K. Anders Ericsson is a Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. He is a pioneer in the study of expertise and the notion of "deliberate practice" as a core process for achieving expert performance. We discuss how his work, may translate to leadership and leadership development. Our conversation highlights several opportunities and considerations for aspiring leaders or leadership educators. In fact, for some practitioners and scholars, it could constitute their life's work...
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K. Anders Ericsson is a Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. He is a pioneer in the study of expertise and the notion of "deliberate practice" as a core process for achieving expert performance. We discuss how his work, may translate to leadership and leadership development. Our conversation highlights several opportunities and considerations for aspiring leaders or leadership educators. In fact, for some practitioners and scholars, it could constitute their life's work...
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Resources/Links to Discussion Topics:
practical wisdom Scott Allen.
Scott Allen :Hello, I am Scott Allen and thanks to my daughter Kate, for developing the intro to the practical wisdom for leaders Podcast, where we offer a smart, fast paced discussion and all things leadership. My guests help us explore timely topics and incorporate practical tips to help you make a difference in how you lead and live. If you haven't done so, please click subscribe so you automatically seamlessly stay in the know when we publish new episodes. Likewise, please provide me with feedback. What do you like? What do you dislike? And what else would you like to know? And now, today's show? My guest today is Dr. k. Anders Ericsson. And we didn't even discuss this before we got on the air. What should I call you, sir?
Dr. Ericsson :Most people call me Anders. Some students call me and a professor Erickson. But Anders is probably would be the most sort of appropriate if you wanted to basically give me a name. Wonderful, wonderful. Well, Anders, we are so thankful that you're with us today. For each of these podcasts, I always share three words that come to mind when I think of the individual that I'm interviewing. And this is really the first time we've met. So it might feel a little bit odd. But when I think of your name, there's a few words that come to mind. One is transformational. Your your work has completely transformed how I think about my area, which is leader development. And another word that comes to mind is prolific. I mean, you've been at this game for decades now and you are producing so such a wonderful body of work. And and I was so thankful that's the third word for your book peak.
Scott Allen :Because I think it also in a very, very nice way translated some of that research you've, you've dedicated your life to. And and again, not necessarily simplified, but it packaged your thinking in such a wonderful way. And so transformational prolific and thankful, those three decent words that you can you can stick with,
Dr. Ericsson :oh, I think those are very generous, and I really appreciate it. I guess I always claim your I'll do my best and that's the best I can do.
Scott Allen :Well, so let's jump in. And let's have a have a fun conversation when I think of your work. Something that stands out for me is the notion of deliberate practice. And at least four ingredients of deliberate practice would be that there's repetition that there's a period of time that there's real time coaching and feedback, and that we are working on skills outside of our current ability level. And of course, in the book peak, you YouTube do a wonderful job of expanding that I believe there's 11 ingredients that would kind of would would equal what we would would call deliberate practice. But if we just kind of stuck with those four for right now, what was transformational for me as a leadership educator, someone who's very interested in in the activity of helping prepare others to be successful, when engaging in the activity of leadership, we are really missing some core ingredients oftentimes. And so when I think about repetition, or when I think about real time coaching and feedback, or when I think about working on our skills deliberately intentionally working on skills outside of our current ability level, oftentimes in our programming, it's us sitting in a room talking about leadership. And really, those elements and others in the book just simply aren't even built into the design of our programming. And so that in a nutshell is why your work was so true. transformational for me, because it fundamentally challenged my my way of thinking about how we're approaching this activity of trying to develop others. But let's start there. Maybe you can just even respond to that. And what I want to get to is, if you are charged right now, ultimately, this is where I'd love for the conversation to go. If you were charged with developing a program or an experience to develop leaders, what has to be present? What has to be present for us to truly develop expertise? Is it even possible? And I'd love to get your your thoughts on that.
