How Deliberate Practice Builds Stronger Communication Skills

You leave a communication workshop with a notebook full of ideas.

You know you should pause more often, get to the point faster, make stronger eye connection and stop filling silence with words.

Monday comes, your calendar fills up, and you go right back to communicating the way you always have.

Sound familiar?

Knowing what to do and actually doing it are two very different things.

If you want to become a stronger communicator, information is not enough. You have to practice the behavior until it becomes part of how you naturally communicate.

That is where deliberate practice comes in.

Deliberate practice means intentionally working on a specific skill that is not yet natural or comfortable, getting feedback on how you are doing and repeating the behavior until your performance improves.

Practice does not make perfect.

Practice makes permanent.

What you repeat is what you are training yourself to do, which is why the quality of your practice matters just as much as the amount.

Repeating a Behavior Is Not the Same as Practicing It

We communicate all day long, but that doesn't mean we are practicing communication.

There is a big difference.

If you ramble through five meetings today and do the same thing tomorrow, you have not practiced brevity. You have practiced rambling.

If you look away every time you are thinking, repeating that behavior hundreds of times will not magically improve your eye connection. It will make looking away more automatic.

This is why I want you to be careful with the phrase, "I communicate every day, so I get plenty of practice."

You get plenty of repetition.

Deliberate practice requires intention.

You identify something specific that you want to improve, pay attention to it while you communicate and find out whether the adjustment is actually working.

A systematic review published in Psychotherapy Research examined 11 studies of deliberate practice for therapeutic skills, including nine randomized controlled studies. All of the randomized studies reported better skill performance for deliberate-practice groups than their comparison groups, although the researchers also noted limitations in study quality and considerable variation in how deliberate practice was implemented. The research on deliberate practice and professional skill development reinforces an important point for leaders: improvement comes from focused learning objectives, repeated attempts and feedback, not simply performing the same task over and over.

That is how I want you to approach communication development.

Start With One Behavior

One of the biggest mistakes I see is trying to improve everything at once.

A leader watches a recording and notices they talk too quickly, use filler words, rarely pause, look away from listeners and take too long to make a point.

Their response is, "I need to work on all of this."

No.

Choose one.

Trying to consciously manage six behaviors during your next conversation will make you so focused on yourself that you will stop paying attention to your listener.

Instead, decide what one behavior would make the biggest difference right now.

Maybe you want to:

• pause instead of using filler words

• maintain eye connection through a complete thought

• answer a question in fewer words

• stop interrupting

• clearly state the action you want

• slow down when you are under pressure

Choose the behavior, then look for opportunities to practice it during the conversations already on your calendar.

You do not need another hour in your day.

You need to use the interactions you already have differently.

Do Not Wait for the Big Meeting

This is one of the most important lessons I can give you about developing your communication skills.

Don't wait until the board presentation, sales pitch or leadership conference to suddenly decide to practice a new communication skill.

That is like changing your golf swing on the first tee of a championship round.

Your everyday interactions are your practice field.

Try the new behavior during a routine team meeting where the stakes are low. Practice it during a one-on-one, a client call or a conversation at home.

By the time the high-stakes interaction arrives, you do not want to be thinking:

"Remember to pause."

"Remember to make eye connection."

"Remember to slow down."

You want those behaviors to be closer to automatic so your attention can stay where it belongs: on your listener.

That is why I have always taught that every day is game day.

The way you communicate during ordinary interactions determines how you are likely to communicate when the pressure rises.

Expect It to Feel Uncomfortable

This is where a lot of people stop.

They try a new communication behavior and immediately think:

"This feels awkward."

Exactly.

It is new.

If you have looked away while speaking for twenty years, maintaining eye connection for a complete thought may feel like you are staring.

If you have filled every pause with "um," silence may feel much longer to you than it does to everyone listening.

If you tend to explain everything you know, giving a concise answer may feel incomplete.

Do not confuse unfamiliar with ineffective.

When you change a deeply established communication habit, your internal experience often changes before the behavior starts feeling natural.

Research in other skill-development environments shows the same value of structured difficulty. A 2025 systematic review of deliberate-practice-informed surgical training found that the strongest programs combined repetition with immediate feedback and progressive skill development. The studies involved surgical trainees rather than business leaders, so we should not apply their results directly to executive communication. The useful lesson is the process: focused practice becomes more effective when people know what they are working on, receive timely information about their performance, and gradually increase the challenge. The systematic review of deliberate practice in skills training provides a useful example of that progression.

Growth often feels uncomfortable before it feels natural.

Stay with it.

Use Video to Keep Yourself Honest

How do you know whether the behavior you are practicing is actually improving?

Do not rely only on how it feels.

Record yourself.

You have already heard me talk about this because it is one of the fastest ways to increase communication self-awareness. Watching yourself communicate gives you evidence of what your listeners actually see and hear, rather than leaving you to judge your effectiveness from memory.

Suppose you are practicing brevity.

Record your next meeting and listen for how long it takes you to answer questions. Notice where you repeat a point or add another example after your listener already understands.

If you are working on eye connection, watch the recording without sound. Where are your eyes when you are talking? What happens when someone challenges you?

