Talent Development (TD) or Talent Identification (TI)? I must confess that I am procrastinating from finding the answer to this question by writing in this blog post. Procrastination is usually a negative trait, but the ability to hyperfocus on a task and have it completed, while still doing a good job might actually be a very powerful skill. Heavy emphasis on doing a good job though. It’s easy to do a terrible job.
If we were to consider procrastination as an attribute in talent identification for school, would it generally be something we identify and select against? Do most people tend to lean towards procrastination and there are a talented few that do not? Is that talent, or is it just training and experience? Does the student learn techniques to manage procrastination, or are they naturally gifted with higher willpower. Do kids who do well on the “Marshmellow Test” naturally have more willpower, or do they find better coping methods to delay gratification?
Well, it depends (my favourite response). Shouldn’t it depend on the sport or whatever activity we are looking at? For example, really tall people may be good for basketball, but are they good for gymnastics? So, my question would have to take a look at my sport of interest: badminton. However, I will speak about (TI/TD) as a broad concept so you may reflect on your own sports and activities.
As I am still going to the research, I would like to share my initial beliefs. That way it will be good to see where it may differ from the literature. I personally don’t believe in talent in general, and I believe it is more general development based on deliberate practice. I am in the deliberate practice camp for sure, and I would be biased towards that. However, deliberate practice is also not for everyone and depends on growth vs. fixed mindsets. Can mindset also be discussed in a nature vs. nurture debate? Probably. And down the rabbit hole we continue to go.
Additional elements that may be part of it include grit (via Angela Duckworth) and flow (via Mihály Csíkszentmihályi). However, a key proponent to this discussion is that sport is often a zero sum game. We NEED a winner and loser. General success in music, business, and other activities aren’t necessarily a zero sum game. Grades in school are not either, but positions into a prestigious program may be. I think where we define expertise is often also relative to many things. How successful do we need to be? In sport, what is an appropriate level for expertise? Sometimes I ask myself if I would consider myself and expert in my sport? Maybe relatively in Canada, but against the rest of the world, I’m not very certain.
Based on those questions, would we need to have a Gold Medal Profile to know which attributes are the most important before talent identification? In other words, don’t you need to know what the best attributes are in high performers before looking for them in the upcoming potential?
So, for ease of commenting, here are a few questions:
1) In your sport/activity, would you lean more towards talent (nature) or hard work (i.e. deliberate practice; nurture)? Any thoughts on mindset (growth vs. fixed)? Flow? Grit? Anything else?
2) How good do you have to be at something to be considered an expert? Is this relative to actual demand, or is 10 000 hours good enough (according to Malcom Gladwell)? As a though experiment, if many people achieved 10 000 hours, then would an expert not need to have more hours than average then? We cannot all be experts, or can we?
3) Does it depend on the type of sport? For example, measuring a physical feat (e.g. stronger, faster, higher) in some sports, getting judged in other sports, versus winning a game, whether through sequential means or non-sequential means. For example, in badminton, it is more or less a sequential game where each side hits shots back and forth, one shot at a time only. For martial arts, it would be different because you can make your move despite whether your opponent moves or not.
Thanks for reading and commenting. Just for fun, here’s a video on “Marshmellow Test Magic”!
Toby.. Here are my answers to your questions.
1. I lean toward nurture, but it is way more complicated than than that, and for sure there is some nature depending on sport. The debate has been well documented in the literature. In the early 90s Ericsson and Howard Gardner had it out over Gardners theory of multiple intelligence. Gardner identified seven intelligences that all humans are born with in some degree and that they only needed to be in the right environment to develop expertise in the intelligence (bunk?). I rarely see reference to Gardner’s work now but it was popular in the 90s. With DNA testing, I wonder if they actually isolated a marker for the seven intelligences… That said, I have read that genetic coding for something a simple as height is very complex.
Another more resent debate was between Tucker and Ericsson on Genetic factors. There are some great articles where Erricson provides his rebuttal.
2. The better question here is how do we define expert? Is an expert the top 2% or 10% of performers in the human population in a particular domain? Think of Doctors. There are probably millions of Doctors on the planet, how many would we consider “expert” versus how many are just “practicing”. I personally have a high standard for expertise because I believe it requires deliberate practice, that is 10 to 20 hours per week immersed in the domain. In some domains the hours of practice are easy to track. The hard part is knowing whether the type of practice is actually deliberate in nature. When I go to my dentist, I know he probably drills cavities several hours in a week, but is he actually trying to get better at drilling each cavity? Is he having to solve unique problems? Is he just on autopilot? Does he limit pain in his patients? The point here is that while he may practice the skill of dentistry he may not be considered an expert dentist (or at least cavity driller). That is why sport is intriguing and often studied when it come to expertise. Why, because we can track practice and performance? Hence we can infer that the top 10 players in the world are likely experts, and therefore if we retrospectively look at their histories we may be able to find common markers or milestones that they may have experienced. The challenge is when you are starting with the human and trying to predict or guide their pathway so that you can ensure expertise (which of course is somewhat impossible). That said, good coaching will likely get the athlete a little further down the path.
3. Yes, nature and nurture may depend on the type of sport, but I would allude to my thoughts on # 2 above. It probably does not matter the task / sport or domain, but the amount of intentional, effortful and problem oriented practice that the person is prepared to commit. Often as humans, we are not prepared to commit to the type of practice necessary to get to expert levels…. What ever that is..
By the way.. I disagree with the marshmelllow test. Interesting however that they did follow up on the participants years later to see if there were correlation between their gratification and life outcomes… If this is predictive of my children, they are going to be losers in life. But by taking the marshmellow at least they will out survive those who hesitate and die of starvation!