Dr. Ericsson :I think you're making some really terrific points. I think when I have now spent, especially since the book peak came out some time talking to people in managerial roles in various companies. One of the things that struck me is that anytime when I found people that, at least to me, in a really can demonstrate that they're doing things in a way that is associated with better outcomes than other people, that they are actually investing so much more time in actually doing things as opposed to a lot of people that I encounter, you know, they seem to be so stressed that they're more or less just kind of handling the most critical issue and spend very little time having to kind of reflect and think through here, what would have happened if they did it this other way, or even actively going out collecting feedback. And I think that's one of the signs that I would argue, has been true here for all the people that I would call expert performers, is that they actually are actively seeking feedback. I would say that too many people are really looking for compliments. But basically, they're really not interested now and getting genuine reactions to what they were doing that if they actually wanted to get better they should pay attention the things that they could improve as aopposed more or less getting comments that make them feel good about what they just did.
Scott Allen :Which is, which is a wonderful point because I think a number of leaders, I believe Dan Goleman had an article and he called it CEO disease that the higher up you go in the organization, the less unfiltered feedback the individual receives. You're exactly right. How do we improve if we aren't exposed to unfiltered feedback? That doesn't mean we have to agree with all of it. But if we don't have that feedback, I mean, that's one of those core kind of four ingredients that I'd mentioned. You're exactly right. Oftentimes if the the CEO gives a speech and it could have gone horribly when he or she says, How did that go 99% of their subordinates look at them and say that was great. And so we don't have this that with that core ingredient of authentic, unfiltered feedback that people can, to your point, at least to begin to reflect upon and make sense of the decor ingredient that's missing, wouldn't you agree?
Dr. Ericsson :Definitely. And I think just finding ways in which you can actually get feedback that wouldn't have negative consequences for the person giving it. But you know, if the only kind of communication with your manager is going to be directly then if you say something that is negative, and I also agree with you that a good leader, or an expert would actually receive a lot of comments, but given that a lot of people disagrees, you know, you're gonna have Do the sorting out and actually asking yourself based here on on these issues, what is the best way for me to handle this? Because I can't always make everyone happy. But if you can explain now why you're doing things, you may actually be able to convince those people for whom the consequences are negative that actually, you know, this guy is looking out for us as a organization. And that's why he or she is basically doing what they're doing.
Scott Allen :Well, and another core ingredient of those four that I mentioned, that I feel oftentimes is lacking. So for instance, I teach tonight at 630. If I have a certain mindset, I can view that as an opportunity to practice. I can view right now running this podcast as an opportunity to practice. And if I have that mindset, I believe that I can approach my day in a very, very different way. Right now. I'm because of our shelter in place, I have an opportunity. I'm living in a living laboratory to practice my emotional intelligence with five of us in a house, right. And so I think another challenge when it comes to leadership, education or leadership development is a habit of mind that for eight hours a day, 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day for some people, they could be practicing different elements of what would be considered activities of a leader, whether that's presentation skills, or negotiation or navigating conflict. But I would argue that a large percentage of individuals are at work right now and not practicing anything. They're on autopilot. They're just kind of going through the motions, navigating tasks, and not present with the opportunities that literally are in front of them. And I think that's, that's a major challenge for our work.
Dr. Ericsson :Yeah, and I think it's sometimes interesting to draw a parallel Here to, you know, a soloists musician who is playing something with an orchestra. If you look at what they are doing, they're basically performing maybe 5% of the time. Sure, the other rest of the time, they're actually preparing and they're more actively engaging here and making sure that they get relaxation and sleep and they work on their physical health. So when they actually are getting to that point where they're going to perform, they've maximized their performance. And it would seem to me that as a leader or a manager, I mean, most people wouldn't want to have a pilot who's been flying for 32 hours and is falling asleep again and again and then waking up. But it's sort of intriguing to me that when it comes to managers, it's not clear in the same way that for the pilot and for the surgeon There's going to be some critical events here that may have pretty important consequences for the people that you are dealing with long term, but basically not having the time to get ready for that, basically, I think is a lost opportunity. At least I've seen some people who are doing, especially when there is a kind of a component to it, where they would have a big audience and maybe even professional reviewers who would actually comment on what they're doing. They all do this. But I think a lot of what's going on is sort of so enclosed that maybe people don't have basically the time or they're not given the resources that they need in order to really do as good a job as you possibly could.
