, you are left with a blueprint for how you, or anyone, can excel in most areas of business and life—without devoting your entire life to it.

Here’s how to understand the two very different claims: The 10,000-hour rule is true for the top performers in a field where there is intense competition and training. Think of concert pianists, chess grandmasters, and prima ballerinas. These people truly do put in thousands—or tens of thousands—of hours of practice to get to the top because that’s what their competition is doing. Every world-class concert pianist has practiced for 10,000 hours or more— usually much more. If you want to excel in one of these areas, to be among the best in the world, you have to start young and devote much of your life to becoming great.

Kaufman is talking about something else altogether. Say that you’ve always wanted to ride a unicycle (or speak French or play the ukulele), but you’ve never tried. His point is that with the right sort of practice, 20 hours is enough to get you to a point where you at least won’t embarrass yourself. You won’t be great, but you’ll be doing well enough to get some satisfaction out of it and maybe even impress your friends.

What these two theories have in common is both involve a very powerful approach to training called “deliberate practice.” It is the single best way to get better at something—anything, really—as proven by many years of scientific research. Briefly, deliberate practice involves picking out specific aspects of the skill you wish to improve, doing exercises designed specifically to improve those aspects, getting feedback on your performance, using that feedback to guide further practice, then repeating.

Kaufman’s big idea is to take this powerful training method that classical musicians, chess masters, Olympic gymnasts, and the like use to hone their world-class skills and use it instead when you are first getting started learning something—in the “first 20 hours,” as the title of his book says. Of course, it is not as easy as it sounds. The classical musicians and Olympic athletes who use it in their training have spent years perfecting their deliberate practice techniques, and there is no way a beginner in a field can match their training proficiency. Still, even if it is carried out imperfectly, deliberate practice is so much more effective than the unstructured way most people go about learning something new that the results can seem like magic. For a beginner, 20 hours of deliberate practice is enough to make a huge difference.

So Kaufman is on to something. If you want to learn to play the ukulele or take up wind surfing, try deliberate practice for 20 hours. You’ll be surprised by how quickly you pick it up.

There is a much more powerful message here, and it is aimed at the rest of us—not the rank beginners or those at the very top of their field, but the ones who are just doing okay. Most of us settle into comfortable ruts in our jobs, our leisure activities, and our lives in general. We get to a point where we’re “good enough,” and we coast. We’re not like classical violinists or grandmasters, devoting hours a day to deliberate practice, working hard to get better. Quite frankly, we don’t have to because our peers—the people we’re competing against for jobs and promotions and bonuses—aren’t practicing for several hours a day either. For the most part, they’re just like us—they’ve learned just enough to do the job reasonably well and are coasting, not really getting much better as time goes on.

So imagine what would happen if we got out of our comfortable ruts and applied Kaufman’s “20 hours” to our daily jobs. If 20 hours of deliberate practice can take you from never having wind-surfed to skimming handily over the waves or from not knowing the difference between your sombrero and your cabeza to carrying on a conversation in Spanish, what might it do for your job performance?

It can make a huge difference. Think of it in tennis terms. Suppose you’re a weekend tennis player. You learned enough to serve and return balls, and you and your friends enjoy your friendly games even though none of you are more than just okay. After 10 years of playing weekly, you’re not much better than you were when you started because, let’s face it, you’ve never really tried very hard to get better, and just playing the same way every week does nothing to improve your game.

Now let’s suppose you got inspired by watching Serena Williams in a Grand Slam finals, and you decide you want to get serious. You hire a tennis instructor who says ‘let’s work on your crosscourt forehand’ and for the next ten weeks you spend a couple of hours each weekend focused on just that. Instruction, practice, feedback, repeat.

At the end of those 20 hours, you’re not ready to take on Roger Federer, but you have a new, improved skill that lifts you above the people you’ve been playing with. Your cross-court forehand is a weapon that wins you an extra point or two each game, and now suddenly you’re the best player in your group of friends. It feels good, and now, invigorated, you decide you’re going to spend another 20 hours of deliberate practice on your backhand. And then your serve. And so on . . . .

Now suppose instead of tennis you decide to spend 20 hours of deliberate practice on getting better at your job. You pick out one aspect that could use improvement that will make a difference in your overall performance, and you work on it. You get ideas for practice techniques from a mentor or a more accomplished peer, or maybe you figure out some exercises yourself. The key is to have a clear idea of the skill you’re trying to develop, specific exercises aimed at improving that skill, regular feedback on how you’re doing, and the ability to shape your training in response to the feedback. At the end of the 20 hours, you will see a big improvement. In particular, you will now have an advantage over anyone who has not made this effort.

