The DP-Starter Kit

Written By Dan Sacks

Tips & Tools for Using Deliberate Practice, gathered for you by Bjorn Bell

What Are the Benefits of Deliberate Practice?

Here’s my view on the benefits of Deliberate Practice.

  1. Learn Skills More Effectively

More seminars and books give you more PowerPoint slides and text passages - for a lot of time and money. Engaging in Deliberate Practice gives you the principles to effectively improve (almost) everything about your therapy for the rest of your career.

2. Experience Immediate Effects

Do it. Get feedback. Do it better. Get feedback. Do it great. This is the rhythm of Deliberate Practice. Through all the specific feedback, you will gradually refine your skills. Every training makes you noticeably more skilful.

3. Gather Feedback On Your “Therapist Style”

"How do I come across as a therapist?" Rarely do we get concrete feedback on this. Deliberate Practice is like a mirror that tells you how exactly you trigger what in the other person. You can keep an eye on your weaknesses and use your strengths in a more targeted way.

4. Improve Almost Any Intervention

Deliberate Practice focuses on nuances. Word choice, voice, body language. These nuances colour the impact of each of your interventions. So if you improve one skill, you’ll often indirectly improve your other skills too.

5. Skill-Building Tailored to Your Level

Whether you are a beginner or a professional, Deliberate Practice can be tailored to your skill level. You learn in your "zone of proximal development" - exactly where it really makes a difference.

The Principles (and Tools)

Five principles for mastering your therapy skills (adapted from Vaz & Rousmaniere, 2021). I’ve also added some useful tools to make starting easier.

Observe Work

  • Option 1: Record your sessions.

  • Option 2: Use in vivo performance.

Tools:

Expert Feedback

  • Find a DP-coach/supervisor and/or peer.

  • Use concrete, observation-based feedback.

  • Focus on your performance.

  • Discourage overly conceptual discussions.

Tools:

Small Learning Goals

  • Use/define concrete and actionable skill criteria.

  • Focus on your verbal and nonverbal performance.

  • Tailor goals to your zone of proximal development.

Tool:

Behavioral Rehearsal

  • Use skill modeling.

  • Practice skills repeatedly.

  • Tailor difficulty to your zone of proximal development.

  • Use ongoing corrective feedback.

  • Establish solitary deliberate practice homework.

Tools:

Assessing Performance

  • Assess your work performance on a micro-level (e.g. videorecordings).

  • Assess your work performance on a macro-level (e.g. outcome data).

Tools:

10 Options for Deliberate Practice

None of the options are my own ideas–except for the voicemail-challenge. Most ideas came from books/videos/supervision by/with Rousmaniere and Vaz. I’ve included a subjective evaluation of the methods regarding the DP-integrity, the fun-factor and the barrier to getting started.

Option + Subjective Evaluation Description
Working with a DP-certified supervisor
will give you the highest degree of
tailored learning. Using recordings of
your sessions will reduce biases.
Working with a DP-certified supervisor
will give you the highest degree of
tailored learning. Using
in-vivo-performance will include some
biases. But it will be better than just
working with descriptions.
With a deliberate practice book you’ll
have prepared skill-criteria and client
prompts to work with. If you use it with
peers, you can also get helpful feedback.
It is, however, not as tailored to your
specific situation/client.
If you recorded your video, you can view
parts of it and press pause when you feel
you could have done better. Then you
can improvise better responses. It’s very
specific to your situation but it lacks
feedback.
If you struggle with a client, you can
record yourself–acting as the
client–saying a sentence that’s
representative of the challenge. Then you
can play it back to yourself and improvise
responses.
You could use standardized video-stimuli
that provide skill-criteria. This approach is
similar to using DP-books for
solo-practice, but it’s more vivid and
concrete. It’s, however, not as tailored to
your situation and it also lacks expert
feedback.
You could use deliberate practice books
on your own. This is an easy way to get
started and get a feeling for DP. However,
when you do the exercises you lack
outside feedback and it’s not tailored to
your situation.
You could use video-stimuli without
provided skill criteria. While this gives you
the freedom of choice, it can be
overwhelming for beginners to choose a
skill that’s relevant. Also: No feedback
and not tailored.
I did a “challenge” with a colleague where
we’d send each other the most difficult
statement of a client we had to react to
that day. The other person would then
improvise a response. It’s not tailored to
your learning goals and has no provided
skill criteria–but it’s fun!
When you read any therapy book, don’t
read it from cover to cover. If there’s a
description of a skill, stop, and try to
carve out specific skill criteria and
practice with them. (You could even
create a document to collect your skills.)
Reading books like this takes forever–but
taking the time is worth it. However, it still
lacks feedback and tailoring.

Helpful Resources

Audio/Video

Books

Websites

Projects

Dan Sacks
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Neuroplasticity, Deliberate Practice and our willingness to grow