But how to do this? Herminia Ibarra proposes that we develop “possible selves” that allow us to try on new experiences in a semi-serious way. This becomes a trial and error process, controlled of course so we don’t go willy-nilly, that allows us to try new roles. We’re looking for the ones that fit us best. And we want to test out various ones that we think may work best for us.

This counters the typical way we think of change, where a lot of assessment and self-introspection is touted. While all that can be helpful, it’s still trying out things in the real world that give us the most robust information about who we are, what we like, and where we should head next. In this sense, there is not one true self, but in fact many possible selves, and we’re out to find the next possible one.

So it’s an experimental process that we’re after. Where we can try things in a semi-serious way- getting the taste of what it’s like for us — but also in a way that allows us to try several things. Sometimes at once. And sometimes as extracurricualr activities to what we’re already doing. The point is to get lots of feedback, and in a timely fashion. This allows us to test out many choices and use the feedback to see which whole or parts fit us.

To read more on this, go to Nine unconventional strategies for reinventing your career, by Herminia Ibarra, at http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3312.html

Put this in the mold of the expert, someone who’s gotten there from ten years of practice. That’s the accepted norm, give or take. But what separates the ordinary from the extraordinary is that those ten years involve a specific kind of practice. For what does it benefit us if we just do the same things over and over again in the same old way? Clearly, we’re not going to grow into much more than ordinary performers that way.

But what does it look like if we practice in a more deliberate way? Researchers say the key is to pick ever more difficult experiences that challenge us to grow a little bit each time. The trick is to pick experiences that are appropriately challenging — not so much that we give up, and not so little that we become bored. Just enough to keep us in the game, feeling a sense of getting better with each action.

Another trick is to make sure that we have an effective feedback loop. Where we do something and get the results soon enough that we can make adjustments. What does soon enough mean? Maybe that depends on the person and the action. Some people can wait a year for feedback on a book manuscript. Others need immediate feedback that their golf swing didn’t quite work out. But in general, the sooner the better.

But why doesn’t this become boring? For superior performers — once they’ve gotten over the novice stage — it doesn’t get boring because they are continually achieving control over aspects of their performances. This gives them a constant sense of mastery. With each practice session they are doing something better than the last time. So deliberate practice is exciting for them. Maybe not as exciting as playing the actual game, but exciting enough to keep them coming back because they know it makes their game the best possible.

To read more on this, see a discussion of Ericsson’s deliberate practice approach at  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07wwln_freak.html

Studies say that people who become deeply engaged with what they’re doing tend to stick with it longer, tend to feel a greater sense of control, and tend to feel more directed.

Take Alex, for example, who was told he didn’t have the organizational skills to make it in his economics class. How ironic since he also worked as an EMT specialist on a local ambulance crew where organization was obviously crucial. Only not to Alex until he was asked to recount in detail the deft teamwork needed to help the injured. When he realized just how organized he could be, he then brought that level of engagement to his economics class and his work turned around.

A similar move occurred with Frank, who talked more about life at the beach than life as PhD history student. Imagine his surprise then when he presented his work portfolio to friends and teachers who all told him what a great researcher and writer he was. So maybe he was playing the history game at a deeper level than he thought. When this realization gave him the focus he needed, he dropped (or at least put on hold) his beach dreams and began to apply himself to what he had already been secretly attracted to, the letters of the early presidents.

Both Alex and Frank were nimble players who could move from a surface approach to a deeper engagement level. That was their response to the question: How can my actions be really well-played? And they liked the results that a deeper level of play brought them.

I live in Charlottesville, Virginia, and every year a cohort of lawyers and doctors and engineers and MBAs leave the university for the BIG CITY. They’re all highly educated and very bright, but when thrust into the “doing game” only some of them actually perform well. They’re the people like Suze who can get situated and begin to learn from their new culture. But why can some people become quick-studys and not others?

Of course, personality plays a role — people who are extroverted and open to new experiences tend to fare better. But beyond personality, there’s the obvious: quick-studys jump right in, oblivious to any disorientation, and immediately begin learning from their actions. Exposure to and mastery of varied experiences move them from a one dimensional person to a person with range and sureness.

