Lots of us came together this afternoon for John and Julia’s workshop on Deliberate Practice. First we all introduced ourselves and said a bit about what we are doing just now, and then we spoke about the new website. Elaine asked for feedback about preferred communication methods and channels and John encouraged members of the network to contribute to our new blog area..

We got into groups and took some time to reflect individually on what we do to enhance our effectiveness as counsellors and how we decide what we do. Each of us then talked about it with our group.

John then talked about what deliberate practice is all about and put forward a similar idea of ‘self-practice’ i.e. trying things out on yourself. Trainees who engage in self-practice tend to become better therapists.

We looked at the study by Chow, D.L., Miller, S.D., Seidel, J.A., Kane, R.T., Thornton, J.A. and Andrews, W.P. (2015) – The role of deliberate practice in the development of highly effective psychotherapists.

John then spoke about Tony Rousmaniere, who writes about incorporating deliberate practice in his own supervision and personal development. We watched an interesting radio interview on YouTube with Tony Rousmaniere on the topic of deliberate practice.

For a copy of the powerpoint slides, please email us at pluralisticpractice@gmail.com