WorkPuzzle

What Creates Talent? - Part 5

This entry represents the last edition of our Talent Code series (1, 2, 3, 4), which has spanned most of this last week.  Again, I am reporting primarily what Dan Coyle has found in his extensive research regarding talent development.

The focus of this final edition is on Coaches, or as Coyle puts it:  Master Coaching.  These are teachers, coaches, managers and mentors who approach the task of nurturing and helping others to grow “talent” (or in Coyle's belief- build myelin: the essential ingredient to brain growth).  Coyle begins by pointing out that coaching/teaching/mentoring/managing is a skill, in itself, that takes a long time to build, and eventually master.

To support his claim, Coyle presents some fantastic examples of coaches, music teachers, and school teachers who have put in many thousands of hours of deep practice coaching and mentoring.  In other words... If you want to be a great coach, you need to hone your skills!  If you are an owner of a company, you must insist that your managers work on their coaching, just as they would any other skill they want to develop.

Coyle calls these great coaches "The Talent Whisperers."  They are the teachers who view their jobs with the utmost seriousness.  These are the individuals who understand that it's up to them to tap and sustain the second element of The Talent Code...Ignition.  As Coyle puts it, "They are creating and sustaining motivation." 

Dr. Bloom, from the University of Chicago, researched 120 world class talents and summarizes:

"The effect of the first phase of learning seems to be to get the learner involved, captivated, hooked, and to get the learner to need and want more information."

If you are responsible for managing/teaching/coaching, do you accomplish this?  I know that I have fallen short at times...or perhaps more importantly, lost sight of this underlying purpose of teaching.  If I've been a successful teacher by presenting you this fascinating insight from the The Talent Code, you might take it further, and read more from Dan Coyle's book, which is full of similar insight.  And then apply, apply, apply...

What Creates Talent? - Part 4

Over the past week, I've shared some fairly counter-intuitive insight regarding talent development.  This information benefits anyone who is serious about recruiting, or wants to better coach their success-driven employees. (To catch up, read editions 1, 2, and 3)

Yesterday, I focused on what Dan Coyle has found regarding a concept that he calls ignition (moment of motivation launch).  All of us intuitively can grasp that to excel at anything, one must have the energy, passion and motivation to sustain a commitment to practice....not just any kind of practice, but deep practice.

To arrive at this level of commitment takes a moment where one experiences a spark, and says to him/herself, "I can do that, and want to do it!"  There are several ways this can happen.  A common way, is to witness achievement by someone who resembles you...someone you can relate to.

For example:

• Since Se Ri Pak won the LPGA championship in 1998, South Korean women on tour steadily grew from one, to 33 in 2007.

• Since Anna Kournikova reached Wimbleton finals, Russian women in the WTA top 100 has grown from three to 16.

Girls in these respective countries likely said..."She's like me, and I can see myself doing that!"

• As soon as Roger Banister managed to break what was considered to be an impossible barrier to the four minute mile, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz3ZLpCmKCM, other runners began to break the record.  Knowing that it was possible was all it took to trigger the motivation.

• For me it was watching The Bob Newhart Show in 1974 and thinking to myself that Bob had the sweetest job in the world:  Getting paid to hang out with quirky people!  I know, not too deep a reason, but it did ignite the original spark. 

Whatever it is that lights the spark must happen before the commitment to practice.

Here's a prime example of the link between ignition and commitment:  Gary McPherson set out to understand what differentiated those kids who continue to practice musical instruments and those who give up?  Predicting the continuation and talent development turns out to rest on a simple answer to a simple question:

Before children began music lessons they were asked to identify how long they believed that they'd play their instrument.  The categories were:  (1) Short-term commitment, (2) Medium-term commitment, and (3) Long-term commitment.

The results were staggering.  With the same amount of practice, the long-term commitment group out-performed the short-term group by 400%.  So what matters most, it appears, is one's ignition level - This is what ultimately determines commitment level.

