Photo Credit: James Robbins

Have you ever witnessed someone so skilled at their craft that simply watching them was inspiring? I recently had the chance to see pure mastery. A couple of months ago my son had an opportunity to spend a weekend with arguably the best ice skating coach in the world.

His name is Besa Tsintsadze. Besa is from Tbilisi, Georgia, and grew up behind the Iron Curtain in the former Soviet Union. Besa loved to play hockey as a boy. When he was 12 years old, his coach told him he was too small and encouraged him to switch to figure skating, which he did. After a successful career as a figure skater, he retired and began teaching hockey players in the United States how to skate.

For seven years he worked in relative obscurity, practicing and perfecting his methods—one day the National Hockey League took notice. The Pittsburg Penguins hired Besa as its skating coach. Over the next five years, he trained some of the best players in the sport.

In 2011, the Boston Bruins hired Besa as a skating consultant, during which time they won the Stanley Cup. With his reputation now firmly in place, the superstars of the league are now phoning Besa to set up private coaching sessions.

Besa’s ability to help the best skaters in the world get better is nothing short of amazing. More important, it offers an important lesson on the principles of excellence.

10 Years of Silence

Have you ever heard the phrase “10 Years of Silence” coined by John Hayes, a cognitive psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University? Hayes wanted to know how long it takes for someone to reach elite levels of performance at something. He has spent years studying masters in their field, such as Mozart and Picasso.

While researching musicians he discovered that more than 95 percent of the most popular symphonies were written in the 10th year or after of a composer’s career.

In fact, none of the masters were overnight successes. It seems excellence requires more than raw talent, it needs time. Hayes began to refer to this period filled with hard work and little recognition as the “10 Years of Silence.”

Deliberate Practice 

Time was not the only contributing factor to the success of these geniuses, though. It was time filled with what Anders Eriksson calls “deliberate practice.” It’s about spending focused time everyday trying to improve a certain area of your craft.

In Besa’s case, he already possessed an amazing ability to skate, but that did not mean he was ready to teach it to hockey players. It took him seven years of perfecting his drills to become someone who could train the very best in the world.

I have often said that leadership is a role that can improve with practice. Great leaders are not born, but are made by deliberate focus and daily improvement. The key for you is to stay focused on how you spend your time. Everyone is busy, but the truly great ones make mastery a priority.

Persistence

What if Besa had quit after four years, or five or even six? No NHL superstars would have him on speed dial, that’s for sure.

But he didn’t. He kept working—diligently, day after day, from one cold ice rink to another—until his excellence could no longer be ignored.

So, what is your magnificent obsession? How will you gift the world with what you have already been given? Where do you need to focus a little time each day to improve your craft so that you will eventually reach genius-level mastery? Is it giving speeches, leading teams, teaching others, or writing? Perhaps it’s plotting strategy, coaching staff, or designing training programs?  

Whatever your skill, be willing to stay the course during your 10 Years of Silence—so that you too may cause people to sit up and take notice.