Only Practice Is Not Enough!
Tanmay Vora
“Practice makes a man perfect”, they say.
Only practice is not enough. In business, have you seen people who have been doing something for a long time and still not very good at it? If practice was enough, these people should have been rock stars in their work, right? But they aren’t.
So, what’s missing? I think, feedback.
Imagine that one of your team members is working on an important assignment for a long time, and there is no feedback. People treat no news as good news and end up assuming that what they are doing is correct. This can be dangerous.
Then there are people who constantly want to know if they are doing the right thing, and regular feedbacks not only help them improve, but also keep them aligned and motivated. People don’t want to wait for one year to know their “areas of improvement”.
As individuals, when we practice our art, we need to constantly look for feedbacks. We are our first source of feedback, since we invariably “feel” about how we have performed. Our gut is the strongest feedback system we are equipped with. Look for your internal feedback, and you mostly get the answer.
Practice only makes us perfect (and helps us improve), when there is a frequent supply of high quality feedback so that we can quickly do necessary course corrections, adjust our game, deliver better and hence learn.
Bottom line:
– If you want to build a constantly learning organization, build a culture where feedback is shared early and often.
– To find greatest level of success in an organization, professionals need to remain open to accept feedback, analyze it positively and use it for their further actions.
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Check out: July Leadership Development Carnival hosted by Dan McCarthy – an excellent collection of high quality content on leadership and executive development. Carnival also features my post “Leading People? A Few Core Lessons”.
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