So, what does this mean for you?

How many times have you asked a new recruit about their ignition story...about what initially sparked their interest in their given field?...Or, how long they planned on continuing in their line of work?  And don't settle for vague answers - Commit to getting solid answers.  Those answers may be the most important information you'll ever get regarding the future your employees.

Igniting a hot bed of talent can be done.  We've just begun to scratch the surface regarding how it can be done.  If you're responsible for talent development, you owe it to yourself to read Dan Coyle's book.

Tomorrow, I'll describe the third principle of talent growth:  Master Coaching!

What Creates Talent? - Part 3

In the last of my discussions regarding Dan Coyle's work on Talent, I promised to summarize some of his findings around the concept of motivation (the second of three vital components of talent creation).  Coyle found that people tend to have what he calls a moment of "ignition" prior to developing great talent. Specifically, he contends that people need to have a moment, or period of time, that inspires them to be great at something.  Without these moments or circumstances, we can't sustain the lonely discipline of deep practice.

I'd like you to reflect on your own talent before I provide any more specifics regarding motivation/ignition:  Where does your talent lie?  How did you develop this talent?  What drove you to practice or study to develop your skills?  Where and when did the ignition take place?  What was your environment like while you were developing your talent?

How have the most talented members of your team developed their talent?  Ask them how and where they were "ignited?"  Has it ever occured to you to ask this of your top talent, or of prospects or individuals who you're trying to recruit?  The more you know about people, the the more relationship credibility you will build, and the better you can manage.

Tomorrow, I'll elaborate some more on the details of Ignition...

What Creates Talent? - Part 2

In yesterday's blog I began to share some facts that challenge the way we think about talent development.  I think you'll find over the next few weeks, the material I share with you on this topic will change the way you train, recruit and coach. 

In my intro, I included questions similar to the following:

• Why has one tennis camp in Russia developed more top ten athletes than any other?

• Why has one music school in New York turned out the likes of Itzhak Perlman and Yo Yo Mah?

or, as metioned previously...

• Why have 12 different boys from the extremely small country of Curacao, made it to the semifinals of the Little League World series, six times over the past eight years, even taking the title once?

In his book The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle uncovers certain consistent patterns that exist in every "talent hot bed" in the world.  Specifically, these patterns include similar methods of practice, motivation, and coaching.

So, let's examine these three components further:  Practice, Motivation (he calls it Ignition) and Coaching (he calls it Master Coaching):

It turns out that Practice, in each of the talent hot beds, is achieved in a very similar way.  It is performed so that mistakes can be tracked and modified, without missing the opportunity for correction.  For example, in one of the top music schools, students are asked to play so slowly that nobody can possibly recognize the song being played - The student is then able to notice imperfections and train the brain to grow in this area.

Similarly, tennis players are trained to work through routine movements slowly, without a ball, to train the brain to grasp the fundamentals before actually hitting a ball. They do this throughout many years of training.

What is happening in the brain while one trains like this? (from a recent blog that also references The Talent Code, but worth including again)

Your brain is made up of millions of neurons and synapses, all with the ability to build super highways of super speed.  All that is needed to build these connections is a substance called Myelin.  Myelin, it’s recently been found, has the ability to grease the skids between neurons so that large pathways are formed to create mega bandwidth learning and growth, if given the opportunity.  And guess what gives your brain the greatest opportunity for Myelin production?... Failure!  Not just failure, but lots of failure…the more the better!  And not just large doses of failure, but failure and correction, failure and correction, failure and correction…

Here’s an example:

In 1997, Soccer Coach, Simon Clifford, was so curious about what caused Brazilian Soccer to be so successful, that he temporarily moved to Brazil and lived in a dimly lit dorm-like setting to find out first-hand.  What he found has changed the way many elite youth soccer teams practice, and has made Simon Clifford a very wealthy man, given that he has founded worldwide “Brazilian Soccer Schools” all over the globe.