You see, people’s performance in the business world is much closer to how you and your friends play tennis on the weekend than it is to how Serena Williams and Roger Federer play tennis—people in the business world are not spending hours deliberately practicing, working to improve their skills. In fact, most people in the business world spend almost no time on improving specific skills. They get to a level of acceptable performance and coast, often with the vague assumption that they’ll get better with experience. But they don’t. Research shows that just going in and doing your job every day does very little to help you improve. The only way to see serious improvement is through deliberate practice.

So here is the takeaway message: You can see a surprisingly large improvement in your performance—in your job, in your sports activities, in pretty much anything you do—with a relatively small investment in time. It won’t work if you’re in a highly competitive field where people are spending hours a day on practice—classical music, pro sports, and so on—but those are the exceptions rather than the rule. In most areas of life people just don’t work that hard to get better, and you can set yourself apart by being one of the few who do. I’m not saying it’s easy. Deliberate practice requires thought, focus, and effort, but you’ll be surprised at what you can do with a commitment of just a few hours a week.

There is a young man in California named Max Deutsch who in successive months taught himself to draw a realistic self portrait, solve a Rubik’s cube in under 20 seconds, land a standing back flip, play an improvised blues guitar solo, and hold a conversation in Hebrew. Now, he wasn’t starting from scratch on every one of these skills, nonetheless over the course of a month he was able to develop a striking new skill—month after month.

Deliberate practice opens the door. All you have to do is walk through.

In this interview on Freakanomics Radio, Anders Ericsson and Malcom Gladwell discuss deliberate practice and some misconceptions related to the 10,000 hours rule necessary to achieve mastery.

Deliberate practice, as defined by author and speaker James Clear, “refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.”

Deliberate and purposeful practice is not a new form of training. In fact, it is used around the world and has even impacted history. During the middle of the Vietnam War in 1968, U.S. pilots were losing aerial battles with Vietnam at a 1:1 ratio. This means that these aerial battles, or “dogfights”, were resulting in the loss of one U.S. plane for every Vietnam plane lost. In response to these terrible statistics, the Navy created the TOPGUN school, which utilizes elements of deliberate practice in order to create an advantage for our pilots.

The Navy participated in purposeful practice by selecting pilots to attend the TOPGUN school and act out combat situations with the instructors. They utilized cameras to record their practice fights and reviewed them with the students to provide coaching. This helped the students understand flaws and grow from their mistakes. Over time, deliberate practice taught the students self-criticism, questioning, and quick critical thinking skills that soon became second nature and helped them in real combat situations.

The results from the TOPGUN school’s participation in deliberate practice were extremely successful. Between 1970 and 1973, U.S. pilots were only losing 1 plane per Vietnam’s 12.5 planes. This was an improvement of 1,150%!

Most recently, the principles behind deliberate practice have been explored in depth by Ander Ericsson and Robert Pool in the book Peak where they distill decades of research into a powerful learning strategy.

Rehearsal is committed to developing these same principals of deliberate practice and using them to improve outcomes in the business world. We have an incredible panel of experts we will be working with in 2018 to help develop these ideas into actionable, quantifiable steps for sales enablement, customer service, and leadership development.

Nice article on the power of practice from our friends at Knowledge Anywhere- https://www.knowledgeanywhere.com/resources/article-detail/5-ways-video-role-play-will-transform-your-training-effectiveness

I was at lunch yesterday with a friend to celebrate his recent promotion. He’s a professor. Shortly after we toasted his success, he said that he was moving to Seattle for the year because his college/employer was sending him on a one-year sabbatical: to learn from what others are doing and to practice what he is teaching.

Can you imagine getting a promotion and then being told to leave the office for the year — PAID — on a professional exploration of learning and practice? As the CEO of a fast growing start-up, I know how hard it is to leave the day-to-day for even 5 minutes to reflect, learn, or practice. But I also know that once I commit to practice, I’m getting better. This was never more apparent than my rebrand announcement where I literally practiced the video 25+ times.

All too often, we simply REPEAT; we don’t see any changes but we don’t do anything about it because we are creatures of habit. All too often, we just show up and feel that we have done our part, but is that enough? We are satisfied with the way it is, when we know we can be better.

A leader — someone who is recognized for initiative, insightfulness, trust, and passion — wants to grow, learn and practice. You don’t have to be the CEO of your company to approach work and life like this — you may be the coach for your kids’ soccer team, the organizer for a volunteer event, or the person at your company who wants to make a change. In all cases, if you simply repeat what was, the results will never change. Add learning, openness, and practice to the mix, and then your commitment to repetition will take you places you’ve never been before.

