Talent, Born Or Made?
February 9th, 2010 | 
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This post was inspired by a fascinating story I read in The Skinny On Success: Why Not You? by Jim Randel. The author relates a story in Geoff Covin’s book, Talent is Overrated. In the book, Hungarian psychologist Laszlo Polgar wanted to test if talent was born or made. He ran an ad for a wife, but the twist is that their children would be raised to be champions in a field unrelated to their parents’, that neither had an aptitude for.
Schoolteacher Klara responded to the ad and agreed to the terms. Laszlo and Klara decided they would attempt to create chess champions since neither were accomplished in the game. They had three girls, Zsuzsa, Zsófia, and Judit and at that time it was the general belief that women didn’t have what it took to excel at chess. The couple home schooled their daughters, immersing them in intensive chess training.
In no time, the girls were competing in the game. The first daughter became the first chess grand master ever. The second daughter became the youngest grand master ever, male or female. And the third daughter is currently the number 1 ranked female player. According to Wikipedia, “Only 11 out of the world’s about 950 grandmasters [are female].”
Is this conclusive evidence that talent is made, not born? What are your thoughts? Is talent overrated?
Here is an excerpt from Did Malcolm Gladwell Rip Me Off? By Michael Masterson in Early to Rise Ezine.
“There are four levels of proficiency in any valuable skill – incompetence, competence, mastery, and virtuosity.
- To get past incompetence, you must spend about 1,000 hours practicing the skill you eventually want to master.
- After putting in about 1,000 hours, you will be competent. To achieve mastery, you will have to continue to practice that skill for a total of 5,000 hours.
- Virtuosity is extremely rare. You can’t get it simply by practicing. You must also have a natural gift. Even then, you must practice at least 10,000 hours to achieve it.
Michael Jordan was a virtuoso basketball player. Mozart was a virtuoso composer. Warren Buffett has been a virtuoso investor. But don’t make the mistake of thinking you must become a virtuoso. You can achieve greatness and make a fortune by becoming a master of your chosen skill.”
If talent is made and not born, what are the implications for you? Are you interested in mastering a skill? Are you prepared to practice deliberately? Please chime in by commenting. Keep the conversation flowing. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.
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Thanks for sharing that research on the chess, Avil. I hadn’t heard about that. I think about the nature vs. nurture a lot. You can nurture a child to become a chess pro — but would you want to nurture the child who isn’t interested in chess? That would take more time and effort. Someone with a natural talent may be good with little practice, but could become primo with more practice.
Fascinating topic with lots of implications and applications.
Hi Meryl,
I hadn’t heard about the research before reading The Skinny on Success. I understand why the parents did what they did, all in the name of research, but it’s a little too radical for me. One of the daughters was beating her father at about four years old. It appears they are all doing well now.
An interesting question I have is should we be teaching our children to be that competitive? They were being schooled in chess 10 hrs a day.
I would like to read the book about them. It’s interesting that after all these years we haven’t come that far in terms of women’s rights. The sisters haven’t been able to compete in some competitions because of their gender.
Thanks for commenting! Avil
It is extreme — but at least, it was for research and they did something good with their learnings. Competition is a mix today. In the younger grades, everyone gets a trophy regardless. But then you have club sports where parents pay high fees for kids to play on elite and very competitive teams.
Competition is healthy when it’s balanced. Kids need to be motivated to do their best, but not at all costs.
It is true that talent is in born we cna have various example the first example that micheal jackson