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The Age September 20, 2011 - 4:36PM
Tiger Woods.
Tiger Woods' father had studied the most effective methods for training young men. Photo: Getty Imageshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Very few of the world’s great achievers were born with any real degree of talent, according to the book Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin.
The book covers great performers from all fields, examining how much of a part talent played in their success.
For example Mozart was born to a father who was a professional music composer and an expert in teaching music, particularly to young men.
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Tiger Woods was born to an amateur golfer who also studied the most effective strategies for training young men. Before Tiger could walk, his father would take him to the garage, sit him in his high chair and start to hit golf balls in to a net in the garage. “It was as if he was watching a movie,” Tiger’s father said, according to the book.
In both case studies, both Mozart and Tiger have been labeled through the ages as exceptionally talented. Yet when looking into their history it becomes apparent that there was more at work than just pure talent.
One of Tiger’s childhood coaches once remarked that Tiger “was like Mozart.” According to these accounts, indeed he was.
The research in the field shows that ‘talent’, a natural aptitude in a specific field, does exist yet when it comes to being great in a particular field, it is irrelevant.
So what makes all the difference?
Francis Galton, who authored the book Hereditary Genius in 1869, coined the term “nature versus nurture”.
Galton argued that people had innate limits in what they could achieve in life, and regardless of the work they put in, they would never break past these predetermined boundaries. At which time, it’s best if they just accept it, stay within their boundaries and “find true moral repose in an honest conviction that he is engaged in as much good work as his nature rendered him capable of performing’’. In other words, give up and be content.
This explains a lot of the thought patterns in our culture that surround great performers and the notion that they operate at an unattainable standard. You either have it or you don’t.
Over 100 years has passed but the research continues. Hundreds of studies have been done on the subject; the employees whose performance had plateaued for years, seemingly hitting their “rigidly determinate natural limits”, only to a see a consistent improvement in performance after new incentives were offered.
In his now famous paper, The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance, Anders Ericsson concludes that “the search for stable heritable characteristics that could predict or at least account for superior performance…has been surprisingly unsuccessful’’. Meaning after countless case studies, researchers found no relationship between natural talent and great performance.
However at the time of this paper, “natural talent” was still the favoured theory when it came to high achievers. To this the authors indicate, “the conviction in the importance of talent appears to be based on the insufficiency of alternative hypothesis’’. That means people believe in ‘talent’ because they don’t have an alternative.
Until now.
Recent research indicates that the number one determinant when looking at the greats is what has become known as ‘deliberate practice’.
This is not the same as saying ‘experience matters’. Often people who have 20 years experience are found to be performing at a lesser standard to those that have been in a particular field for five years.
Experience alone does not make the difference. Practice alone will not make you great. For example you may go to the driving range and hit golf balls for an hour, going through the motions, making your way through the irons and eventually getting the drivers. However if there isn’t specific concentration and thought going into every stroke and it is simply a form of entertainment, this doesn’t constitute deliberate practice.
It can be similar for people who have remained in the same industry for 20 years. If they haven’t been constantly learning more, seeking feedback and bettering themselves it may be more like one year of experience repeated 20 times.
Deliberate practice has been found to encompass five characteristics:
1. It is designed specifically to improve performance The exercise often needs to be designed by a teacher or mentor who understands what your weaknesses are and what needs to be done to improve.
The activities need to be designed to stretch you and push you outside your comfort zone. Tiger Woods will drop a golf ball into a sand bunker, step on it, and then play the stroke and he will do that thousands of times until he is exhausted. Tiger may only play that stroke a handful of times through his career, but when he comes to it he is well rehearsed in how to execute.
2. It can be repeated a lotRepetition counts. Repetition alone however is not good enough, but when focusing on a particular skill-set with a clear outcome, there needs to be high repetition.
In business this can be achieved through role-play and rehearsal. When preparing for a high stakes show in Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve, Chris Rock performed 18 dress rehearsal evenings in small clubs across America, perfecting his material with every laugh.
3. Feedback on results is continually availableIn business, feedback is everywhere and often it comes in the form of failure; a proposal that didn’t get through, a presentation that didn’t hit, a deal which fell over. Rather than looking at these experiences as failures, if we can examine what happened and take from it an understanding of what to do differently next time, there is our feedback. This is best done with a mentor or manager.
4. It is highly demanding mentallySeveral studies have shown that four or five hours a day seems to be the most we can engage in deliberate practice. This is due to the mental exhaustion that accompanies it.
Even professional athletes that may be hitting more tennis balls in a day than most people do in a year, report that at the end of the day it is the mental exhaustion, not the physical exhaustion, that is most obvious.
5. It isn’t funOften people can have a romantic notion of what it is to be an ‘entrepreneur’. These notions don’t usually make it past the first year.
Doing what we’re good at is enjoyable. However when you take what you are good at, hone in on your weaknesses and repeat a deliberately designed exercise to the point of mental exhaustion, often it is not fun.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
This is of course a good thing. If it were easy – everyone would be doing it.
The research highlights that when looking at business moguls such as Branson, Gates or Trump, we no longer have an excuse to write them off as being “on another level” or “unbelievably talented.” Admittedly these people may be on another level today, however the studies show that they weren’t born there. It was through hours, years and decades of deliberate practice, that they were able to attain a level of performance somewhat resembling greatness.
As Colvin concludes: “great performance is not reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and everyone
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