A recent Forbes article stated, “The problem is that many leaders don’t conceive of behavioral leadership as a skill set to be developed the way their technical skills were once developed.” This article focuses on leadership capabilities and suggests that even at the very highest levels of the organization, leaders who practice win.

You can only get better when you dedicate yourself to learning, trying, and practicing. There is no downside to this. But the alternative surely comes with a cost. At Rehearsal, we see this every day. We have proof that practice works and that it results in financial, professional, and personal wins.

Become great.

Great overview on Rehearsal done by our European partners. Strong work Triple A.

Rehearsal recently presented for a large global audience at the LEARNTEC conference at Karlsruhe Trade Fair Centre in Karlsruhe, Germany. The conference was keynoted by learning guru, Elliott Masie, and attended by more than 7,000 participants and 240 exhibitors. Rehearsal had the opportunity to discuss how its technology is pushing learning and coaching to new levels.

Take a look at the presentation and contact Rehearsal to learn more about how you can use its virtual practice platform to increase performance.

At its core, franchising is about brand value. Brand value flows from the franchisor to the franchisees and then to the customers. So how do you teach brand value? And when your company growth depends (at least partly) on an increase in the number of franchisees, how can you effectively and efficiently teach brand value to multiple general managers and franchisee teams distributed throughout the world?

The most famous franchises in the world boast that training is the key element to ensure brand value and consistency among their franchisees. In franchising, training should be continuous; Classroom training is not viable due to costs and disruptions in day-to-day scheduling and operations. Many franchises are using mobile training to get their franchisee teams up to speed. But, even with mobile and ondemand training, how will you know when your franchisees are ready? How will you know that they can deliver the level of service, passion and commitment that your brand requires?

Rehearsal has solved that problem for a number of its franchised customers. Rehearsal’s mobile-friendly video based practice platform allows for franchisees afar to bring their messages right to the home office. Through a video conversation thread, corporate employees can serve as mentors or coaches and give feedback to the franchisees until everyone is comfortable with the level of performance.

With Rehearsal, companies can ensure that brand value is preserved right from the start and continuously as the franchise builds. If metrics indicate that a franchisee is underperforming, the Rehearsal platform allows for employees to practice toward improvement. Further, the Rehearsal Leaderboard stores videos that have been graded highly and those videos can be shared across franchisees as learning resources.

If your company’s success depends on the perceived value of its brand, training is not enough. Your franchisees need to practice and perform until every location is on message.

“We could have gone with another provider, but the Rehearsal Team went the extra mile to give us everything we needed. That’s how we work and we want to work with partners who are willing to do the same.”

The Challenge

This global learning company trains 100+ associates each year to deliver a signature training program for the company. The signature program reveals individual thinking and behavioral preferences through experiential and interactive learning. As part of the associate training process, each must be reviewed by seasoned coaches to ensure understanding of the content and ability to identify thinking patterns and behaviors of the students in the class. The content in these workshops is personal and can be sensitive so the company must ensure that its trainers are ready and able to do the job accurately and consistently.

Prior to implementing Rehearsal, associate reviews were done in person and through videos sent on flash drives; however, with a growing team and limited resources, the company was forced to find a more scalable solution.

The Solution

After learning about Rehearsal’s technology, the company bypassed a pilot program and went directly into implementation. A group of associates began their training experience using the Rehearsal platform. They were provided with instruction to learn the content of the workshop and then asked to use Rehearsal’s technology to record their best delivery. The response to the technology was very positive.

The Results

Since June 2015, hundreds of associates from North America have used the Rehearsal platform to practice and showcase their training abilities. The coaches find it much easier to pinpoint where feedback is necessary which helps the associates to more quickly improve and get in front of the students for live workshops. Travel needs have been reduced and trainers find the process far more efficient.

Based on the results, the company has now implemented Rehearsal internationally.

Written by Darik Volpa

I saw this article in HRB so I assumed it was credible and timely but what I found is that it is incredible and timeless. In a group of 10 people, maybe half will say they never want to speak in a public arena, two or three may say they are ok with it if they have to do it, and the remaining are your budding thespians who get on the stage and in front of a mic whenever they can. But here’s what I find incredible….you are still afraid of what you’d look like or sound like or say once you walk up to address the mic?

