Mastery - A Process For Achieving Results

By: Steve Stadler

I recently finished the book MASTERY by George Leonard for an upcoming seminar I’m attending. At first I was reluctant as this was “required reading” for attending the session. Now that I have completed the book I’m fascinated by the concepts and ideas presented by it. George Leonard is a teacher and 5th degree black belt in Aikido. Aikido is widely considered to be the hardest of the martial arts to master and as an Aikido sensei or teacher George began his path of aikido mastery at the age of 47 in 1970. I say “path” because as George explains mastery is a continual path of learning and practice.

Practice is the only way to mastering any task or skill. The book is mostly about physical performance improvement but many of the metaphors within the book are applicable to work performance or life performance. Practice and enjoyment of practice is essential in improvement and achieving mastery. In the workplace we’ve seen people we would call masters in the position they hold.

Think about these types of Masters: bricklayers, software developers, carpenters, project managers, sales people the list can go on and on. George points out that achieving so called mastery is a never ending process. Imagine performance improvement over time as an upward line with points along the way that increment higher, fall back, level off, increase, fall back, and level off. The individual’s overall performance is improving but at times falls back from previous highs. The point being that these individuals are always on a path of learning. The incremental improvement steps occur as the practice of tasks become second nature or ingrained in the individual’s ability. Tiger Woods, who most people consider a Master of the game of golf, is always practicing. Consider what he has done so far in his career, he redid or learned 2 new golf swings to advance his abilities in the game of golf. Most people thought his original swing was pretty good but Tiger wanted improvement and in learning the new swing his performance dropped until he achieved ( through hours of  practice) mastery of that new swing. Each time Tiger has achieved even higher levels of performance from his previous golf swing. I have a hunch before his career is over Tiger will change his golf swing again to achieve a level not seen prior. What I learned from Mastery is quick fixes are just that, quick and not long lasting. Only a dedication to long practice will lead to achieving higher performance.

Think of the work you do and If you are truly dedicated to mastering that task and if you are constantly on a path of improvement by practicing. This could be learning a new project management method even if you have been a high performing project manager for many years. Say you are a software developer and have the belief you are on top of your game and do not need to improve, remember what's happened to some IT Professionals that haven't practiced updating their skills.

I’m going out to practice my swing.