Deliberate practice

Why most practice does nothing

People assume that doing the job is practice. Mostly it isn't. Anders Ericsson's research on expert performance — written up for general readers in Peak (2016, with Robert Pool) — draws a hard line between repeating an activity, which produces early gains and then a long plateau, and practice that is designed: specific goals, full attention, immediate feedback, and working just beyond current ability.

Voice from the field

"Purposeful practice has well-defined, specific goals."
— Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise (2016)

Making fifty calls a week is not practice. Making fifty calls while working on one named thing, listening back, and checking whether it changed — that is. And communication craft needs no prospect or pipeline: only a recording device.

Recording yourself

The highest-return habit in this module, and almost nobody does it, because listening to yourself is unpleasant for about three sessions and then stops being unpleasant.

Record on your phone, on anything you legally can — internal meetings, practice calls with a friend, mock interviews. On customer calls follow your company's policy and applicable law; in the UK, notify participants and get consent.

Then listen back once, with a single question in mind — not "was that good?", which produces only discomfort. Ask: how fast was I? How many fillers? How long was my longest monologue? Keep the recordings; comparing week one with week four is the only reliable evidence you're improving.

The 10-minute daily drill

A template — swap the content, keep the shape:

• 0–2: read aloud. Any text, deliberately slow. Trains pace and articulation.
• 2–5: answer one question on camera. One take, no restarts, aim for 90 seconds.
• 5–8: watch it back against this week's single focus. Note one thing.
• 8–10: rewrite one email, from your sent folder or this module's "before" examples. Halve it.

Five days a week, that is four hours a month of designed practice on exactly the skills an interview grades.

Transcript review

If you have access to recorded calls — yours, a colleague's, or public recordings — read the transcript rather than only listening; you notice different things on the page. Mark up your longest monologue (over about a minute needs a reason); your talk ratio, against the 40–45% guidance from Module 04; how many questions were open, closed, leading or stacked; every missed thread where the buyer offered something and you moved on; and every phrase you reused from them — if there are none, you were downloading.

The most valuable pass is marking where the other person tried to speak and you carried on. These appear as fragments — "Yeah, but the—", "I think the issue is—" — inside your turn, and every one is information that got thrown away.

One specific thing per week

Not "get better at communication" — one named, observable behaviour a week, chosen because you saw it in a recording.

Good: count two before I speak / no stacked questions / summarise before changing topic / cut every email's first two sentences / stop talking after I make an ask.

Bad: sound more confident / be more concise / build better rapport. Not observable, so you can't tell whether you did them.

Keep a one-line log: date, focus, whether you did it.

A four-week practice plan

Ten minutes daily plus one longer session a week, assuming no sales role and no prospects.

Week 1 — Listening and silence. Focus: count two before speaking, in every conversation, work or otherwise. Longer session: record a 20-minute practice conversation with a friend about a real problem in their job — understand it, don't solve it — then count your interruptions and the phrases you reused. Deliverable: a written summary of their problem in their words, sent to them, asking what you got wrong.

Week 2 — Questions. Focus: no stacked or leading questions. Write 20 discovery questions for a persona in a sector you want to sell into, classify each as open/closed/leading, and rewrite every leading one. Longer session: a second recorded conversation, funnelling four questions deep. Deliverable: a one-page question bank you'd actually use.

Week 3 — Writing. Focus: cut the first two sentences. Rewrite one email daily, halving the word count. Draft a cold email, a post-call follow-up and a LinkedIn note for a real target company, then rewrite each against the six clarity rules. Longer session: give all three to someone outside your field and ask what the point of each was. Deliverable: three emails you'd be happy to have graded, because you may be.

Week 4 — Presence and structure. Focus: stop talking after the ask. Fix the camera setup and run the silent/audio test from section 4. Daily, record a 30-second version of something and cut it until it fits. Longer session: a recorded mock, reviewed by transcript for talk ratio, longest monologue, missed threads and stacked questions. Deliverable: a 30-second company version, a 60–90 second customer story, and a recorded mock you'd show someone.

You won't be a polished communicator after four weeks. You will have four recordings a month apart, a question bank, three good emails and a measurable habit — more evidence of coachability than most candidates bring.