We all recognize that even the most proficient athletes and artists spend hours practicing to stay at the top of their game. But not just professional athletes benefit from regular, focused practice. A recent conversation I had with a financial advisor after a talk I had given at a conference highlights the extent to which advisors would benefit from the principles of focused practice in the same way as LeBron James, Yo-Yo Ma and Bruce Springsteen do.
You may be familiar with the 10,000-Hour Rule made popular by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. This is the principle that 10 years of practising for 20 hours per week is necessary to become outstanding in any field. In a recent talk, Anders Ericsson, a Florida State University psychologist whose research underpins this rule, suggested that the need for focused practice doesn’t apply just to mastering an instrument, excelling at a sport or becoming a chess grandmaster. Addressing a group of MBA students at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Ericsson outlined how financial advisors can apply the same principle to increasing their effectiveness in dealing with existing and prospective clients.
– The 10,000-hour rule
In Outliers, Gladwell wrote that while talent clearly is important, natural ability isn’t enough to become world-class in a field. After all, there are a great many tremendously gifted artists, musicians and athletes who have failed to turn their talent into success. Gladwell argues that beyond ability, the many years of dedicated practice are what sets the most successful practitioners apart.
As just one example, the story of Bill Gates dropping out of Harvard in 1975 to co-found Microsoft Corp. with Paul Allen is well known. But what are not appreciated are the many hours that Gates and Allen spent programming computers beforehand at a time when computers were relatively rare. Much of this effort happened while they attended a private prep school in Seattle, where, in 1968, the Mothers Club used proceeds from a rummage sale to buy a terminal and computer time for the school’s students. Starting when Gates was 13, he and Allen spent thousands of hours during evenings, weekends and summers honing their programming skills, something that Gates continued to do when he started at Harvard.
– What makes elite performers
In a Harvard Business Review article entitled “The Making of an Expert,” Ericsson points to research on the childhoods of 120 elite performers who had won international competitions in fields ranging from music and the arts to mathematics and neurology.
The conclusion: there were no early indications that could have predicted the success of these prizewinners. They did, however, have three things in common: they had strong support from their families; they had practised intensively for many years; and they studied with highly proficient teachers.
– Deliberate practice
In Ericsson’s book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, he emphasizes that hours of practice are not sufficient; what he refers to as “deliberate practice” is what sets star performers apart. There are two aspects to deliberate practice: what you practise and how you practise it. In Ericsson’s words: “There are no shortcuts. It will take you at least a decade to achieve expertise, and you will need to invest that time wisely, by engaging in ‘deliberate’ practice – practice that focuses on tasks beyond your current level of competence and comfort.”
Many people fall into the trap of practising what they’re already good at – because that’s more comfortable. Research shows that focusing only on areas of weakness, however, can turn people into experts.
The second aspect to deliberate practice is sustained repetition. Ericsson explains why golfers’ skills become stalled despite years of regular play:
“You don’t improve because when you are playing a game, you get only a single chance to make a shot from any given location. You don’t get to figure out how you can correct mistakes. If you were allowed to take five to 10 shots from the exact same location on the course, you would get more feedback on your technique and start to adjust your playing style to improve your control. In fact, professionals often take multiple shots from the same location when they train and when they check out a course before a tournament.”
– More successful meetings
In Ericsson’s talk at the Rotman School, he outlined the feedback loop required for improvement. First, identify a skill on which you want to work. Second, get feedback on your progress – ideally, from an observer who is an expert, although it’s possible to self-coach and get feedback on your own. Finally, modify your performance until you are happy.
The first step is deciding what you want to focus on. Here are some of the things that drive success when meeting with prospective clients. If you want to improve, pick one or two of these to concentrate on:
– your initial impact, conveying energy and confidence when you greet prospects;
– getting prospects relaxed;
– asking questions to get prospects talking;
– listening for hidden meaning and indicating that you are listening by taking notes;
– asking followup questions to get prospects to open up further;
– using stories to describe how clients are better off as a result of your work.
Or perhaps you need to focus on keeping responses to client questions short and to the point. Psychiatrist Mark Goulston, in his article “How to Know if You Talk Too Much” (Harvard Business Review), uses the analogy of a traffic light to describe conversations. When the light is green, you have your audience’s complete attention. When the light turns yellow, their attention has started to wander. And when the light turns red, they’ve stopped listening.
Goulston suggests that in some cases, the light can be green for as little as 20 seconds. Even if a prospect’s attention span is longer, many advisors would benefit from shortening their answers to no longer than a minute.
I’ve taught for many years in the MBA program at the University of Toronto, where a key focus for graduating students is getting a job. When I share this research, a common response is “I can’t possibly say everything I want to in 60 seconds.” To which my response is: “You don’t need to say everything; say just enough to interest your audience and to get them to respond and perhaps ask followup questions.”
– Feedback on performance
The best way to improve is to practise in a safe environment, getting feedback from a colleague or your branch manager by role-playing in advance of meetings.
Role-playing is the equivalent of top athletes’ and musicians’ practice time, allowing you to make mistakes in a safe environment. This concept is why pilots practise on simulators rather than in planes in the air; why doctors learn new techniques on high-tech medical mannequins instead of on patients; why business schools use the case study method to simulate real-life business problems.
Practice is not just for starting advisors. A highly successful advisor with more than $500 million in assets under management told me that when he began role-playing with a coach for upcoming meetings, this advisor saw his success rate jump significantly as a result. If you don’t have anyone to provide feedback, you can monitor your own performance with a voice recorder, using a spouse or friend to play the role of the prospect.
A second approach is to do a post-meeting analysis, similar to what coaches and athletes do when they watch a game tape. Ericsson points to research that indicates surgeons who do a short debrief with their team after each operation reduce the failure rate on surgeries by 50% over time. You could ask your branch manager or a team member to sit in on key meetings, with the view to sitting down afterward to discuss your performance. Or, failing that, you could do a three-minute analysis after each meeting, listing what went well and where you could improve in future.
Securing a meeting with an important prospect can take many hours over several years. You can keep doing what you’re doing, and chances are you’ll maintain your current success level. Or, by using the techniques of deliberate practice, you can dramatically improve your odds of success.
Dan Richards is CEO of Clientinsights (www.clientinsights.ca) in Toronto. For more of Dan’s columns and informative videos, visit www.investmentexecutive.com.
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