Take my friend Rebecca. New to a mid-sized law firm in Chicago and with 2 years to learn the ropes, she wondered if she could quickly learn and master her new game. But when she thought back on her 3 summers in Europe where she’d lived with a different family each summer, she realized she could use those same skills to adapt to the new “families” that were about to come before her.

Not so for Alex, a recent electrical engineering graduate who’d signed on with an Ohio electronics firm with global aspirations. With little travel and multicultural experience of his own, he soon floundered when called upon to train his peers in Asia. Since he needed an experiential feel for the situation, not an intellectual one, books and classes didn’t help. Without the background or willingness to become a quick-study, he soon left his job for a firm with more local aspirations.

Rebecca was a nimble player who asked of her actions: How can I try out and master my new situations? This allowed her to develop a range and sureness that made her a master of her work.

James for one took an intense but circuitous path. He began his career as a jazz musician and then went to the University of Virginia where he received a PhD in English literature. He then became a communications professor at a prestigious business school. Through it all James steadily and skillfully wove the strands together: the jazz into the literary and then both into business communications.

Many people, particularly in mid career, get stuck on the ordinary level. They’re frustrated because they cannot breakout and rise to the level of a great player. James was able to breakout because he unwittingly followed a step by step process — jazz to literary to communications — where he gradually got better with each step. With each step he challenged himself to do better, and that challenge allowed him to steadily perform at higher levels.

While James took a circuitous path to greatness, others practice in a more straightforward way. Talking with engineers in one computer company, for instance, I noticed how they individually plotted their paths to high level-play. Some stayed with engineering, deliberately working their way through the ranks to become top-level engineers. Others wanted to combine their technical skills with people skills, first moving into mid-level management and then to top-level management.

But what struck me about both groups and about James was how their progression to great play unfolded so slowly, over such a long time, over a career really. Apparently high level players all make a commitment, knowingly or unknowingly, to carefully and deliberately practice their craft, and that practice eventually moves them to high level play.

James and the engineers are nimble players who have asked of their actions: How can we use our situations to practice and get really good at what we’re doing? Their careful practice has allowed them to develop a fineness and distinction to their work that has made them experts.

How do we determine if we actually play with force or with skill and grace? This question comes up a lot for career professionals who have reached a plateau and don’t know why. Since they’ve been so tooth and nail involved in their professional activities, it’s difficult for them to step back from their automatic world and look at what they actually bring to the game. If they work in a culture that rewards score rather than level of play, this becomes even more difficult.

Maybe we all need an encounter like I had where face to face contact with someone more skilled and graceful forces us to see our ordinariness. Of course, that’s a time when we have to have enough openness and honesty to allow our bubbles to be burst.

1. The poseur golfer. This is the golfer who tries to appear nimble. He or she acts as if the television cameras are rolling. There’s an attempt at a smooth swing that occurs at an ever so gentle pace followed by an obligatory pose at the end as the ball, hopefully, flies onward towards its goal. Only rarely does that happen, because in this case any skill or grace is only on the surface.

2. The solid striker. A step up, where the golfer actually executes a skillful swing that produces a steady and appropriate ball flight. This is the accomplished golfer who can pick up a series of irons and each time hit a shot that is consistent and straight: a 5 iron to 160 yards, a 6 iron to 150 yards, a 7 iron to 140 yards, and so on. We all know how thrilling it is when we get to this point, whatever we’re doing. We feel, in a sense, nimble or at least well on the way to being nimble.

3. The fluid player. As a kid I watched Sam Snead demonstrate how to really hit the ball. With a 5 iron in hand, he hit a series of shots, announcing to the crowd before each shot exactly how the ball would fly. Okay, he’d say, I’ll hit it straight and 180 yards. And then he’d do just that. Okay now I’ll hit it 190 yards and it will curve to the left at the end. Again he did just that. On and on – 120 right, 180 low and left, 150 high and straight. He was, well, he was so nimble! Something that only comes from many years of true engagement in what we do.

I understood their position a lot more, however, when in route this summer to Cape Cod my gal June and I stopped by my high school home in Wyckoff, New Jersey, to replicate a picture of me swinging a golf club on the front lawn. But when we reached my old address, we discovered my old house had been replaced with another, bigger one. While June managed to get a new picture, it wasn’t until a few days later and the bewilderment had worn off that I wondered: Why did I expect the house to be there? After all, things like this happen all the time now.