Scott Allen :Well, and what's interesting about the leadership space is that there So many variables. As a manager or leader throughout my day, I might be moving from a difficult conversation to a budget meeting to a motivational speech to a strategic planning. And to your point, the individual really oftentimes has no clue what's going to come at them that day, especially depending on the role. So they they have to be so ambidextrous And to your point of not having necessarily time to prepare or to plan ahead of time, and it's almost a little bit more like jazz and you're fluidly moving in and out of different situations and sections. And another thing that I think about when I think about your work is and I'd love for you to help me think this through. I don't know that we have archetypes. If I'm training a cellist or if I'm training As a surgeon, or a pilot, there are archetypes or mental representations, as you would say, of ideal performers. People, even even Toastmasters would at least say, you know what, here's the number one presenter in the world if you want to do it. Well, here's the example. And I don't know that in leadership, we have enough really clear examples for people of how to navigate some of these difficult situations. So that people don't necessarily have a mental representation to hold on to. I grew up as a diver. And I look to Greg Louganis, as the archetype of what I would hope to be. I don't know what that looks like when it comes to leadership or management. Do you? How do you think about that?
Dr. Ericsson :Well, I've actually been talking to people in different domains, but I guess if one was interested in managers, I think it would be interesting to actually videotape identified People who are have a reputation. And I want you to probably work on some objective definition here on the outcomes of what they're doing, but essentially provide videotapes because I guess when the case that you gave about diving, that's a public event. And I think I've been talking a lot to surgeons about that, because surgery. Actually, if you go back 200 years, that was actually public event, Arjun was actually doing it in front of the audience. And obviously, there are all sorts of issues here about being antiseptic and stuff like that that wouldn't. But if you take a videotape of a surgeon who is facing our complicated case, and what I'm particularly interested in, what did that surgeon do even before he entered the operating room, and that's what I found when I talked to a few leaders that at least other people have pointed to me as is exceptional. I remember one guy I was talking to, but spent the whole weekend just thinking through all the people who are going to be at this meeting and thinking through how would I be able to build on the various ideas and issues that individuals would have? And how would I basically present the issue in such a way that we could get, you know, almost complete consensus about a very difficult decision,
Scott Allen :his habit of mind was to prepare for that in that way. Right.
Dr. Ericsson :Exactly. I'm just wondering if one, you know, had videos of some of these than other people could actually be putting themselves in the same situation as he was before he started preparing, and then actually be able to see now, how do you actually get to a result, you know, that was very successful and maybe even interesting, you know, to have Some of the experts I've talked to, they're also willing to share things that they did incorrectly. And I think that's the ultimate kind of confidence sign is that you have a good sense of what you can do. So you can actually show how you made mistakes when you started out, that will now actually be very helpful to other individuals who are in the similar kind of stage of their career, when I remember in some of the research that that that you had done, it could have been others. So don't hold me to this, but was in an activity called the talk aloud where you might take a chess player and have them talk aloud what they're thinking in their head before they make a move, so that we can begin to understand their mindset and how they're thinking about the board. Would you share a little bit about that? Because I love I love what you're saying. It If we can get into the mind of a leader even before they walk into a situation, film that, observe that, and then have them reflect on it, that would be a fascinating exercise, it just would be, and to listen to them talk aloud, at least beforehand and after about what they're doing and why, and what worked and what didn't. I don't know that we have that. I haven't seen that. I think there because that's kind of how my research started. I was interested in trying to understand how people were thinking, because I thought that if I could understand how people that I really admired were thinking that maybe I could improve my own thinking. So that method of actually having people to what we call think aloud, so they're actually given a task and often it's kind of nice to have a task that actually is real task. And with the chess players, they pick out certain positions that are interesting because Don't wouldn't want to basically ask the first move here, because we know that everyone knows openings, you know, at least as far as 10, maybe even 15 moves that they actually have memorized. So that wouldn't be as interesting as giving them now a gain possession in the middle of a game that they've never seen. And then basically, have them think out loud. And now they're just computers that actually do a better job than any human and thinking moves. So once you have figured out, you know, gone through your thinking, you can actually get immediate feedback about what would have potentially been the same move or a better move. And if the computer came up with a better move, and could show you here, the consequences and why this was actually better than the move that you had planned out. That's an opportunity to learn and basically by then, Going up a level of thinking, why didn't I basically see that? Now you can actually change the representation. So even if you don't, you know, encounter exactly the same situation, but something that's similar, you've actually made that change to how you actually think about various configurations.
