Grow your Talent
Public Group
Description
The best way to succeed is to mimic those who have gone before you. In this space we will share insights into growing and developing talent, your own talent and that of others. How can you become better? How can you use your mentor to grow your talent? How can you be an example for others to follow?
News
Talent vs Effort
THE conventional wisdom about “natural” talent was a myth, said Geoff Colvin in Fortune Magazine last year. “The real path to great performance is a matter of choice.”
Colvin went on to say that some researchers now argued that talent means nothing like what we think it means — “if indeed it means anything at all”. “In studies of accomplished individuals, researchers have found few signs of precocious achievement before the individuals started intensive training. Similar findings have turned up in studies of musicians, tennis players, artists, swimmers, mathematicians, and others. Such findings do not prove that talent doesn’t exist. But they do suggest an intriguing possibility: that if it does, it may be irrelevant.
“The concept of specific talents is especially troublesome in business,” says Colvin. “We all tend to assume that business giants must possess some special gift, but the evidence turns out to be extremely elusive. In fact, the overwhelming impression that comes from examining the lives of business greats is just the opposite — that they didn’t seem to give any early indication of what they would become.”
Jack Welch, named by Fortune as the manager of the 20th century, “showed no particular inclination toward business, even into his mid-20s.” Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest people, although fascinated by computers as a kid, “possessed nothing to suggest extraordinary abilities”.
David Lyman, in his essay The Eight Keys to Success, What it Takes to Reach Your True Potential, says talent is the last thing you need. “You have to have some of it, but you do not need a lot. “Too much talent is often a handicap. Things come too easily, and there is little incentive to push, to make use of the talent. I know highly talented musicians who refuse to perform in public, photographers who are so arrogant no one wants them around and others who are so impatient at getting what they want, they never master anything.”
So what is the vital ingredient for success? According to Lyman, it is passion. “That demonic compulsiveness that fires any creative person, something that gets you angry, or something you love and want to share.” Next comes willingness to take a risk. “I do not know anyone who has succeeded who has not been able to take a risk,” says Lyman. Then you need high self-esteem and persistence.
Calvin Coolidge thought persistence was far more important, however, and wrote: “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
“The slogan ‘press on’ has solved, and always will solve, the problems of the human race.”
That being the case, we’d be making a terrible mistake if we gave up on an ambition simply because we thought we lacked the talent for it.” (BusinessDay)