I get fear of the lights shining on you; fear of tripping up the stairs or on the carpet as you walk into the presentation room; fear of a bad AV connection — those are random occurrences and you’ll have to deal with them at some point. But you know what shouldn’t be random? 

YOU!

In the generation of #selfies, do you really not know what you look like? And I mean doing everything…I have seen what Gwen Stefani looks like when she wakes up in the morning and even President Obama was caught practicing his smile and his wink, “Things Everybody does but Doesn’t Talk About”.

So to many the fear is, like Teddy and his successors have said as recently as at last night’s DNC Convention #HRC, fear itself. You no longer have to fear how you’ll “show up” in the arena. You don’t have to worry about mumbling, misconstruing words, missing the message, or licking your lips 50K times in a 30-minute presentation. Why? Because you have technology that will handle that. Specifically, you have practice technology called Rehearsal.

Whether your anxiety shows up when you have to speak in front of tens of thousands, present to a group of co-workers, or meet with a new prospect, you don’t have to fear anything because you can practice EVERYTHING. Fear is what you make it and only you can let it grow and take over. Or you can take control of it. Put yourself in the hot seat — no one needs to be watching — you are your harshest critic after all…so get over yourself. Let Rehearsal help you to show the world who you really are. 

Go forward my fearless friends.

Written by Darik Volpa

My favorite paragraph from a recent article in HuffPo:

“As companies constantly look to get ahead in terms of productivity and operational effectiveness, there is an outstanding need for ingenuity. Using VR as a mental rehearsal tool is not one that is still widely known. Becoming the first to use it could result in great success. Those who don’t innovate tend to fall behind. As we obsess about workplace performance, increasing it through this unique tactic could be the step in the right direction.”

Awane Jones, partner at Merchlar and thought leader in digital marketing and author of “How VR Can Help Executives Rehearse For Big Moments”, is right about a few things:

• First movers tend to gain the greatest reward.
• Those companies that don’t innovate tend to fall behind.
• Virtual reality is not widely known.

So I ask you: What is widely known? What is available to let you rehearse for that workplace performance we demand of our employees and of ourselves? It’s Rehearsal. And the first movers are gaining the greatest reward. And those companies that are not practicing with visual recognition, creating “hotseat” environments for practicing workplace behaviors, and giving constructive and managed feedback – are falling behind.

You don’t have to go very far to see the evidence:

• Allstate
• Amazon
• Verizon
• Johnson & Johnson
• Abbvie

Some of the world’s largest companies are turning webcams on their own employees — not to see what they are doing wrong but instead to help them make it right…make it better.

If swimmer Michael Phelps gained a competitive edge by visualizing every aspect of his race, what can your employees gain by seeing themselves present, practicing how they may answer a tough prospect question, or by finding a new angle to an old challenge because they had the chance to see someone else do it differently?

If a virtual-reality trained surgical resident performs gall bladder surgery more accurately and 29% faster by seeing what he or she does and improving upon that work, why wouldn’t your employee sell faster, find ways to be more profitable, or create new solutions for old problems, if he just had the opportunity to see himself?

You don’t need to wait for virtual reality technology. That is an excuse. We have what you need to see exactly what you are doing. Get better now. No excuses. 

Written by Larry Israelite

Like most people of a certain age, handwriting was a major focus of my early childhood education. It was not, to say the least, one of my strengths.  My teachers were persistent, reminding me on an almost daily basis, that practice makes perfect. If I kept at it – if I practiced more – my handwriting would continually improve.   

As it turned out, this may have been the example that proved the rule (I am, still, barely able to sign my name). But the concept of practice was ubiquitous when I grew up. I recited my spelling words out loud, letter by letter, completed multiplication worksheets until my fingers (and mind) ached and recited, repeatedly, the state capitals. I also went to baseball practice, practiced my trumpet (perhaps another bad example) and attended play rehearsal. While many of these activities continue to occupy the time of our youth, the most compelling contemporary example may be gaming, on which our children (and some of our friends, I expect) spend countless hours perfecting their techniques and increasing their point totals.  

Certainly, throughout elementary and high school, and even in college, there was an expectation that we would practice frequently, an explicit understanding that our skills will improve as a direct result, and feelings of guilt, inadequacy and remorse if we weren’t able to find the time to practice or, as in my earlier examples, practice didn’t yield the expected results. It was just how things were. And we accepted it.  

This steadfast belief in practice wasn’t created by psychologists or learning theorists, such as Skinner, Gagne’, Piaget or Maslow and wasn’t the result of the rigorous scientific research they and others conducted. At best, they simply confirmed something that we have known since the middle 1500’s, when the phrase ‘use makes perfect’ was first used – the more we do something the better at it we get, especially when there is an expert around to give us guidance and feedback.

