How to Become an Elite Performer

There’s one question we all ask each other when we witness greatness. 

When the expert pianist hears a complicated piece once and can immediately play it…

When the Olympic divers perfectly synchronize their tumbling off the platform…

When the veteran colleague closes yet another tough sale…

…we, the spectators, observe them with awe and ask: “How do they do it?” 

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We usually ask this question rhetorically– it’s more of a statement of wonder than an actual query. But, it really is a good question to investigate. 

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How do they do it? How exactly do elite performers master their craft? And how can we reach expert-level excellence in our own professional skills?

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Organizational psychology tells us that coachability is the answer. 

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The Power of 10% Better

Our research indicates that highly coachable people perform at a 10% higher level.

It might not sound like a significant amount at first, but think about it– would you rather be a salesperson who hits 97% of their goal or 106%? Let’s raise the stakes a bit– would you rather have an open-heart surgeon who performs at an 90.9% success rate or a 99.9% success rate?

I don’t know about you, but I’d take the surgeon with a 99.9% success rate in a heartbeat.

If you want to become the best of the best, 10% better performance can be a huge competitive edge. So, becoming highly coachable is essential for reaching mastery.

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What Even is Mastery?

Mastery is the ability to perform a skill to an elite level across situations, contexts, and pressures. In psychology literature, researchers call the process of reaching mastery deliberate training.

It might seem obvious how an elite performer reaches a level of mastery– talent plus hours and hours of practice, right? But the story that emerges from deliberate training research is a little more nuanced than that. 

Research indicates that one must take several important steps to reach mastery. Coachability Consultants, Inc. has developed a framework for this process that we train in our Mastery workshop.

We won’t dive into the details of our framework here, but we can tell you this: if you really want to reach mastery, you have to start with your mindset. 

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A Mindset for Mastery

Developing a growth mindset–believing in your ability to grow and improve–is a crucial prerequisite for achieving mastery. However, it's not enough on its own. You must also be highly coachable. 

The pursuit of mastery requires continuous feedback, identifying the right coaches, and being open to multiple sources of guidance. 

To put it plainly: you simply cannot become virtuoso-level good without being open to coaching first. 

And let’s be honest– you can reach some success without being coachable. You can get pretty far on talent alone. You most likely know someone who excelled at school without much help from their teachers. You can probably point to someone who has reached collegiate or even professional levels of sport without so much as applying one suggestion from a coach. 

But when we talk about the best of the best, the world’s most elite performers – Olympic gold medalists and Nobel Prize winners, they don’t rely on talent alone. They are hungry for other perspectives; they constantly seek and apply feedback from multiple sources. In fact, researchers Salas & Rosen (2009) highlight feedback-seeking behaviors as a key part of developing expertise. 

Constructive feedback is essential for closing the gap between good and great, and even more so between great and elite. This requires nuanced, sometimes seemingly “nitpicky” feedback that can help you refine your skills to the highest level. 

So what’s the difference between being really good and being the GOAT? Coachability. 

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Elevate Your Coachability with CCI

As we’ve mentioned, there’s more to mastery than just a coachable mindset. Having the right headspace is a solid starting point for the actual work of mastery– deliberate training. 

For more information on how CCI teaches deliberate training, reach out to us for more details on our Mastery workshop. We look forward to starting your coachability journey with you!

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Sources

Salas, E., & Rosen, M. A. (2009). Experts at work: Principles for developing expertise in organizations. In Learning, Training, and Development in Organizations (pp. 99-134). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Weiss, J. A., & Merrigan, M. (2021, February 1). Employee coachability: New insights to increase employee adaptability, performance, and promotability in organizations. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring. https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/items/0fe54ff4-6d2a-40a2-bedd-28ce117595d8/1/

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