This week’s blog is short and to the point.
By simply reading a book (or this blog), or by attending a training that introduces some great new skills, it is unlikely you will notice a change in your outcomes unless you practice applying the skills regularly (i.e. until you are unconsciously competent at them).
The magic number in terms of time commitment to achieve unconscious competency is apparently 100-120 days. What that means is that we need to study/revisit/apply any given skill we would like to be naturally good at for approx. 3-4 months on a regular basis. If we follow this rule, we will start to apply the skill we are aiming to excel at unconsciously (i.e. without needing to consciously think of the skill and then apply it).
This probably explains why, despite 20 years of hacking around, I’ve never managed to get my golf handicap below 20 for any sustainable period. Playing once or twice per month simply isn’t sufficient. The same principle applies to learning any new business skill including the communication and influence techniques that I write about in this blog.
This challenge is at the heart of both personal and team development, and is the holy grail of soft skills training. How do we evaluate whether participants are using the skills taught and if the company is benefiting from them, or whether the investment was a waste of time and money? This is a question ever business owner or team leader needs to address.
So, if you come across a skill you’d like to use and benefit from, commit to a plan of reviewing it every few days, applying it and analysing the results. Make improvements and repeat. Do this for 100-120 days and you’ll have neurologically hard wired that skill into your unconscious mind and can enjoy the benefits for many years to come!
The approach is similar for teams, however in this case you can use group psychology to motivate behaviour and increase the chances of success. When people work in buddy pairs or small teams, no-one wants to be the person that ‘lets the side down’.
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Hi Neil, care to mention where this number of 100-120 days is coming from? And how much variability there is if it's coming from a rigorous study?