What he found was that everyone, except the professionals, were playing a much smaller game of soccer on a small, hard court, with a heavier ball.  Given the small space, the game moved quickly and frantically, with split-seconds to decide where to pass, to whom, and how.  In other words, unlike American Soccer, Brazilian Soccer offers many more chances to fail and succeed in each minute of play, for each player – Every player touches the ball six times more per minute, to be exact.

When the brain experiences this incredible frequency of failure and correction, it grows Myelin like mad!  Super highways are formed that can ultimately lead to amazing talent.

So what does this teach us?

When we are training, it's not the "talented" people we should focus on, it's the people who share the capacities of the top performers, and are willing to practice until they reach mastery of a given skill.  People who are willing to practice scripts, over and over and over... Sales people who are willing to make multiple calls, fail/correct, then fail/correct, again and again...These will be the folks who develop talent!

I don't know each of your businesses well enough to definitively be able to articulate what should/shouldn't be part of your training regimen, but I do think that if you can mirror the practices of these talent hot beds, tailored to your industry of course, you have a much better chance of turning out some true talent. 

I would love to hear your ideas regarding how your company's training might be able to resemble these talent hot beds... 

Next:  Ignition (Motivation)

What Creates Talent?

Most of us have been brought up to believe that talent is something people are born with- you either have it...or you don't.  This idea is so pervasive that what I'm about to share with you may take a few days to sink in.  For that reason, I'll spend a few days giving you a little information at time, so that you can digest it, and perhaps slowly begin to let it change the way you approach everyone under your management. 

What deeply interests me, is that what you believe about the question, "What Creates Talent?" will determine how you recruit, coach, mentor and parent.  It will determine the questions you ask in an interview, how you train, what you insist on in work performance, etc...

I've recently been devouring the book The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle.  Coyle had the enviable job of traveling the globe, studying the world's most unusual "talent hot beds" - places where unusually high percentages of people excel at what they want to achieve.  He describes the social science and neuroscience around the phenomenon of talent development.  It's truly amazing stuff! 

He convincingly answers questions like:  

• Why is Brazil so dominant in soccer?

• Why has South Korea gone from having one LPGA touring pro in 1998 to 33 in 2008?

• Why has Russia gone from having three in the top 100 Women's Tennis Professionals, to 16 today?

• Why have 12 different boys from the extremely small country of Curacao, made it to the semifinals of the Little League World Series six times, over the past eight years, even taking the title once?

The answers to these questions will surprise you, and will have you doubting your preconceived notions of talent development.  I actually want you to ponder the possibilities today...Sorry, I'm giving no answers until tomorrow.  But, I guarantee that the answers will make you a better manager, mentor and parent.

I will leave you to ponder this quote:  Robert Lansdorf, tennis coach of former number one players Pete Sampras, Tracy Austin, and Lindsey Davenport, all who grew up miles from each other said this:

"It's not about recognizing talent, whatever that is.  I've never tried to go out and find someone who's talented.  First you work on the fundamentals, and pretty soon you find where things are going."

There is much, much more than meets the eye with regard to this quote.  I will chip away at the science around talent tomorrow...

The Benefits of Failure - Part 2

In yesterday’s post I introduced some of the newer thinking around the concept of failure.  Specifically, I revealed that failure is a fairly important ingredient for future success.

As promised, today I am going to update you on what the brain does with failure.  It’s actually quite fascinating to learn that how you handle failure either gives, or takes away, your brain’s ability to grow and learn.

Your brain is made up of millions of neurons and synapses, all with the ability to build super highways of super speed.  All that is needed to build these connections is a substance called Myelin.  Myelin, it’s recently been found, has the ability to grease the skids between neurons so that large pathways are formed to create mega bandwidth learning and growth, if given the opportunity.  And guess what gives your brain the greatest opportunity for Myelin production?... Failure!  Not just failure, but lots of failure…the more the better!  And not just large doses of failure, but failure and correction, failure and correction, failure and correction…

Here’s an example:

In 1997, Soccer Coach, Simon Clifford, was so curious about what caused Brazilian Soccer to be so successful, that he temporarily moved to Brazil and lived in a dimly lit dorm-like setting to find out first-hand.  What he found has changed the way many elite youth soccer teams practice, and has made Simon Clifford a very wealthy man, given that he has founded worldwide “Brazilian Soccer Schools” all over the globe.

