Let’s talk about practice

Before I landed in the world of Information Technology I was a musician, I hold a degree in Music Performance. I started playing flute in the 4^th grade and my best friend started clarinet at the same time. I was, and still can be, quite competitive so when it came time to earn stars, praise and accolades for the amount of time I practiced, I was all in! 30 minutes every day was the norm and sometimes more. For a 4^th grader, giving up play time and doing my own thing to practice was, well, unusual. That started my world of intentional practice. That ritual of practice went from 4^th grade until I stopped performing at age 26. 16 years learning the art of practicing, learning how to effectively practice to create something new, different and skillful. What I can share with you is that there is effective and ineffective practicing available to all of us which supports us in mastering any craft.

Practicing effectively allowed me to perform on stage in front of large groups of people sharing what I had learned, what I was feeling and what was true for me. My practicing allowed my mind, body and yes, my spirit, to work in unison without having to try to perform. My practicing took me into the realm of allowing what I had trained myself, with the support of a myriad of friends, colleagues, and mentors, to do and be while on stage. I was no longer thinking about all the notes and mechanics of performing, I was allowing everything I had learned to simply be what it was. I was no longer making music, I was allowing the creation of a shared experience to flow through me with ease and grace.

You might be wondering what this has to do with project management and being a project manager. I am suggesting it has everything to do with project management. I am suggesting that what we practice matters in our lives and to be capable, competent and masterful at anything, such as being a project manager, requires practice. It requires us to be present to the skills of project management. This will allow us to BE project managers rather than trying to DO project management. I’m suggesting that being a project manager means that we have taken the time and energy to practice. The goal of our practice is to allow us to perform our craft without thinking about how to do what we are doing, our goal is to allow it to naturally flow from us because we have practiced effectively.

The dictionary definition of practicing is “to do or perform often, customarily, or habitually”. Practicing tangible activities such as mastering penmanship seems pretty straightforward, however, that isn’t always the case. Like anything that we’ve done for a period of time, we don’t always know and can’t always tell whether what we are doing works. There are small, almost imperceptible nuances that we discover over time that require us to stop and practice anew.

I’d been performing for many years and one day a conductor said that my tone was “breathy”. The emotions I felt when I received that feedback were enormous. I was shocked at my defensiveness, anger, and hurt. He had shared with me something no one else had bothered to tell me. I took the emotions that were triggered by that comment and began practicing my sound. I stood in front of a mirror for hours to look at how my mouth met the flute and discovered I’d spent years playing based on what I had been taught as a child, to center the flute on my lips and blow. What I learned is that my lips aren’t symmetrical and centering my flute didn’t work for my body. I discovered there was something different about me that required me to not center the flute on my lips. I learned that I had to allow my body and flute to work together differently to create a clean sound. I was amazed at the difference created by that small comment.

There are so many lessons that came from that moment in my life which serve me today.

• I am not always able to discern what isn’t working in my life, whether it is about what I’m doing or how I’m being. When I received the feedback, I didn’t automatically start changing everything. Instead, I verified what I had been told by asking others what they thought and listening to recordings of myself. I was looking to prove the feedback wrong and discovered there were elements of truth in what I’d been told.
• Knowing that there is an issue allows me to discover new possibilities.
• What I learned as a child doesn’t necessarily work when I’m an adult. I had learned how to play from a school teacher in a large class, I’d taken private lessons for years, and still didn’t know that what I had been taught could only get me to a certain level. If I wanted to go farther, I had to learn to do something differently. That comment interrupted my perception of my abilities.
• Small changes can make a big difference. The change in how the flute met my lips was imperceptible and the change in my sound was very noticeable.
• What I produce when I allow my body (in this case my lips) to move freely with my surroundings (my flute) is free from distortion by ambient noise.

All of this to say, even the most seasoned project management practitioners get to receive feedback and to practice.

One last thought, if the tangibles can be this challenging to discover and master over time through practice, what about the intangibles. And what are those intangibles and how do we practice them? More to come next week.