Scott Allen :Well, and another thing that comes to mind for me about the complexities of developing leadership is that there are archetypes out there. One is that people construct the notion differently in their heads. What did I could say Barack Obama or Donald Trump, and people have different realities in their head as to if that person was a great leader, or a poor leader. There oftentimes doesn't seem to be objective metrics. I've seen some objective metrics that have been developed by historians about presidents and such. So so some of that does exist. But you take an individual who's revered many times like a Steve Jobs Who by many accounts was a pretty rough around the edges guy a little bit prickly, you know is actually fired from Apple the first time because of some of his behavior and some of his lack of emotional intelligence and such. And then you have the individual come back as he did. And he creates the most valuable organization in the world. And so Was he a great leader? That's an interesting question. And I think depending on where I sit, I might say yes or no. And we could probably ask 15 people, and we'd get some different shades. So how do we navigate that? Do we have to come up with some shared sense of, of what is ideal? And given normal circumstances? Obviously, jobs would be potentially an outlier. But how do we navigate that part of all of this?
Dr. Ericsson :So my recommendation might be that you if you had the resources you would actually know Do a lot of follow up. So I guess there's some interesting research now on physicians that are talking to patients who have basically long term diseases like diabetes or overweight or whatever. And then you can actually define now the outcome. So if you actually check in with the patient, you know, say, five years after you've actually had this extended interaction with the doctor, you find that some doctors are much more successful here and actually influencing basically their patients. So the outcome of those patients is going to be different. I could imagine that there are other kind of similar things with a leader, that if you have some way of actually assessing what people are doing, and then especially if you can bring in a leader that an often I guess when you have a unit with problems, sometimes people would be brought in to kind of try to solve straighten things out. Sure. And they're I think, basically by having those people who keep jumping around here and a more or less serve as sort of help, emergency help for straightening out problems. Those I think would be quite interesting to study. And if you could actually have now enough research assistants that you could actually interview now everyone in the unit, so you can actually get more direct, unfiltered feedback as to what happened when the leader was giving this inspirational speech. To what extent did they actually even remember it? And if they did, was there anything that they were actually motivated to maybe do differently? And how did the leader actually support them in those basic efforts of trying to improve prove their contribution. One thing that we've been talking about, which I think is interesting that in meetings there, you know, if you put some real different categories, there are some people who seem to be most interested in getting a lot of credit here for good ideas. Then there are other people who are actually listening to what all the other people are saying. So when they make an idea, they actually try to integrate all the things that they hear other people having presented, and explicitly give them credit for that. So now you actually have a proposal that actually integrates a lot more ideas. Whereas basically the other person, you know, almost feel, you know, frustrated if people point out that there's some relevant overlapping things that people have already brought up by basically videotaping meetings and then having you know, skilled people actually reviewing How various people contributed to successful decisions that were made at the meeting. That would be sort of a way here of giving feedback. And then actually not just doing it once. But this could be, you know, something that you would do once a week or once a month or something. And then actually being able to give more credit to those people who are able to build on what other people were saying. So you actually have not this adversarial kind of situation, but actually, you have people who go out of their way to build consensus. Yeah, you almost have a you have a coalition now of three or four ideas that have been placed together, which has greater levels of power for sure.
Scott Allen :Exactly. Yeah. How else do you think about this Anders? I mean, if, again, our objective is to develop a leader to help a person be better prepared. To take on a formal or informal leadership role to help the work of the group move forward. How else do we need to be thinking about this puzzle? Maybe something that we haven't touched upon yet? What comes to mind for you?