What he found was that everyone, except the professionals, were playing a much smaller game of soccer on a small, hard court, with a heavier ball.  Given the small space, the game moved quickly and frantically, with split-seconds to decide where to pass, to whom, and how.  In other words, unlike American Soccer, Brazilian Soccer offers many more chances to fail and succeed in each minute of play, for each player – Every player touches the ball six times more per minute, to be exact.

When the brain experiences this incredible frequency of failure and correction, it grows Myelin like mad!  Super highways are formed that can ultimately lead to amazing talent.

So what does all of this have to do with us?

I’d love some comments about how you believe this can be applied…but here is one broad idea:

As you coach or mentor others, encourage them (and place them in positions) to fail.  Then have feedback sessions, then allow them to fail some more, then more feedback, etc, until they get it.  And when they do, more than likely, they will thank you for the growth you enabled them…

Reference:  The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle

The Benefits of Failure

If you recruit, coach, mentor or parent others, you will benefit greatly from the next few blogs...  Ask yourself these questions:  How do you deal with failure as a coach?  As a recruiter?  How do you deal with your own failure?

No one likes the feeling of failing - It can be devastating to our egos.  Failure in one area of our life has a way of impacting every other domain.  So, many of us try to avoid failure at all costs.  Consequently, many of your employees and those you are attempting to recruit become frozen in a fear of failure.  So, what is an effective way to address this fear?

There is a rapidly growing body of evidence revealing that failure is not only essential to learning, but can also have a positive effect on our psyches.  The more rapidly you fail, pick yourself up, and then try again, the faster you perfect your skills.  Interestingly, the most successful people attribute their successes to countless failures.

The following is an excerpt from the June edition of Psychology Today:   

"Some psychologists, like the University of Virginia's Jonathan Haidt, ...argue that adversity, setbacks, and even trauma may actually be necessary for people to be happy, successful, and fulfilled.  'Post-traumatic growth,' it's sometimes called.  Its observers are building a solid foundation under the anecdotes about wildly successful people who credit their accomplishments to earlier failures that pushed them to the edge of the abyss.

Last fall, J.K. Rowling described to a Harvard grad class a perfect storm of failure—broken marriage, disapproval from her parents, poverty that bordered on homelessness—that sent her back to her first dream of writing because she had nothing left to lose.  'Failure stripped away everything inessential,' she said.  'It taught me things about myself I could have learned no other way.'

Apple founder Steve Jobs describes three apparent setbacks—dropping out of college, being fired from the company he founded, and being diagnosed with cancer—that ultimately proved portals to a better life.  Each forced him to step back and gain perspective, to see the long view of his life.  'I have failed over and over and over again, and that is why I succeed,' said Michael Jordan—as did Oprah, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Winston Churchill, and Thomas Edison, in slightly different words.  Indeed, so oft-repeated is the trope that we lose sight of how strange it is.'
 
...'Failing better' boils down to three things.  It's a matter of controlling our emotions, adjusting our thinking, and recalibrating our beliefs about ourselves and what we can do in the world.

'Chess is a game of failure,' says Bruce Pandolfini, an American chess master known for his work teaching young chess players.  (Sir Ben Kingsley played him in Searching for Bobby Fischer.)  'At the beginning, you lose—a lot.  The kids who are going to succeed are the ones who learn to stand it.  A lot of young players find losing so devastating they never adapt, never learn to metabolize that failure and to not take it personally.  But good players lose and then put the game behind them emotionally.'

