If Daniel Coyle's Book, The Talent Code, could be bottled, I'd give it to the nearly 1500 clients I've coached over the past 40 years. Tom Peters couldn't be more accurate in his endorsement: I am even willing to guarantee that you will not read a more important and useful book in 2009, or any other year. And if all that's not enough, it's also a helluva good read.
In this new world, talent development has become a major competitive issue not merely for individuals, but also for corporations and even nations. With a sense of awe, media makes it possible for us to look in on the highly talented in numerous fields: sports, music, education and even business. Conventional wisdom tells us that that this talent is innate and unchangeable. As my generation puts it, "the cream always rises to the top." Daniel Coyle tells us that's dead wrong, and genes determine far less than most of us think.
As can be expected, Coyle's ideas don't go down easily with much of the public. Numerous comments on Amazon reflect the reviewers' resistance to these well-researched conclusions. What they write is no different than what one acquaintance said to me after I shared with him pieces of related research. "I don't believe it. I can't believe it. Everything in my history tells me those ideas are wrong."
Sitting on my bookshelves are two very important books detailing the extensive research supporting every word of the Talent Code: a 900 page handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, by Anders Ericsson and others, and a much thinner book, Mindset, reflecting ground-breaking research by Stanford's Carol Dweck on motivation. Uniquely, Coyle illustrates his conclusions in riveting narrative, surveying some nine different "talent hotbeds" around the world that have applied this new research in depth and are having success in spades, including the Curacao Experiment in Little League, the KIPP educational program, the Russian tennis program and the South Korean women's golf program. Here you learn that technique is everything, and that "chunking" is the path to success. Chunking consists of identifying the important elements of a behavior and grouping them into a behavior, making it possible to develop expertise in an activity, bit by bit.
A close reading will reveal that success is not merely that "practice makes perfect," but is instead about coaching that emphasizes what to do, how to do it, and when to intensify that activity. As a professional with more than 40 years of coaching, Coyle's discussion of the best coaching practices is exceptionally useful. (I can't resist calling my readers' attention to his finding that more than half of the best coaches are in their sixties or seventies.) The best coaching teachers, he believes,
focus on what the student is saying or doing, and are able, by being so focused and by their deep knowledge of the subject matter, to see and recognize the inarticulate stumbling, fumbling effort of the student who's reaching toward mastery, and then connect to them with a targeted message.
The discussion of myelin, the neuron wrapping that adds speed and accuracy to our movements and thoughts is depicted, rightly, as the Holy Grail: the foundation of all forms of talent greatness. You'll find an article on enrichment and glia cells, the makeup of myelin, on my website. Since motivation and perseverance are major keys in the development of expertise, readers will find the discussion of "ignition" of much value.
In The Talent Code, we have the theory, the research, the application of that research in numerous fields, and example after example of success. You read narrative after narrative in which the change is like an "adorable gecko lizard morphing into a slavering T. Rex: you know the two are related in theory, but that knowledge doesn't stop you from saying holy shit." The holy shit effect (HSE) leaves observers dumbstruck, amazed and bewildered--all depicted by shocking change for the good.
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