In the work place, things are a little different. Our ability to practice is, at the very best, limited, and subject to the good will of our managers and the kindness of colleagues, coaches and mentors. For technical skills, training continues to offer safe opportunities to practice and learn. That used to be the case for skills that involve human interaction – so called ‘soft skills.’  Multi-day training programs, during which we had the opportunity to practice new skills, were commonplace. Now they are less so.

Today, classroom programs are shorter, if they are available at all and, and they are heavy on content and light on practice. A substantial amount of corporate training is delivered over the web. And while web-based programs can be incredibly creative and engaging, skill practice predominantly involves demonstrating that we know what to do or say in specific situations or that we recognize the right behavior when we see it demonstrated by others.  They rarely, if ever, include activities that require us to demonstrate that we can actually do something. And for work tasks that require us to engage with others, that kind of practice is absolutely critical.

The good news is that there is a solution. There are several trends that make possible the addition of the missing link in web-based training – meaningful practice for skills that, simply put, require us to speak to and engage with others.  To be specific, there now is:

• A camera in virtually every device we use – phones, tablets and laptops
• Universally available high speed internet
• Inexpensive cloud storage for video files
• General comfort with the creation of personal videos that can be viewed by others (and yes, this even extends to many boomers, generational stereotypes notwithstanding).
• General acceptance that providing and receiving feedback electronically is a viable alternative to face-to-face discussions and communication.

As a result, technology platforms exist that allows us to learn new interactive skills through traditional eLearning and then practice applying those skills in a way that fully replicates what used to happen in the classroom. One such system is Rehearsal (www.rehearsal.com). Imagine the following:

• We engage in a learning activity, which could comprise completing an eLearning module or simply reviewing a written process or task list. We then read a description of, or view a short video that describes, a scenario which requires a verbal response. We also might see a short video of an expert performing the same skill we are about to practice.  
• Using Rehearsal, we practice what we have learned by recording an appropriate response to the scenario. We review the video and then either record it again (and again) until we are satisfied with our work.
• The video is delivered to a coach (a manager, a mentor, a peer) who reviews, evaluates and comments on our videos. The coach then approves the video or suggests a re-do.
• We review the coach’s comments and then either record a new video or move on to the next practice scenario.
• Using a community leader board, the coach also has the ability to make the video available to other learners as an example of what ‘good’ looks like.

And because the entire experience is virtual, learners and coaches are bound by neither location nor time.

Since the early 1980’s eLearning designers have struggled with their inability to fully recreate the classroom experience through technology. By providing web-based video practice and feedback, Rehearsal has, finally, solved this problem and done so in a way that is efficient, effective, repeatable and enjoyable – words that any L&D professional or business leader loves (and longs) to hear.

Written by Geoff Curless
VP Sales, Rehearsal

Rehearsal recently exhibited at the ATD International Conference & Exposition. We were fortunate enough to have some of our team members attend the keynote presentation delivered by Simon Sinek. He kept using the word, “Practice”. It made me excited because that’s what we do. We offer the learning community, well…moreover…we offer people who want to get better…a place to practice and be coached on workplace topics, issues, and challenges.

Each time Simon said the word, “Practice”, I felt my heart race. I wanted to grab the mic and tell everyone that just yards away from this stage on the Expo floor was a company that would give them the chance to practice – just like Simon says to do!

I didn’t Kanye West my way onto the stage. Instead, I tweeted some Simon-isms on our Twitter page and then I let the whole experience sink into my overwhelmed conference brain. Like with many exciting moments, the ideas that spark the excitement fade after some time. Sometimes you even question what got you so excited in the first place. But not this time. In fact, this time it wasn’t the excitement that continued, it was instead my confidence in how Rehearsal could help every person in that audience and all of those people out there who make it their responsibility to make others better at what they do.

I found this article. Well, I found many articles as I searched for how Simon described “practice” at work. In every case, I challenged myself to make the connection between Simon’s philosophy and how Rehearsal could make it a reality. The reason I chose this article in particular is because each of the three things that Simon identifies as a “thing” that makes a leader…well, none of them are typically things you imagine practicing, especially in front of a web cam. But what I found is that each is, in fact, practicable. See how…my notes are in red and what follows is an excerpt of a recently published article on inc.com.