Pandolfini teaches his students this calming sense of perspective.  The present moment is laid out against the past.  What you see is compared to your memories of what you've seen—and mastered—before.  What you have in the end is a kind of coherent story.  He calls it chess instruction, but really, it works with anything.  In fact, it's not so different from the way writing down your feelings in a journal helps you process failure and move on, a phenomenon demonstrated by James Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas.

Teachers, studies reveal, can foster resiliency among students, creating students who don't flinch from failure but actually welcome it as a learning opportunity."

As a manager, how can you adopt this way of teaching, coaching and encouraging your employees/agents?  How can you begin to teach "chess instruction?"

Tomorrow, I'll discuss the neuroscience of failure and success... It will have you yearning to fail more! 

The Brain Science of Management - Part 2 - Incorporating Metrics

Yesterday I summarized a review of Jacob's new book, Management Rewired.  I opened with this statement:

"First, we need to relinquish the fact that people are rational.  Recent research has shown emotions hold more sway over our decisions than reason; we turn to logic merely to justify our choices after the fact." (Ellen Gibson, Newsweek)

I discussed the author's plea to refrain from managing out of reward and punishment, and focus instead on building ownership and meaningful connections to peoples' work - It takes more forethought and tact, but is far more effective.

However, what the book doesn't address well, is how metrics fit into all of this.  I agree, wholeheartedly, that much of the conventional wisdom taught to managers produces the opposite effect from what is intended (carrot/stick), but we can't throw the baby out with the bath water... The better path is frequently counter-intuitive.

Measurement will always be part of how we gauge success.  Take sports for instance:  Sure the goal is to build teamwork, meaning, and aspirations for greatness into each player's motivational mindset.  But without measurement, this goal is meaningless.  Measurement will always be a part of determining an individual's contribution to a team.  Measurement is how we gauge progress and improvement, and how we calculate our standing against the competition.

As most of you know, we at Tidemark, place a great deal of importance on measurement.  We measure pretty much everything.  It is through measurement that one can make rational decisions, instead of justifying bad decisions through emotion.  Measurement doesn't inherently lead to the atmosphere of "carrot and stick" -- Lazy management does...  

The Brain Science of Management

"First, we need to relinquish the fact that people are rational.  Recent research has shown emotions hold more sway over our decisions than reason; we turn to logic merely to justify our choices after the fact."  (Ellen Gibson, Business Week).

This excerpt is one of the summaries to a review of Management Rewired:  Why Feedback doesn't Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science, by Charles S. Jacobs.

If you've read the latest Workpuzzle blogs by Ben Hess (1,2) trying to rationalize his coffee addiction, you have witnessed, first hand, this principle at work.  He is physically, and therefore emotionally attached to coffee, and continues to look for evidence to justify his addiction.  He does a pretty good job of this, I might add.

What Jacobs details in his book has actually been conveyed previously in countless other ways - Jacobs has just written a book using the latest brain research to justify a well found truth.  The truth is that people respond more to their emotions than they do to rational motivations.

It's long been known, for instance, that people respond best when they are performing meaningful work and striving to do their best, and when managers don't manage out of reward and punishment.  Professor John Seddon from the University of Cardiff in his work, Freedom from Command and Control, states that:

"Dysfunctional behaviour is ubiquitous and systemic, not because people are wicked but because the requirement to serve the hierarchy competes with the requirement to serve customers."

When management becomes out of control,

"...people's ingenuity is engaged in survival not improvement.  By causing managers and staff to lose sight of their customers, they can ultimately contribute to putting the organization out of business altogether."

In Gibson's article, The Stop-Managing Guide to Management, Gibson explains:

"Whether we're a chimpanzee or a corporate employee, we don't like being controlled by others.  Instead of trying to alter behaviors by fiat, he recommends that managers stop managing.  Employees should set their own objectives, critique their own performance, and come up with their own strategies for improvement.  People are self-motivating, Jacobs says, especially when they feel they're doing meaningful work.  (In case this strikes anyone as a dubious assertion, the author points out that engaging tasks stimulate the brain's dopamine system and deliver the same 'high' we get from food and nicotine.)"