Dr. Ericsson :Well, I, my feeling is that if, if we're going to change this current situation, I think the place where we're more likely to be able to be successful, would be to help new leaders actually be given training opportunities that you know, the current leaders never had. So basically, by putting in resources and maybe engaging the new leaders and evaluations here and identifying in a really excellent examples here of a leader, who is basically faced with a very difficult situation, how did they basically think through this and how could one then basically by trying To think about that same situation, compare how you would approach it, and then see here, how you may have to think differently about the situation in order to generate the kind of more successful option that was generated by the more successful leader.
Scott Allen :What else comes to mind?
Dr. Ericsson :Well, one thing that I've proposed, when I've been giving little presentations, is that very often in companies, you give awards to people who you think are basically done a very good job. But most of these people when you give the award, it's like an award to the person, if you could re-center that into an award for somebody who was able to achieve that level of basically behavior. So they would be motivated enough to talk about what is it that they actually did? You know, at what point do they actually got interested? And how they could improve and what kind of people did they talk to and, and basically helping other people see how they got to be who they are, as opposed to the more traditionalist, it's almost, you know, like you were kind of almost born with it. So here's this a medal showing, basically how you're special. And now everyone should really be impressed with you, as opposed to and I think that's getting more and more that exceptional athletes are really sharing what it took for them to reach this outstanding level of performance.
Scott Allen :Well, let's talk about that for a little bit. Let's see if we can switch gears into athletes. What are you learning about athletes, whether it's baseball players or basketball players? What are some ways you're thinking about, about how they achieve the highest levels of performance?
Dr. Ericsson :Well, one interesting thing and I guess It's also sort of a problem that most coaches to basically professional teams, they are almost like kings, everyone more or less depends on them. And that obviously means that they're going to get fired if the team is not doing well. So they're very few of them are really open to bringing somebody in, who might actually suggest here that some of the things that they've been doing was actually not the perfect thing. But I've been able to establish contact with a couple of coaches, one in particular that I'm very impressed with, which is human connection. He was a coach that led the American volleyball team to gold in Beijing. And so one of the problems with coaches is, well, if you keep coaching a team, and then the best player wants to be coached by you, how can we separate you your ability as a coach from actually just recruiting better players so he switched over and actually started coaching the women's team. And again, you know, they rose from a relatively modest position and got silver in London. So here, he's basically, you know, taking two different teams to the very highest level. And that, and I guess, given that we're talking here, I've been talking for like, five, six years. He's very sensitized to these issues. And I think one general thing that I noticed talking to other coaches that coaches are realizing that to help individuals improve individually, is actually a very effective way of improving the performance of the overall team. And this idea that you have to do everything with a team being involved. And obviously, if you're only one coach, it's gonna be hard to beat. You have individual sessions with individual players. Some, what I noticed is that there's a growing supply of specialized coaches that work directly with professional athletes outside of basically their commitments with the team. So they actually are now able to work with somebody who is completely aligned with trying to help them. Because the problem with basically coming to a coach and say that, you know, I think I might actually have an injury here, well, then the coach may actually say, well, we probably shouldn't be using him next time. It's sort of the coaches, you know, having too many functions. So it's almost like you would need to have a like in the court system, like a defense coach who is completely interested in helping the player improve, and then basically having somebody else who is not reviewing this, so you can actually put together the best team here for the next game.
Scott Allen :So almost, is it Almost, is it too lofty of an expectation for anyone coach to be able to do all of those different roles? Is that is that another way of saying what you just said?
Dr. Ericsson :I think that's true. The problem is that even if you have four or five specialist coaches for different aspects of the game, they typically have that double role of helping players, but then feeding to the head coach, information here about how good this player is, and basically, whether he or she should be playing in the next couple of games.
Scott Allen :So how does this the social dimension impact your work? If it's chess, or if it's cello, or in some ways, if it's surgery, it's the social dimension is decreased to some level, obviously surgery we still have members of the team and other partners. But as soon as the social dimension is introduced, whether that's leadership Management coaching. As soon as you add in humans to the equation, the complexity, it's it grows exponentially. Would you agree? Yeah.
