Learning Masterful Practice I: Overview

“In school they told me practice makes perfect,
then they told me nobody’s perfect, so I stopped practicing”
                                                     

                                                            Steven Wright

How do we learn to be good practitioners of anything? Good results come from masterful practice. In most professions and professional endeavors, it’s ultimately the execution that counts. The delivery, of the knowledge and skills accumulated, in a specific situation for specific results… a doctor responding in an emergency, a lawyer arguing her case in a courtroom, a therapist choicefully interrupting a patient, a teacher posing a particular question to a student or a consultant facilitating a group in a certain way in order to enable learning or change. Each of these providers of a human service has learned masterful practice.

Such questions have been with us since the beginning of mankind. Each generation has developed their answers. Some used show and tell, some show and show and show… Some developed elaborate apprenticeships to learn crafts or other forms of watching and learning from masters. While most of these required some physical skills, most of the human service professionals today require some combination of mental/social skills to execute good practice.

Some professions even require supervised field work in order to certify that a person is ready to practice (clinical psychology, occupational therapy). In my field of organization development and change consultation, we’ve never been that sophisticated and most people learn by doing, trial and error, some mentoring and learning from masters and a lot of self-development. I have discussed and wrestled with many colleagues, the deeper questions of how to help more people learn practice better and faster, but masterful practice is a lot like quality was in the 80’s…”I know it when I see it”…but I’m not sure how to teach it!

In a short series of entries to this blog, I’d like to outline some thoughts, on the way to a deeper understanding, of how to learn masterful practice. In this piece I’ll highlight an overview and then elaborate further in a few subsequent entries.

We learn masterful practice through:

• Preparing ourselves for the inherent adaptability of working in and across human systems. The myriad of variables in human organizations, relationships and their dynamics creates “almost unique” situations each time a human service professional encounters their work environment. I’m calling this use of the situation.

• Building a ready repertoire of principles and frames that inform meaning and action choices. Our ability to quickly understand the situation…what’s going on…and consider possible actions…what to do… is enhanced by our easy access to theory and concepts in an operational set of frames. Our confidence rises when we can move more quickly from “uncertainty” to “some certainty”. I’m calling this the use of theory and past experience.

• Creating high levels of self-awareness to continually tune our “instruments of professional practice”. Who we are and what we can and cannot do in reality are all important in executing our professional roles. Honest understanding is necessary for authentic behavior. I’m calling this theme use of self.

• Using critical reflection to tap into and organize our repertoire of tacit knowledge. We build up learning through multiple senses that has to be made conscious and organized for future use. This component I’m calling use of reflection.

• Engaging, singularly and collectively, with mentors and others in a social learning exchange. Having dialogue with others deepens understanding, validates our meanings with others and uses language to organize learning so that it can be shared. I’m calling this use of social interaction.

If one can have experiences in which they interpret, make choices and take actions and can consciously take in feedback, use reflection and social interaction to incorporate new learning into their own repertoire of principles and frameworks, then they can progress towards mastery (Raelin, 2007) .

Food for thought…until next time.

References:

Raelin, J. A. (2007). “Toward An Epistemology of Practice”. Academy of Management Learning & Education Journal. Vol 6, No 4, pp. 495-519.

 [tags]Dave Jamieson, masterful practice, self-awareness, adaptability, critical reflection, social interaction, theory-in-action, use of self, envisia learning[/tags]

David Jamieson

Dr. Jamieson is President of the Jamieson Consulting Group, Inc., an Adjunct Professor in the Master of Science in Organization Development Programs at Pepperdine University and American University/NTL and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Benedictine’s Ph. D. in OD Program. He has over 38 years of experience consulting to organizations on leadership, change, strategy, design and human resource issues. He is a Past National President of the American Society for Training and Development (1984) and Past Chair of the Management Consultation Division and Practice Theme Committee of the Academy of Management. Dave is co-author of Managing Workforce 2000: Gaining the Diversity Advantage (Jossey-Bass, 1991) and co-author of The Facilitator’s Fieldbook, 2nd Edition (AMACOM, 2006). He serves as Editor of Practicing OD, an OD Netwok on-line journal; Editor, Reflections on Experience Section of the Journal of Management Inquiry and on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Organization Change Management and The Organization Development Practitioner. Contact information: david.jamieson@pepperdine.edu; 2355 Westwood Blvd., Ste 420, LA, CA. 90064; (310)-397-8502.