The Leader and the Violinist: 10,000 things in common.

In his fantastic book Outliers: The Story of Success Malcolm Gladwell explains the different factors that combine for someone to become successful. It was really surprising to check out for commonalities in the success of the Beatles, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Hockey Players, Soccer Players, Lawyers, Doctors, and find out the common ground they share. It’s a really interesting book and it deals with the subject from different points of view. The book really changed the way I look at success now.

One of the things that really struck me was that the book stated that the “magical number” to become an expert was 10,000. That is, 10000 hours of performing, practicing an activity ensures you that you’ll become an expert, whether you’re in sports, science, music, or any other human activity. The key factor, is that our brain takes that much amount of time to fully integrate the activity in our natures. Gladwell used several examples to illustrate the fact, but the one that stroke me the most was the one of violin players, an average violin player has 4,000 hours of practice, a better one has like 6,000 but the really good ones all had in common one thing, over 10,000 hours of play/practice. The same with every other human activity.

With that number in my mind, I started to think that to become an “expert” leader one should be involved in the activity of leading at least 10,000 hours. That means if you dedicate 2 hours, 5 days a week, 48 weeks / year, the task will take you roughly over 20 years . But leading is an activity you perform every day, say 6 or 8 hours / day. That means you can reduce the time to become an “expert leader” to approximately 5 years. Nevertheless, the case might not be that easy.

What’s the problem here? Why don’t we have more expert leaders then? Easy answer… when you play violin, you have clear and specific skills you need to develop in order to excel at the activity, and you have clear measures of progress. In Leadership those skills might be clear as well, but sometimes the results are not so easy to observe, and the outcomes of your actions/decisions may take several days to show before you realize you made a mistake. In leadership you have to train yourself, and most of the time you don’t assist to a “conservatory of leaders”. There’s a lack of formal education for leaders, or at least, there was. Now, several universities offer post graduate studies in leadership, and the subject has taken more relevance because of the clear need for leadership in every human activity.

Anyway, formal or informal, to become an expert in a field requires 10,000 hours of practice in that particular field. So, What kind of Leader do you want to be ? Average (4000 hours) Good (6000 hours) or and expert (10000). How much do you want to invest in becoming a leader? Don’t wait any longer… lead, lead , lead , practice, practice , practice .

And Remember, Be Alert, Be A Leader