With the European Football Championship going on in France right now, we can see the most talented players Europe has to offer on the pitch. Just like football clubs, companies are also looking for exceptional talent to join their team. But is there actually such a thing as talent?
Not according to Anders Ericsson. This Swedish psychologist recently published his latest book (Peak), in which 30 years of research on top athletes, musicians and others lead to one conclusion: exceptional performance mainly originates from lots of deliberate practice. That might sound harsh. HR managers globally have been searching and testing for aptitude and what people know and are able to now, for decades already, thinking they can identify the future Ronaldo's in their industry this way. Have they been on the wrong track all this time?
10,000 hours of practice
As a global authority in the field of expertise and skills, Ericsson is mostly known for his 10,000 hours rule: the most successful ‘talents’ in different skills appeared to have spent this amount of time on average practicing. He states: “Because expert performance is qualitatively different from normal performance, people believe that the expert performer must have qualitatively different characteristics too. We agree on this, but these differences are not innate and therefore not immutable. Except for some genetical exceptions such as height, differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.”
Deliberate practice
This means that someone who is doing the same job for 20 years is a real expert by now, right? Unfortunately that’s not how it works. Ericsson emphasizes deliberate practice: improving the right skills in the right way. 10,000 hours of doing exactly the same thing will not make anyone an expert performer. You will need to identify the necessary skills and train them regularly in small parts, each time in a different way, each time at a slightly higher level, preferably accompanied by quick coaching and feedback by an expert who knows how to improve. “If you want maximum concentration, 15 to 20 minutes is the best time to focus,” Ericsson adds. “With new technologies we can create simulated environments where students can practice in a better way.”
Helping normal people perform exceptionally
Organizations looking to find the best employees would be better off substituting the term ‘talent’ for criteria such as someone’s past. “One would have to show to what extent they made progress in their previous occupation. Ask them what they did to get better. That is much more interesting than what education they have had or what their grades were.” This means looking for characteristics like motivation, eagerness to learn, willpower and perseverance.
Talent arises
Talent might not exist, it does however arise through deliberate practice focused on the right (sub) skills. If you want to develop talent within your organization, don’t solely look at what a candidate or employee is able to do now. Rather, ask yourself whether he or she has the drive to also deliberately practice the next 8000, 5000 or 1000 hours. And if your organization offers opportunities for this. ‘Secrets from the New Science of Expertise’, is the subtitle of the book. Do you want to implement those in your organization as well? Then help your employees to practice deliberately!