Playback tells you whether your practice is changing your behavior.

You do not need to like watching yourself.

You need to learn from it.

Ask for Feedback on What You Are Practicing

Deliberate practice and meaningful feedback belong together.

If you are working on one specific behavior, tell someone you trust what you are practicing before the interaction.

For example:

"I'm working on getting to the point faster today. Would you pay attention to whether I give more detail than you need?"

That is much more useful than asking afterward, "How did I do?"

"Great job" will not tell you what to practice tomorrow.

Specific feedback will.

This is why the feedback process we discussed in How Leaders Build Self-Awareness Through Video Review and Feedback focuses on observable behaviors rather than broad impressions.

You want to know what worked, what did not and what you should do differently next time.

Then practice again.

Practice Until You Can Stop Thinking About the Skill

Think about learning to drive.

At first, everything required your attention. You thought about where your hands were, when to brake, when to check the mirror and how far you were from the car in the next lane.

Now you probably do most of those things without consciously thinking about every movement.

Communication habits work the same way.

When you first start practicing a pause, it may feel very intentional. Eventually, it becomes part of your natural rhythm.

At first you may have to remind yourself to finish a thought while looking at one person. With enough correct repetition, you stop having to remind yourself.

That is the goal.

You practice the delivery behaviors until they require less of your conscious attention, leaving you free to listen, adapt and respond to the person in front of you.

The skill becomes part of how you show up.

Use Your Workday as the Practice Field

I often hear, "Stacey, I do not have time to practice."

Yes, you do.

You are already communicating.

The opportunity is built into your day.

If you have six conversations tomorrow, you have six opportunities to practice.

If your goal is brevity, work on it every time someone asks you a question.

If your goal is listening, practice pausing after another person finishes speaking.

If your goal is making a clearer call to action, use it at the end of each meeting.

Small amounts of focused practice across real interactions add up.

This is also why I do not want you to separate "communication training" from your actual job.

The training happens while you are doing the job.

That is how you create Monday to Monday® behavior.

Be Careful What You Practice

Remember:

Practice makes permanent.

If you repeatedly rehearse a presentation while reading from slides, you are practicing dependence on slides.

If every practice run is ten minutes over your allotted time, you are practicing going over time.

If you rehearse alone without recording yourself or getting feedback, you may be reinforcing a behavior you cannot see.

Practice the behavior you actually want to use.

That requires enough self-awareness to know where you need improvement and enough feedback to know whether you are moving in the right direction.

The goal is not repetition for repetition's sake.

The goal is better repetition.

Give Yourself Something Specific to Measure

"I want to become more influential" is a worthy goal.

It is a terrible practice target.

You cannot practice "being more influential."

You can practice behaviors that contribute to influence.

Instead of saying:

"I want more executive presence."

Decide:

"I will stop fidgeting when I am answering difficult questions."

Instead of:

"I want to become a better listener."

Decide:

"I will ask one open-ended question and wait for the complete answer before responding."

Instead of:

"I want to communicate more clearly."

Decide:

"I will state the decision and required next step before adding background."

Now you have something you can see, hear and measure.

You also have something someone else can give you feedback on.

Accountability Keeps Practice From Becoming a Good Intention

You can know exactly what you need to practice and still not do it.

We are all good at letting ourselves off the hook.

A busy week arrives. A deadline takes priority. You tell yourself you will work on your communication next week.

Next week becomes next month.

This is where accountability matters.

Tell someone what you are practicing and ask them to check in with you.

Put the behavior somewhere you will see it before your meetings.

Track whether you practiced it that day.

When you are ready to make accountability more deliberate, build a process that makes follow-through harder to avoid.

Communication development becomes much easier to postpone when nobody knows you committed to it.

Stop Looking for the Quick Fix

No communication technique I can give you today will permanently change how you communicate tomorrow.

I can show you what to do.

You still have to do it.

You cannot read about pausing and suddenly become someone who uses silence effectively.

You cannot attend a workshop on brevity and expect years of rambling to disappear on Monday morning.

You cannot learn about eye connection and assume you will automatically use it when a senior executive challenges your recommendation.

Behavior changes through use.

This is what separates people who know a lot about communication from people who consistently communicate with influence.

They practice.

What Are You Practicing Today?

Before your next interaction, ask yourself one question:

What communication behavior am I intentionally practicing today?

Keep the answer specific.

Then use it.

Notice how it feels. Watch how your listener responds. Record yourself when possible and ask someone for feedback.

Tomorrow, do it again.

You do not need to transform your communication in one giant leap. You need to stop leaving your development to chance.

One behavior practiced intentionally today becomes easier tomorrow. With feedback, repetition and accountability, that behavior eventually becomes part of how people consistently experience you.

That is how communication development happens.

That is how you move from knowing to doing.

That is how you build influence Monday to Monday®.

Stacey Hanke Inc.'s leadership communication workshops give leaders the opportunity to practice communication behaviors in real time, receive specific feedback and build the skills required to communicate with greater clarity and influence.

If your leaders know what effective communication looks like but struggle to put it into practice consistently, explore leadership communication workshops.