Selflessness

People like to be around people they trust–it’s as simple as that. “Humans are constantly assessing people and organizations around them, and if they feel they’re selfish, they’ll keep a safe distance,” said Sinek. On the other hand, people tend to want to associate with people and brands characterized by an element of selflessness. Creating that human connection–building trust–is key, though it does take time. Just remember: You’re responsible for setting that tone, Sinek warned. [Here is it…TONE! Do you know how you deliver a message? How would you even know? Sometimes we take for granted that our intentions are received, but our tone may not convey the message we intend. You can practice your tone. But you can only do so once you have seen and heard yourself deliver a message. With Rehearsal, you can see yourself ask a very common and simple question like, “How are you doing this morning?” Or more complicated messages like, “I’m worried about your performance lately. Can we talk?” And best of all, you can have others view your video and give you feedback. You can keep practicing until you deliver the tone you intend to be received.] “When the environment is one of a leader who [will] sacrifice, the way people respond is by sacrificing in return. Being a leader is a lifestyle decision; it means you’re willing to take care of others.” 

Empathy

Speaking of taking care of others, Sinek added, “the more we do good for each other, the more we want to do good for each other.” He recounted the time he picked up loose papers for a man when he saw them slip out of his bag. The man was grateful, but Sinek said his actions went further than that. They motivated someone who saw them to do something kind. Kindness begets kindness, Sinek went on. [So how do you create contagiously repeatable leadership examples? Have you ever wondered how you can change the way you do something so to encourage others to follow your lead? Simple. Practice! Instead of opening a meeting with your agenda, why not practice asking others to build the agenda with you? Practice letting Dana start the meeting by telling about her latest client interactions and then ask how you can help her better support her client’s needs. What could happen next is that other members on your team will stop questioning the work their co-workers do and instead ask how they can help support each other better.]  It’s holding the door for someone, making a new pot of coffee, and letting someone into your lane. Putting others ahead of yourself–“that is the practice of leadership,” he said. 

Grace under fire 

Stress and anxiety are enough to make people dishonest and to sabotage their performance at work. When your body is flooded with cortisol, or the chemical that produces anxiety, “you biologically restrict empathy and trust,” Sinek said. Don’t be that kind of boss–if you’re the one inducing fear and anxiety in your employees, you’re never going to have their trust. [You just learned that one of your product lines is going to fall short of its revenue goal by more than 20%…that means no bonus for you and possible staff cuts. You are livid and you want someone to blame. You also know that your temper gets the best of you but you still call an immediate and mandatory meeting of your team and open with one question: “Who is responsible for this?” as you point to the declining trend line on the white board. What have you done??? This didn’t have to happen. You can use Rehearsal to practice your responses to some of the toughest office challenges. You can turn moments that would typically destroy team culture into moments that strengthen culture. It’s up to you.] The solution is clear: Work on managing your own stress and “be the leader you wish you had,” he said. Your team will appreciate it. 

Are you ready to practice? Are you ready to be the best leader you can be? You can be the best. You can all be the best — with practice.

It’s no more complicated than this for any chosen profession.

Rehearsal Founder Darik Volpa talks about the exciting new direction the company is going in this video blog.

Why do you put up with your commute to the office?

Why do you fall asleep with your computer on your lap and your phone in your hand more than three nights each week?

Why do you listen to a TED talk and get excited?

Why do you have an extra cup of coffee before your next meeting?

Why do you try to make it to the office early?

Why do you work on your days off?

Why do you tell your kids to work hard in school?

Why do you tell yourself to stop making excuses and start making progress?

Because.

You want to be better.

You may not be on TEAM USA but you are on a team. Practice hard. Show your work.

It’s hard not to love the American commitment to leadership. It’s likely that your next thought may be, “Is it working?” And then maybe, “What does ‘working’ look like?”

Peter Bregman, business advisor and author of 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done, argues that leadership development programs strive too earnestly to create safe environments for learning. But the best learning often comes in times of risk and struggle. I picked that up in a Forbes article entitled, “If You Think Leadership Development Is A Waste Of Time You May Be Right”.

One of my favorite quotes comes from training…physical training…it’s from celebrity trainer, Bob Harper, “You have to get uncomfortable to see change”. Simple, right? Anyone who works out regularly knows that it has to hurt a little (sometimes even a lot) to see results. The same applies to personal challenges; you can’t change what you refuse to confront.

Now let’s bring it back to leadership development. We spend more than $15B annually to develop our leaders (get the Bersin Research Executive Summary here). How often do you think our developing leaders get uncomfortable? How often do you think they watch themselves lead, recognize what needs to be improved, and then make and practice those changes. In reality, most leaders — like people in general — see something they like or don’t like about how someone else is doing something and then borrow or alter styles and strategies to forge their own approach. What could you learn if you stopped for a moment and watched yourself?