Dr. Ericsson :But I think it's what's interesting is that if you look at the trends in the last five years, now, they're actually doing video analyses of games. And they're actually now able to actually see how a given player actually evaluate his or her actions. You know, and I don't know, maybe it would be 15 situations during a game that would have some similarity. And the question is, now retrospect, knowing everything that they do after the game, did that player actually, you know, make the right decision here of say, passing this other player, when there was this other player who was actually you know, in a different part of the field getting to a city Question where they would have been more successful. So by basically now analyzing it, then you can actually now once you put your finger on some of the weaknesses of a player, now you can design practice off the match time that basically helps this player develop these skills. And you can get feedback of how well will they be doing now in their next game.
Scott Allen :So we're close on time. But what I would love to do is if you could share two pieces of advice for someone who's trying to develop leaders, what should they prioritize? And for someone who's trying to develop their leadership skills, what would you suggest that they prioritize?
Dr. Ericsson :Well, I would argue that, that we actually the domains that we looked at, we recommend that somebody finds a professional teacher, and I don't know whether there are professional teachers, for whom you could actually argue that they have demonstrated evidence for actually improving now, the people that they're working with,
Scott Allen :You've you've nailed Another limitation of our work. It's maybe a CEO, jack welch, who who achieved results. But how he achieved those results, it could be interpreted different ways. That's a great connection.
Dr. Ericsson :And it seems to me that the first step is actually recording and ideally by allowing our videotapes to be made, so you actually now have something that can be built up as a knowledge base, and in particular, you know, identifying people who are very successful, but also I think, in finding ways in which people are were making mistakes, but not that didn't realize it, because that may actually be places where you could get, you know, avoid problems more easily. And I guess I've been looking at instances across the board. where you actually find that the training time by a factor of four actually improves sort of the cost of health organizations. And one of the place that they found is reducing spreading of infections. So by actually training personnel with simulators, they were actually now able to influence the presence of infections. And you can quantify how much that costs the hospital to have that patient for three or four extra days. So now you actually found things where the linkage between the training and the and the outcomes are, you know, nobody could argue with them. And and I think thinking through basically when it comes to leadership, other issues that are of the type here of getting an infection, you know, where you have somebody doing something that you know, really creates a lot of damage that takes a long time. Time to recoup from if one could think about ways that you would be able to kind of reverse engineer and find ways here of training people. So they would be much less likely to be in those kinds of situations.
Scott Allen :Well, and and so for the learners, what would you suggest someone who wants to develop their leadership skills? What would you suggest for those individuals?
Dr. Ericsson :Well, I mean, if there's a teacher that's available, the next best thing is actually trying to figure out somebody that you really admire, and that other people admire. And then the question is, how can you go to one of those leaders and offer something that would make it worthwhile for them to want to basically mentor and help you and give your comments? And I think, thinking through here, what is it that you could do to basically successful leader that they would really find viable? that I think would be where I would start
Scott Allen :It's a great place to start. And I think also just Are you known as someone who is open to feedback? And are you are you another another way of thinking about that it might not be a mentor. But are you open to feedback from people at your level below above, and gathering data as to how they're experiencing you? Like, and that's kind of where we started with the conversation because I think that's, that's critical. And, and a great way of being, I think it's a it's a habit, habit of mind or a way of being that will serve individuals. Well, if they're open to that feedback, and willing to hear it again, not agreeing with all of it. But it's data. It's important data. And at times, I've gotten you you probably haven't ever had this experience, and there's but I've gotten negative feedback in the classroom. And I might not agree with it, but I at least have to reflect upon it and work through well. Why could someone experience me that way? What can I do to manage that or to not give off that impression, and then I can improve, I can grow and I can develop in my own skills so that the next person who comes along understands why I'm behaving a certain way or, or why I'm not including something or any number of other variables. But we are going to conclude with a little bit of a speed round. And so I just have four questions for you. What are you streaming right now? Are you streaming anything that's interesting on Netflix or prime? or Hulu or any of these these streaming devices? Are you just are you just writing papers?