So what's a boss to do? 

"Managers are better served by using subtle tactics to influence employees. Understanding that people are strongly motivated by emotion, he recommends that leaders create evocative 'narratives' about an organization's mission. For a small startup, it could be as basic as a David-vs.-Goliath plotline.

Here's an example of a rewired manager in action:  A team with a specific goal feels it's understaffed.  Jacobs suggests the manager defer to the team's point of view rather than react irritably.  Acknowledge that the team is shorthanded, he advises, then convince members that adding staff would dilute their accomplishment.

The book draws parallels between the couch and the cubicle.  The goal of the talk therapist is to guide the patient away from self-defeating mindsets.  But it's hard to imagine the average boss having the patience to apply these techniques, and Jacobs acknowledges that his approach takes more effort than employing carrot and stick.  Even so, reading Management Rewired might soften the touch—and boost the effectiveness—of many a corporate drill sergeant."

Keep in mind that most of you who have been raised under the reward and punishment system, with little exposure to the more subtle motivations, are emotionally attached to that way of relating, and will find ways to justify that management style.  But if you do this, you'll be rationalizing something that's not good for you or your team, much like Ben continues to rationalize his coffee addiction.  

Gratitude - Part 2

In Friday's blog, I described the many benefits to a daily exercise of gratitude. I suspect that had I listed the benefits (even powerful benefits to reaching your goals), without explaining the prescription, many of you would have reached for your wallet to pay for whatever it was that could lead to such great benefits.

But, given that the solution requires some personal daily discipline, and might be seen as kind of corny (especially to the macho types), you might be inclined to blow it off. Much like Rosanne Bar said many years ago: "I'd do absolutely anything to lose weight.... except diet and exercise."

Here's my promise:  I am going to start following the below prescription daily.  If you haven't yet read Friday's blog, please do, so you can learn why I'm so emphatic about building gratitude into my daily life. It is my hope that you (and those whom you manage) will too aspire to improve your outlook on life via a conscious practice of gratitude.   

Beginning a Gratitude Journal: (Modified from How to Keep a Gratitude Journal)

Step 1:  Choose a blank notebook or journal to write in every night.  Consider a spiral-bound journal that opens flat for ease in writing.  Select lined or unlined paper.  Keep this notebook next to the bed with a pen readily available.

Step 2:  Look for things during the day for which you are grateful.  Make mental notes throughout the day, every day.  Notice how the gratitude journal serves as a catalyst in shifting your focus to a more positive outlook over time.

Step 3:  Write five things you're grateful for each night before bedtime.  Review the day and include anything, however small or great, that was a source of gratitude that day.  For example...the morning sun (rare in Seattle), the sound of a Harley, a flower in bloom, your child's laugh, or the smell of a newly cut lawn (...or cinnamon toast).  Make the list personal.  Write a few words about the five benefits or blessings.  Be brief and increase the length as time progresses.

Step #4:  Begin looking every day for the positive angle in all things.  You will begin to view obstacles as opportunities to appreciate.

Step #5:  Focus on the wonderful things in life to attract similar encounters in the course of the day.  Use positive emotions as you interact with others to elicit more positive emotions (There is a lot of research supporting this finding).  Note these attractions in the gratitude journal.

Step #6:  Personalize the gratitude journal.  Expand it with clippings, photos, quotes or verses from magazines or other sources.

For most of us, this seems like such a stretch -- It seems like something Oprah would do (As I recall, I believe she actually does keep a gratitude journal...). Nevertheless, the benefits are clear and profound. 

While researchers are stating their findings loud and clear, religious leaders have been emphasizing the benefits of gratitude for thousands of years.  I invite (challenge?) you to join me in this endeavor, and post your results.  I think you'll be surprised how much you will gain from this exercise....