Written by Darik Volpa

This article from Business Insider is a nice reminder that most of the all-time greatest athletes work a lot harder than most people realize.

They have an obsession with being successful.

They have trainers.

They have mentors.

They have coaches.

They have places to practice.

Compare the mindset and work ethic of your all-time greatest employees with the mindset and work ethic of these athletes. What are the similarities? What are the differences?

Now compare and contrast the mindsets and work ethic of your great employees with your average or your below average employees. How can you convince all of your employees to have an obsession with success? What more can you give them? What more do they have to give?

At Rehearsal, we believe that practice builds ability and capability and that grows into an obsession with success.

The bottom line is that we are not all born talented; we are born human. But with practice and hard work, we can achieve anything we can dream.

You have a date. It’s different than other dates. He always seems to be looking over your shoulder and comments about things that are behind you versus the nice shoes you just bought. She’s totally cool. She never complains about how you don’t tuck in your shirt and she’s fine if you wear flip-flops no matter where you go.

Your date is a webcam.

Your webcam captures you from the waist up in most cases. Your webcam cares a lot about the wall behind you. What else is your date looking at and how can you make the best of your time together? Get the latest infographic from Rehearsal, then practice your webcam style, and share it with us on Twitter @Rehearsal and hashtag #meandmywebcam.

Written by Geoff Curless VP Sales, Rehearsal

I was watching Sunday Morning at 4PM ET last weekend. The show featured internet celebrities…people who got famous for going viral.  It mentioned many of the social platforms that I am less familiar with like Vine and Snapchat.  But something caught my attention.

I work with video and yet I am still amazed by what it can do — not just the production of it but the impact it has on people. It’s not like we haven’t been using it for decades. In fact, I watched a documentary last week about the Ford Company and saw movies of Edsel Ford partying in his 19^th century chateau. But here is what’s different about video today.

One, as I mentioned, I watched CBS Sunday Morning at 4PM in the afternoon. Ondemand video is nearly essential now that we all try to balance work and life so masterfully 😉

Second, we have short attention spans and yet want to squeeze the most out of the short time we have to devote to learning something new. Video can tell a story in a matter of seconds. Forrester claims that a one minute video is worth 1.8 million words!

Third, and possibly most important, “seeing is believing”. Those of us in learning know how hard it is to measure the impact of learning initiatives. We have come a long way and many large companies are using evaluation models and assessment tools that tie nicely to business outcomes. But would we feel differently about learning if we visually saw progress?

Finally, I’ll throw one more thing into the mix before I get to the point of it all. I’m a gadget guy. I found this during my downtime internet reading: https://getkiba.com/. It’s a video camera that knows how to identify the most important moments you and your family experience. That’s right….it records and self-edits your life so once you watch it, you only see what is important. The camera builds your story for you.

What if you had the chance to teach people, watch them learn, watch them practice, watch them grow, watch them get better? What an amazingly human way for companies to show the impact of talent and development initiatives! The good news is that you don’t need to “get kiba” into all of your offices; you don’t need to get Vine celebs to capture your employees’ greatest “six-second” learning moments. You just need to teach your team and encourage them to practice. Well, at least that is your part. We at Rehearsal will capture the stories for you so you can watch every team member grow.

I’ll leave you with this video that has been viewed millions of times. It’s a six-second time-lapsed video of a woman….growing. What if you could watch your employees grow? You can with Rehearsal.

Do you have video clips — time-lapsed or not — of you, your employees, your co-workers, you kids, learning and growing on video? Share them with us on Twitter at @Rehearsal and hashtag #watchmegrow.

Wonder why everyone is talking about video? Because it works. If you want learning retention, you need video. This infographic from Rehearsal makes your next business case for video and learning. Rehearsal takes these stats to the next level by using video role play to put learning into practice and practice into results.

Written by Geoff Curless VP Sales, Rehearsal

Have you ever been to the circus and wondered how those trapeze artists got their start? Was it jumping from bed to bed as a child that gave them the confidence to fly high in the air with the greatest of ease? Was it just a born talent?

I took my two kids trapezing during winter break. While I felt safe about the facility and instructors, I still had to wonder how my kids were going to go from never having seen a trapeze up close to being caught in the air by a man in tiger pants flying full speed ahead toward their little bodies. The session took two hours. We learned about three moves and we had to practice them over and over again until our instructors felt we could do them without giving each much thought. Each try came with input for how we could make the moves look cleaner, how we could move our bodies more efficiently and how we could prepare for when we would reach out to be caught by our partner. When our instructors felt we had perfected the moves, we were ready for the big catch.