Dr. Ericsson :I'm doing a lot of reading of papers. So one of my favorite places Google Scholar, and I find you know that when I have extra time, it's almost like a ask a question, and then I realized I can't answer that. And then I go and look for papers. And then as I find another paper that maybe touches on something I was thinking about a couple weeks ago, then I will explore that. But at that type of activity when I have extra time, that's what I would do. And I also found that email is about as much as I can handle at this point. So putting myself in any other kind of social role would be just asking for trouble because I I still don't have enough time that I have never really had that sense that I had more time than I could use.
Scott Allen :Yeah. So So what are you reading right now that is of interest here?
Dr. Ericsson :Well, I guess I was basically reading articles. Again, I'm not reading books. The way I basically approached books is more that somebody makes a claim about a book. And then I basically get a copy of that book to figure out what did they really say? But I never really read it, you know, from first base to last Page. But basically yesterday, I guess I was reviewing the literature on benchmarking and critical incidents, and basically how this would be different. And the work that we've been doing because I'm starting to wanting to sort of place some of the work we've been doing, because people ask me, you know, so isn't this sort of like this? And sometimes I don't have as good an answer as I would like
Scott Allen :that one of the words I should have I should have included about you would be just the curiosity. It seems like your curiosity is insatiable, which is a great way to be as an academic and a scholar.
Dr. Ericsson :Well, you know, and I would argue that I really try not to get into sort of making claims that I can't support and I see on science that people find something and then they blow it up to be you know, extremely lead gen and whatever. But once you look at it, it's not very compelling. So what I'm really looking for is the most compelling evidence. And I think expert performance is one of those phenomena that if you see an expert, nobody would really disagree that this person is able to do things that you couldn't even do if you were given $10 million.
Scott Allen :Exactly. And to devote your life's work to figuring out how people work at the highest levels, regardless of context. I think it's a noble endeavor. I really do. And I and I appreciate your work. I appreciate your time today. And I'm going to go back to my three words. I think our listeners will do transformational. Your work has been transformational, prolific, and then I'm just thankful that you've done that work, how I do my work and where we need to go with A field. And I can't thank you enough for doing what you do.
Dr. Ericsson :Well, and I just thoroughly enjoyed talking to you. So hopefully we'll get a chance to talk some more.
Scott Allen :I would love to I would love to have a wonderful day be well, and we'll talk soon. Okay.
Dr. Ericsson :Bye. Thank you.
Scott Allen :As always, I took a little bit of time and reflected on my conversation with Anders. And just a number of things kind of running through my head. So first, we need video, we need video of expert performance and what we're trying to develop. Doing. So we'll provide our learners with mental representations of what an ideal or a great performance could look like. And I think this could also really truly benefit our leadership educators as well, so that they have a clear understanding of what expert performance looks like in this domain of leadership. And so of course Any number of different topics that we would need video in that could be presentation skills, negotiation influence, leading a meeting. And I think that's part of what makes this so incredibly complex. Now, a couple other things stood out for me in my conversation with Anders. So first of all this notion of kind of pre reflecting, or reflecting before you perform, he mentioned the leader who spent a weekend thinking about the meeting or the surgeon thinking about the surgery before the activity. And I think it's also a habit of mind that the individual is putting themselves in a position to receive feedback. Maybe they have a coach, maybe they have a mentor, or someone who's skilled, that can provide the learner with authentic transparent feedback. And that is an essential element of leader development. Now, another thing that I thought was really interesting Was videos of not just expert performance, but also mistakes. And if we have those videos, if we have video of mistakes, I think that can also serve as a learning tool for the people we're hoping to develop. So those are a couple of things that I'm going to leave the conversation thinking about. I really look forward to hearing what's on your mind. Please feel free to share those in the comments. Have a great day, everybody. And as always, thanks for checking in. You have been listening to the practical wisdom for leaders podcast. If you liked what you heard, please share it with others and let them know what we're up to. And one last quick reminder to click Subscribe so you know when we publish new episodes, and of course, we'd love to hear your feedback. You can stay in touch with me by visiting www Scott J. Allen dotnet or any number of social media platforms be well be safe and make a difference wherever you are on this beautiful planet. Now, here's Kate's twin sister Emily with the outro.
Emily Allen :You've been listening to phronesis practical wisdom with Scott Allen