“The right sort of practice carried out over a sufficient period of time leads to improvement. Nothing else.” — Anders Ericsson
For centuries, society has clung to the idea of “natural talent.” Ericsson’s work dismantles this notion. His studies of top violinists at Berlin’s music academy revealed something surprising: the best performers weren’t more naturally gifted than their peers. They had simply practiced more and better. As he says: “We deny that there is such a thing as a predetermined ability that determines what we can achieve.”
When we watch a concert pianist perform flawlessly, a surgeon carry out a delicate operation, or a CEO lead a team through a crisis, it’s tempting to think: they were born for this. Talent seems like the obvious explanation. But Anders Ericsson, the Swedish psychologist whose decades of research reshaped how we understand skill, challenges that belief. In “Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise”, co-written with Robert Pool, he demonstrates that what separates the extraordinary from the ordinary isn’t talent, but a specific type of training: deliberate practice.
Moving Beyond the Talent Myth
This doesn’t mean genetics play no role — physical height, for example, may matter in basketball — but greatness isn’t written in DNA for most fields. Instead, it’s written in hours of disciplined, intentional effort.
Reflecting on my own leadership journey, I see the parallel. In the early 1990s, when I became president of a bank, people sometimes assumed I had been “born a leader.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Every boardroom negotiation, every crisis, every speech delivered in difficult times was less a test of inborn ability and more a training ground. Leadership, like violin or chess, is a craft built over time.
What Makes Practice Deliberate
Not all practice improves performance. Ericsson distinguishes between naive practice (simply repeating tasks) and deliberate practice, which has three essential components:
- Specific goals — working on weaknesses rather than repeating strengths.
- Immediate feedback — adjusting quickly based on correction.
- Constant challenge — pushing beyond one’s current limits, often into discomfort.
As he explains: “Deliberate practice is purposeful practice that knows where it is going and how to get there.”
Most of us avoid discomfort; experts seek it out. That’s why great performers often look more like scientists than artists — they are constantly experimenting, adjusting, and refining.
In leadership, this might mean rehearsing presentations not until you “get it right,” but until you can handle hostile questions. It might mean debriefing with a trusted colleague after a tense negotiation to analyze not only what you said, but how it was received. Growth requires moving into zones where mistakes are likely, but also where learning is richest.
The Role of Mental Representations
Another key idea in “Peak” is the power of mental representations — the internal maps experts develop through years of practice: “The main thing that sets experts apart from the rest of us is that their years of practice have changed the neural circuitry of their brains in a way that increases their ability to respond appropriately to situations they encounter.”
Chess masters don’t memorize every piece on the board; they see patterns, dangers, and possibilities invisible to the casual player. Violinists don’t just hear notes; they perceive the structure of the music, anticipating how one phrase should flow into the next.
Leaders, too, build mental representations. Over time, they learn to sense the mood of a meeting within seconds, to anticipate the second- and third-order effects of a policy decision, or to “read” silence as clearly as words. These insights aren’t gifts of intuition in the mystical sense; they are the result of training the brain to recognize patterns.
Leadership as a Domain of Expertise
What if we treated leadership the same way Ericsson treats violin, chess, or athletics — as a domain of expertise that can be deliberately practiced? Too often, leadership development is left to chance: years in an office, a few seminars, maybe a book or two. But Ericsson’s research suggests that unless we practice leadership deliberately, improvement will plateau.
Looking back, the times I grew most as a leader were not the smooth years, but the crises. In 2008, when the global financial crisis derailed our bank’s ambitious expansion plan, my colleagues and I were forced to make decisions in unprecedented uncertainty. It was painful. But those moments sharpened my judgment more than a dozen routine years ever could. As Ericsson writes:
“The hallmark of purposeful or deliberate practice is that you try to do something you cannot do — that takes you out of your comfort zone — and that you practice it over and over again, focusing on exactly how you are doing it, where you are falling short, and how you can get better.”
Expertise Is a Choice
The message of “Peak” is both challenging and empowering. Challenging, because it tells us that mastery is never easy or quick. It demands years of uncomfortable, structured practice. Empowering, because it puts growth in our hands. We may not all become world-class violinists or Nobel-winning scientists, but in our own fields — whether it’s leading a team, negotiating, or building organizations — we can become far better than we imagine.
“No matter what role you play in life, you can choose to be the best at it.” That line from Ericsson captures the essence of his work. Expertise is not destiny — it is design.
If you’d like to explore the book yourself, you can find it here on Amazon.
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