Standing tall above the rest of the field might seem like it’s only for the few. But expertise has less to do with the talent you were born with and more to do with practice, according to one expert.

What gives a person expertise? What made Mozart pitch perfect and able to compose 600 works in a relatively short life? How do London cabbies recall the details of 25,000 streets within a 10-kilometre radius of Charing Cross? What of the feats of Scrabble Master, New Zealander Nigel Richards, winning the 2015 French Scrabble championship when he couldn’t speak the language? He spent just nine weeks before the tournament memorising the French dictionary.

Common answers to such questions invariably use words like ‘giftedness’, ‘natural ability’, even ‘genius’. Mozart has long been called a ‘child prodigy’.

What made all these people brilliant is within the reach of almost everyone, insists myth-busting behavioural psychologist K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University. Ericsson has spent more than 30 years studying experts in their fields – athletes, musicians, doctors and poker players, among many others – to determine what makes them exceptional.

His research shows something quite prosaic is the difference between being ordinary and truly outstanding. To Ericsson, the difference is a method known as deliberate practice – and that view has made him an international target for his behavioural science colleagues as they try to counter his claim.

In his new book, Peak: The New Science of Expertise, co-authored with Robert Poole, Ericsson explains the science as he shows step by step how almost anyone can reach their full potential by using the right approach.

“We’re actually describing scientific processes that show how the body can adapt, rather than assume there’s something magical going on,” Ericsson says. “This idea that we’re born with certain innate characteristics that we can’t change – that’s basically wrong.”

Changing the brain

Crucial in the development of expertise, Ericsson finds, is the brain’s ability to change over time, with deliberate practice refining its mental maps for the next best step. Put simply, it involves building or modifying specific skills by focusing on particular aspects of those skills and using feedback from a coach or teacher to improve incrementally.

Over a long period of dedication, this process of continuous improvement leads to exceptional performance. Whether aware of it or not, experts the world over have used deliberate practice to achieve excellence, Ericsson asserts.

After numerous studies and analysis of the psychology, physiology and brain machinations that culminate in exceptional performance, his discovery suggests revolutionary possibilities for professional productivity, educational selection, and training and sporting prowess.

One of Ericsson’s first studies in 1993 was of a group of violinists at the Music Academy in Berlin that showed 10,000 to be the average number of hours they had practised by the age of 20. The all-important difference, though, was whether that practice was ‘deliberate practice’.

Most people make do with conventional practice “where they just go out and play and hope they’ll get better”. Everyday examples include driving a car and participating in a game of hit-and-giggle tennis, Ericsson explains. Then there’s purposeful practice “where you get out of your comfort zone and try to improve a particular aspect”, such as working on your leg muscles to get better at high jumping.

Deliberate practice is more complex and goes well beyond the comfort zone.

More than just smarts

Not everyone is convinced by the claims being made about deliberate practice. Contradictory research points to how talent development is a mix of abilities, environment, practice and motivation; that the average IQ of advanced chess players, for example, is higher than that of the general population; that it’s very unlikely child prodigies would have engaged in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice before adolescence; and that expertise in creative fields cannot be counted, because creativity is nebulous.

Ericsson consistently counters that researchers use different theoretical frameworks for their studies.

“In many years of mapping DNA, I find it curious that a single gene hasn’t been discovered where there is consensus that it’s providing a clear advantage for the people who have it.”

Ericsson’s recent work shows IQ is “a decent predictor” for beginner performance in chess, but that “skills overtake and replace whatever was correlated with IQ,” he says.

Skills also outstrip knowledge, according to Ericsson. He and Poole note that there’s been a tradition of focusing on knowledge as a sign of expertise in business, mainly because it’s “easier to present knowledge to a large group of people than it is to set up conditions under which individuals can develop skills through practice.”

The business applications

The two researchers have now trained their sights on professionals. Qualifying tests for doctors, for instance, tend to involve multiple choice questions about knowledge. “A lot of the time doctors don’t even get feedback about how patients are doing,” says Ericsson. “We need to find how they can deliver superior performance.”

In business, forecasting could take a cue from deliberate practice. When scenario planning, valuable feedback comes when the correct scenario emerges, says Ericsson. “A lot of people lose track of what they were thinking when they were generating predictions.” It’s important to reflect and learn from the process. “But many just jump to the next thing,” he laments.

Beyond specialness

Ericsson has come to realise that people often want to believe in specialness. “I’m yet to find someone who’s exceptional at what they do, who would cite innate abilities as important for their success. They all talk about the training.

“People who know exceptional people seem to be even more wedded to the idea of being friends of someone special, but they don’t know what it took for that person to reach this high level.”

The good news, Ericsson and Poole conclude, is that everyone has the main gift in the adaptability of the human brain and body – it’s just a matter of taking advantage of it.

This feature originally appeared in INTHEBLACK magazine.