Top Performance Blog

I wonder what you were expecting to read about when you clicked on the link for my "Something Magical" blog. When the link first appeared about a month ago, I started receiving emails. First, people asked, "Where is it?" Until now, the link took readers to a mostly blank page–except the promise of "more to come." A few speculated that the blog might have something to do with writing fantasy, fiction novels. Others wondered if it was a newer, hipper version of the old ISTC "Baloney Watch." The short answer is, "neither."

If you’ve been following my website and the Top Performance Blog you know that my professional interests over the last couples of years have been shifting, away from psychotherapy, the common factors, and feedback and toward the study of expertise and excellence. Studying this literature (click here for an interesting summary), makes clear that the factors responsible for superior performance are the same regardless of the specific endeavor one sets out to master. The chief principle will come as no surprise: You have to work harder at whatever you want to be best at than everyone else. In other words, you have to practice.

Hard work is not enough, however. Research shows that few attain international status as superior performers without access to high levels of support and detailed instruction from exceptional teachers over sustained periods of time. In the massive Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, Feltovich et al. note, Research on what enabled some individuals to reach expert performance, rather than mediocre achievement, revealed that expert and elite performers seek out teachers and engage in specifically designed training activities…that provide feedback on performance, as well as opportunities for repetition and gradual refinement" (p. 61).

What makes for a "good" teacher? Well, in essence, that is what the "Something Magical" blog is all about. I’m going on a journey, a quest really. I’ve decided to take up a subject I’ve always had a passing interest in but knew nothing about and try to become an expert: I’m taking up "magic." (In truth, I’m also picking up the Ukelele, in the hopes of becoming the next Jake Shimabukuro). I just think that magic, given the popularity of Chris Angel, Derren Brown, and others, will make for more interesting material!

Deciding what effects to learn and how best to master them has been a challenge. Indeed, the process reminds me a lot of when I started out in the field of psychology. In a word, its daunting. There are literally thousands of effects (as there are 100’s of treatment models), millions of how-to books, videos, and other instructional media (just as in the therapy world), as well as experts (who, similar to the field of psychotherapy, offer a wide and bewildering array of different and oftentimes contractory opinions).

By starting completely over with a subject I know nothing about, I hope to put into practice the insights gleaned from our study of expertise and expert performance, along the way reporting the challenges, triumphs and failures associated with learning to master a new skill. I’ll review performances, instructional media (live, printed, DVD, etc), and the teachers I met. Stay tuned.

So what is the first step to improving your performance? Simply put, knowing your baseline. Whatever the endeavor, you have to keep score. All great performers do. As a result, the performance in most fields has been improving steadily over the last 100 years.

Consider, for instance, the Olympics. Over the last century, the best performance for every event has improved–in some cases by 50%! The Gold Medal winning time for the marathon in the 1896 Olympics was just one minute faster than the entry time currently required just to participate in the Chicago and Boston marathons.

By contrast, the effectiveness of psychological therapies has not improved a single percentage point over the last 30 years. How, you may wonder, could that be? During the same time period: (1) more than 10,000 how-to books on psychotherapy have been published; (2) the number of treatment approaches has mushroomed from 60 to 400; and (3) there are presently 145 officially approved, evidenced-based, manualized treatments for 51 of the 397 possible DSM IV diagnostic groups. Certainly, given such "growth," we therapists must be more effective with more people than ever before. Unfortunately, however, instead of advancing, we’ve stagnated, mistaking our feverish peddling for real progress in the Tour de Therapy.

Truth is, no one has been keeping score, least of all we individual practitioners. True, volumes of research now prove beyond any doubt that psychotherapy works. Relying on such evidence to substantiate the effectiveness of one’s own work, however, is a bit like Tiger Woods telling you the par for a particular hole rather than how many strokes it took him to sink the ball. The result on outcome, research indicates, is that effectiveness rates plateau very early in most therapists careers while confidence level continue to grow.

In one study, for example, when clinicians were asked to rate their job performance from A+ to F, fully two-thirds considered themselves A or better. No one, not a single person in the lot, rated him or herself as below average. As researchers Sapyta, Riemer, and Bickman (2005) conclude, "most clinicians believe that they produce patient outcomes that are well above average" (p. 146). In another study, Deirdre Hiatt and George Hargrave used peer and provider ratings, as well as a standardized outcome measure, to assess the success rates of therapists in a sample of mental health professionals. As one would expect, providers were found to vary significantly in their effectiveness. What was disturbing is that the least effective therapists in the sample rated themselves on par with the most effective!

The reason for stagnant success rates in psychotherapy should be clear to all: why try to improve when you already think your the best or, barring that, at least above average?

Here again, expanding our search for excellence beyond the narrow field of psychotherapy to the subject of expertise and expert performance in general can provide some helpful insights. In virtually every profession, from carpentry to policework, medicine to mathematics, average performers overestimate their abilities, confidently assigning themselves to the top tier. Therapists are simply doing what everyone else does. Alas, they are average among the average.
Our own work and research proves that clinicians can break away from the crowd of average achievers by using a couple of simple, valid, and reliable tools for assessing outcome. As hard as it may be to believe, the empirical evidence indicates that performance increases between 65-300% (click here to read the studies). Next time, I’ll review these simple tools as well as a few basic methods for determining exactly how effective you are. Subscribe now so you’ll be the first to know.

One more note, after posting last time, I heard from several readers who had difficulty subscribing. After doing some research, we learned that you must use IE 7 or Firefox 3.0.7 or later for the subscribe function to work properly. Look forward to hearing from you!