Talent Is Overrated, Part One

I'm reading a book titled Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, and the premise of this book is that "you don't need a one-in-a-million natural gift. Better performance, and even world-class performance, is closer than (we) think."

He argues that neither a high IQ nor the presence of natural gifts create excellence.  Instead it's something he calls deliberate practice, a concept he illustrates in full detail.  For those of you who read my blog and work with me, you're welcome to borrow the book when I'm finished.

Anyway, I'm only into Chapter 3, How Smart Do You Have To Be?, when I am stopped dead in my tracks by the section in which Colvin discusses the impact of IQ on Grand Masters of chess.  "Why in the world would you care about Grand Masters of chess?" you might ask.

Because immediately I began making parallels in my mind between what made these men great at what they do and the possible implications for our students.

Colvin shows the results of study after study that prove Grand Masters of chess have IQs no greater than yours or mine.  What they do have, however, is hours and hours of rigorous, deliberate, creative practice that allows them to truly know the multiple possible moves of their opponents, and the multiple possible moves they might make in response.

Implications for us in education?  Take a school's sports teams, for example.  When a coach decides to provide an opportunity for his team to attend an enrichment activity (a sports camp), he is providing a series of models of excellent performance.  However, if those models and strategies are not then consistently and rigorously applied in practice again and again in preparation for each game, the camp is a complete waste of resources (time, money, energy, etc.)  Why?  Without repeatedly engaging in practicing excellence, a player's qualities of excellence atrophy and diminish over time.

Worse yet, how often in athletics do we provide these enrichment opportunities to only a few of our athletes rather than many?  If thirty students are out for a sport, then I would argue that thirty ought to go to that camp, not just the top few.  The logic is clear--if only six go to the camp, the performance gap WIDENS between those players and the other twenty-four.  Six players become much better and learn new skills, but twenty-four do not.

Providing all members of an organization--not just an elite few--with models of excellence followed by deliberate practice is the only way the entire organization can move not just forward, but upward, as well.  Moving forward is what most of us do every day--and we never really break out of the orbit of "being alright at" what we do.  We'll end our season with a few wins, maybe even making it all the way to an even split between wins and losses.

But to achieve excellence, and to achieve it consistently over time, we need to move both forward AND upward.

Next week:  how do these principles apply to the other important work we do in schools?