So maybe we all need a constant, present, and immutable core from which we derive our stability, safety, and meaning. Something that’s more easily seen, perhaps when we watch young children in restaurants as they wander away from the table but continually look back at the stable core that is their parents. But I guess needing a stable core doesn’t ever go away.

A few nights ago I went into our study and looked at the two golf pictures on my desk. While there had been many people and places between them and I had changed greatly, I’d also remained remarkably the same. I guess that’s an easy observation to make in the warmth and safety of the home. Perhaps when we’re out in the fray, however, we’re more like those kids in the restaurant, always turning back to look for a safe and constant core.

Is it important that students get the facts right before they act? Or should they have a way of acting as they get to know? These two University of Virginia students wanted to learn and act at the same time, and research agrees with them.

This research says we can engage in a surface way where we simply try to get by. Or we can engage in a strategic way where we try to get the best grades possible. Or we can engage in a deep way where we really try to get involved in the subject. Students tend, based on personality factors and situations and their own keenness, to work from one of the strategies most of the time.

What happens, then, many years later when they are in the workplace? Both the surface and strategic learners will tend to feel overworked and overwhelmed by their circumstances and their performance levels will not be as high as they could be. The deep learners, however, will be more in control of their circumstances, will have more sense of choice, and will perform better.

These two med students intuitively knew something more than the regular school routine was needed to make them good practicing doctors. Besides the typical array of classes, they needed the opportunity to concentrate in one field where they could engage on a deeper level.

Maybe that’s because she doesn’t see what’s there. Curiously enough I had a similar vision problem on that very same golf course, and with a cow no less. One day I walked down the 4th fairway, amiably talking with my playing partner, when he suddenly said: Oh look, isn’t that a cow over there? Sure enough as we moved closer we could indeed see a cow sitting on the side of the fairway and all fenced off with yellow tape. Foxes, deer, rabbits yes — but I’d never seen a cow.

But in fact I had seen a cow before. Or more specifically that cow. In playing back the experience, I realized how moments before my partner spoke a part of me saw that cow, or at least something up ahead with two funny ears and a loping head. But because it made no sense to me, I refused to consciously recognize it.
In this case my mind frame said: Animals on the course, sometimes, but cows, never. Thus even though my brain registered the anomaly my mind refused to acknowledge it. We see what we want to see. So maybe Jane only sees what she wants to see on the golf course — a place to go with her husband — and not what she could see — a place to get exercise.

On the driving range I once saw a father teaching his 2 year old to hit the ball. Clearly the father saw the range as opportunity for his family, a place where anyone could play.

Last year my friend David, the principle of an architectural firm, needed to make his team more agile. While their design skills allowed them to develop beautiful models, that same care and precision prevented them from moving quickly when new design opportunities came along. Rather than lecturing them on agility, David devised discovery scenarios where his team members made mock presentations to mythical clients whose concerns far exceeded the usual. And in the scenarios each person had to present on the fly, without the usual presentation props and models. These experiences gave his team members the aha’s they needed to see how agile they could be.

Letting others discover for themselves can require a change of thinking. Take Antoinette, for example. As a university professor in economics she was accustomed to telling not showing. But with one particularly bright but not so promising grad student she needed to tread carefully, knowing that letting the student go could have profound career implications if not done carefully. So instead if telling, she developed a profile of the situation from the student’s point of view. Then she looked at how she could get the student to reason from that profile, perhaps beginning to see that while she was very bright, economics was not the appropriate field for her. Happily, the approach worked.

Both David and Antoinette were nimble players who could cleverly devise discovery experiences for others. These experiences allowed the participants to develop the insights needed to make real changes.

Two years ago Leo played doubles tennis with me for the first time. In that match he was very keen on getting the strategy down – two people working together to skillfully cover their side of the net – and he asked me a lot of questions. This summer when I watched him play doubles, he didn’t ask a lot of questions. Instead he moved smoothly, side to side and back to front, covering his ground with the rhythm and pace of a smart game. Not only had Leo learned from his experiences, he’d gotten steadily better at it.

