How to Master your craft so you lead your field

“Mastery is a way of thinking, a way of acting, and a journey you experience”

– Gary Keller –

Mastery is defined as having comprehensive knowledge or skill in a subject what does mastering my craft mean? a workman or craftsman fully qualified to practice his trade and to train others in it for 10,000 hours. That’s how long it takes to master your craft, according to best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell.

Doing your job is the easy part while many people can complete routine tasks, meet company standards and ensure customers are satisfied. They often times fail at mastering their crafts.

Whatever your role is in a business, one of your top goals should always be to master your craft. Mastering your craft makes you not only more marketable to the industry you’re in, but better at what you’re already doing.

Customers, prospects, and peers can always spot someone who’s put in the hours, developed the skills, and acquired the knowledge to perform at a higher level than others.

Every role is a craft that has processes, functions, and metrics that define success.

Do you study your own craft? If so, how often? Are you constantly looking for ways to not only improve but practice your skills? What about measuring and assessing your progress? Mastering your craft takes a lot of effort.

Mastery can only be attained through the development of comprehensive knowledge or skill. It is the highest order of accomplishment in our craft Mastery does not require you to be perfect but it does require you to pursue perfection.

This distinction is important because it allows you to enjoy the results you produce while adopting a mindset that requires you to pour your heart and soul into your work.

In fact, if you adopt this mindset, I think you will find three key benefits of mastery in the creative process. They are the discovery of self, fulfillment, and opportunity for growth.

There are some steps to master anything. They are determining the skill you want to master, setting specific stretch goals on your path to developing that skill, attaching a high level of emotion to your journey, identifying the factors critical to success, and developing your strengths in those areas, and many more.

These are eight steps to becoming a master of your craft. They are committed to your goal – Mastery is a long-term journey that never ends, get while most people desire to perfect their craft, many people lack in execution, find a coach, leverage a support system, focus on desire, get inspired, and practice and repeat.

What does perfecting my craft mean?

You know the saying, practice makes perfect. Think of your craft as a path of mastery and each session is a new chance to practice. Become one with your work. You can treat your work as a chore, or you can lose yourself in it when you’re fully engaged, as when you’re practicing mastery, you can find enjoyment.

By mastering your craft, you can lead your field. What do great leaders do? As well as providing direction, inspiration, and guidance, good leaders exhibit courage, passion, confidence, commitment, and ambition. They nurture the strengths and talents of their people and build teams committed to achieving common goals. Being in a leadership role pushes a person to be a good role model, make decisions, be fair and reliable, and have integrity.

One of the most important qualities though is to have commitment. If you expect your team to work hard and attain success; you will have to lead by example.

Mastering your craft will help you to increase your knowledge and skills in your craft. This will help you to lead your field. Being a leader doesn’t mean you keep others down, it means you build others up. Caring about your team, investing in their education, and encouraging their creativity ultimately benefit you as a leader. You’ll get the best from your team by building them up, and they’ll help make you as a leader in your field.

“The ordinary is, paid to do their work. The extra-ordinary are paid to master their craft”

So how do they do it? How do top business leaders become masters in their fields? Is there a sequence to their success, are there inherent qualities shared by the business world’s top leaders?

Studying the top business leaders in various fields allows us to pinpoint the key qualities they share which enable them to achieve success in the business and abundance in their lives. Here are the top qualities of business leaders that you can learn from to improve your leadership skills. They are leaders who naturally work in their flow, leaders are committed to constant and never-ending improvement and innovation. Leaders are willing to take educational risks, leaders embody their company culture, leaders invest in their own personal development of their team, leaders surround themselves with people who help them grow, leaders built extra-ordinary teams, leaders are able to reliably produce results and leaders know how to motivate their teams to produce extraordinary results.

How can I be the best in my field?

Learn by reading, watching videos, and learning from people who are great in the field. Spend your time wisely. Evaluate the quality of the material you are about to study before you delve into it. Focus on learning from thought-leaders in your field, not from just anyone who decided to teach something or write a book. Learning and implementing the qualities of the world’s top leaders who became masters in their fields will help you on your path to becoming a great leader which can lead to professional success and personal abundance.