Your personal development coach

Develop a Skill

To develop a skill or habit – physical, intellectual, emotional, interpersonal – takes more than just knowing what to do. You have to create new brain-body connections that will bring what you want to do to life.

Here’s how to do it:

Set aside your desire to “be perfect.” Tell others that you are working on mastering a new skill.

  • The need to be perfect is an enemy of skill development. Take small initial steps – mastering parts of a skill rather than the whole skill at once.
  • Learning and self-improvement are signs of strength in these fast changing times. Rather than apologizing for not knowing, let yourself be an example of an agile, continuous, lifelong learner – always open to development and change.
  • It’s a “go slow to go fast” process where you will move toward mastery faster and won’t develop bad habits to replace later.

Partner, work with, or observe someone who has the skill you want to develop. Watch what s/he does, how s/he thinks, what s/he says and pays attention to.

Ask someone whose perspective will be helpful, to give you feedback and suggest changes that will help you or what you have produced to be more effective

Contract with a coach or mentor to help you develop the skill to a proficiency level

Based on input from an expert or someone who is proficient in the skill, create a checklist as a behavior/thinking guide. Use If…then language: “If/when (this happens)… I will… (take these steps)

  • Checklists can be very valuable guides for developing and guiding new skills. For some skills, steps are so important that checklists are built into the daily practices of experts (think about operating room doctors or pilots, kitchen crews who are on the line for food and facilities inspections, technicians or call center staff working with customers to solve problems).
  • So, to help you quickly learn and master any new skill, find or create a checklist as a step-by-step action guide.

Envision the skill as a sequence of moving from one activity to another – in a process flow pattern. Imagine moving from one step to another, always in the same sequence.

  • Be sure this is a mental picture of the flow – see yourself following this flow sequence… “first I do this…. then this….then this..”
  • This is a technique many pilots use before they take-off. They start at one end of the control panel and scroll across to the other end, always in the same sequence.

For interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, write out your thought process or develop a script for a role model conversation.

  • Include what you will say, think, and do…. “he says…..you say….then he says…then you say.”
  • Or “I notice this….then I say this to myself…. Then I do…. Then if this happens, I say….”

When you learn perceptually, you accelerate trial and error learning.

  • Put yourself into as many developmental situations as quickly as you can, that require the skill you want to develop. Do the best you can in those situations (maybe with a coach or a mentor nearby). This perceptual learning helps accelerate and refine your skill by repetitive doing/reflecting in a shorter time frame than would occur in your normal daily life and work.
    • For example, if you want to improve your interviewing skills, volunteer to conduct interviews for a job where there will be a lot of applicants. Do it with a more experienced partner observing. Do a self-review and get feedback after each interview.
  • This is a form of accelerated and deliberate trial and error learning: by doing, getting feedback, trying again.

Use a plateau and or valley as an opportunity to strengthen your skill and embed it more deeply as a capability. See stabilizing your learning and tweaking weak areas as a worthwhile goal.

  • Know that plateaus and valleys are natural parts of the cycle of skill and habit change. There are many components of any skill– mental, physical, interpersonal, personal. Stuck times are often times when all these parts have time to align. Think of learning a sport – there is often progress, then a plateau. Don’t give up! Something important is happening!

Discover and deal with any underlying challenges. Dwindling motivation? Lost connection to your vision? Stuck in one learning method? Facing a deeper issue like lack of self-confidence? Need more time for practice and skill consolidation? Need a break?

  • Answering these questions will help you know what to do.

Recharge. Take a break for a few days. Let your non-conscious brain consolidate your learning while you focus on something else.

  • There is a lot of rewiring going on inside you when you learn a new skill – involving many parts of your brain and your body – your thoughts, emotions, self-esteem. Most of it is happening incognito!
  • Sometimes a rest from your goal is the best thing you can do.

Appreciate how far you have come. Tell yourself that this is a development journey. Make sure your self-talk recognizes your progress and your effort.

  • People often quit their learning project when they reach a plateau or valley – but this is time of important consolidation. Appreciate this and it will help motivate you to go on.