I think Leo’s development occurs within his own arc. Jazz camp, baseball, Quebec, tennis – that’s all part of his story. We each have our own stories and we set our experiences within them. I see this most clearly when I look at where my daughter and I travel. I usually take trips to the eastern shores – Cape Cod, the Jersey shore, the Outer Banks, and Charleston – with an occasional jaunt to San Francisco. My daughter Rayne, however, travels on a more global scale — Aruba, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Rio, Bonn, Thailand. She’s my daughter, but she has her own arc.

We each have our own experience profile, our own development spiral, and our own arc.

The alternative involves “spiral learning,” a process of learning in small steps where we first seek something that interests us. We next experience that interest through a challenging and engaging activity where we’re rewarded for doing well. We then repeat the process, only at a slightly higher, more challenging level.
In this way we get a little but whole picture, and then from that we construct, using the same circular process, a bigger and bigger whole picture. This allows us to continually feel in control, always having a sense of where we are. While this is good for us, the learner, it’s tough for the teacher (or manager or leader or parent) who must develop an understanding of each individual in the group. That’s why we tend to get “canned” presentations such as the one I had in a psychology class where a professor, simply reading from notes he’d developed many years ago, talked in the present tense about his first grade son whom we later realized was now in fact eighteen.

We’re uneasy when we’re talked to this way. And what better response than to simply turn off! Because in situations where success means learning more – school, work, play — we expect to be treated as individuals, and we revolt when we are not.

Anders Ericcson calls Albert’s approach a “deliberate practice.” That’s where we take things step by step, carefully playing through each action so we gradually but steadily become better players. With each subsequent action we seek a more difficult challenge, enough that we try harder but not so much that we feel defeated. Clearly Albert’s achievement reflected good practice and just as clearly mine did not.

My young nephew Julian once spent a Saturday afternoon putting together his latest and most complicated Lego project. With family members talking and milling about, he was able to work steadily and with great care. Watching his intensity and deliberateness reminded me of Albert and I began to wonder: What happens to many of us along the way that we lose our intensity and deliberateness?

I think in Julian’s case it helped that his two very bright older brothers, Adrian and Leo, had played with Legos before him. So perhaps growing up in such a rich atmosphere fostered an attitude of intensity and deliberateness in Julian.

I explored this phenomena by looking at students who were taking an introductory kayaking class at the University of Virginia. One student reported that she bicycled long distances to get in shape for the river trip, and afterwards she reported that gave her the confidence to make a successful run. Her husband, a PhD chemist, instead took a scientific approach, talking about risks and safety features and likely outcomes. While he also successfully completed the run, afterwards he reported that his little league baseball experience back in Ohio had really gotten him down the river.

So maybe not all attempts at change go smoothly. And maybe in times of change we have to test out various new and real experiences, ones we have a stake in, and then we have to learn from the experiences so we can plot a new direction. We must then keep going when things make sense and we must redirect when things appear, well, silly. Obviously my kerchief days became a redirect.

But to test and learn we have to adopt a kind of “provisional self” that allows us to pretend that we really like what’s happening. As I dated many new women in Chicago, for instance, a provisional part of me was introduced to the various ethnic restaurants these women preferred. Thus my Chicago years become a kind of gastronomical odyssey — Chinese, Indian, Thai, Mexican, Korean. While most proved delightful, there were the occasional upset stomach nights that had to be endured.

Maybe in times of transition, then, some people can tolerate and even welcome new experiences while others cannot.

Her elephant? Some people say we act like the rider atop the elephant, with our rider aware and seeming to be in control but with our elephant unaware and largely propelling us forwards. True happiness, it is suggested, can only come when we get our rider and elephant to work together.

Today, however, we tend to kill our elephant rather than honor it. Much of that killing comes from living in a culture where things like family, school, religion, politics, advertising and career imprint us with values of the other. So we’re not ourselves.

A few years ago I worked with a rider-driven woman named Diana. She’d easily graduated from the University of Virgina law school, greatly pleasing her hard working parents, and then she’d worked in several legal jobs, doing well but hating them all. With a thick streak of heroism in her, she contemplated taking her legal skills to the military. But her rider could push her no further, and finally she gave in to her elephant and began to work with her hands, first with jewelry and then with glass. She’s now a successful glass artist, and her parents recently chipped in for a studio and a bigger kiln. Evidently both Diana and her parents are now on board with their elephants and their riders have decided to help things along .