I needed about two more hours of practice before they would ever give me the green light to move on; however, my daughter, a budding gymnast, was allowed to move to the next level and was successfully caught by her partner each time. See here. This experience made me reflect on what I do as a sales manager. All too often we let our sales representatives go out there and “get ‘em”, but are they really ready? Some of our newbies may be like my daughter and already come with confidence and expertise; others may be like me on a trapeze and have no experience or confidence at all. But no matter what point they are at when they begin, we have to give them the room, time, and tools to practice before we literally let them throw themselves to a new prospect.

We never want to lose a good opportunity because of our own incompetence. We need to practice the basics, get feedback, move to the next level, and repeat. This is how we build confidence and competence. This is how we build a stronger sales team.

Written by Kelly Riggs, Founder of Business LockerRoom

There’s an old adage that says, “Practice makes perfect.”

Of course, that’s not right.

As the venerable Vince Lombardi said: “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”

As it turns out, you can spend a lot of time practicing and actually be hurting yourself.

I’ve had a chance to see that first-hand. Having spent many years coaching kids’ football, I had lots of opportunities to see how other coaches run practice sessions during the week.

You would be amazed at how many coaches go directly to “team” practice – that is, 11-on-11, full scrimmage. To understand the problems this creates – or, if you’re not familiar with football (or football practice) – this is akin to the actors in a Broadway play practicing the entire play, from Day 1, with people who may or may not know the lines or the choreography. Instead of blocking scenes, practicing lines, and working on choreography, the actors go straight to full rehearsal (for more information on “blocking” a scene, read THIS). So, a typical football practice for a young kid (think 3rd through 7th grade) would include a warm-up and some stretching, followed by some general drills like sprints and agility exercises. Then, there might – MIGHT – be more specific drills: blocking, tackling, and ball drills (throwing and catching). 

After that – 30 to 40 minutes into practice – a lot of coaches would go directly to practicing plays with a full offense and defense.

The problem with this kind of approach should be obvious. Team performance doesn’t improve until individual players improve, which, by definition, would require much more individual practice.

Sequence is Important

As a college football player, I was exposed to truly effective practice sessions.

Warm-up. Stretch. Agility drills. Then, individual ball skills. Receivers, for example (the position I played), throw and catch with QBs. They practice specific routes. They practice catching passes from different angles, with one hand, facing the QB, over the shoulder, and much more.

Depending on the position, there was extensive blocking or tackling practice, with every conceivable game possibility included in the practice. For instance, a lineman might practice zone blocking, pull blocking, doubleteams, and much more, with application to specific plays the team runs.

Then, it was on to group practice. Groups of players worked against other groups. The offensive line practiced against defensive linemen. Receivers worked against defensive backs. Quarterbacks and running backs worked together against linebackers and defensive ends.

It was in this part of practice that the connection between individual skills and specific plays were created. Players learned how their individual roles created success in a specific play. Compare that with the average employee who toils away in a cubicle, often in complete obscurity, with little understanding of his/her role in the success of the company.

Then, after all of that individual and group practice, it was finally time for “team” practice.

But, realize that by this point, each player understands his role in the play. He has practiced the individual skills that allow him to excel in that particular play. He has worked on footwork, recognition and reaction, blocking and tackling, and much more.

The point to all of this is that sequence is important. Players (employees) have to perfect individual skills before they can excel within the “team” framework.

Unfortunately, few companies provide that type of practice environment.

In sales, for example, a salesperson needs to learn how to interview, ask questions, get referrals, respond to objections, present dozens of different solutions, tell compelling stories, present pricing, and so much more. But how many salespeople actually practice these things before they go LIVE in front of a customer??

Those companies that actually provide some level of training are often guilty of exactly the same mistake that amateur football coaches commit – they go straight to full-on sales presentations without any thought to the individual skills that will make those presentations more effective.

That’s where Rehearsal becomes incredibly invaluable.

First, it eliminates the objection of working in front of peers; employees can practice in the privacy of an office or at home.

Second, it allows managers to practice on specific individual skills before going live with a customer.

Finally, it allows employees to practice over and over until it’s right. And then they can continue to practice to stay sharp or to adapt to change.

Remember, all practice is not created equal.

Individual practice is critical. Sequence of practice makes a huge difference.

And, most importantly, perfect practice is what creates perfect execution.