The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How.

Daniel Coyle, 2009

Discussion by George Pullman

This is a readily digestible rendition of some of the findings of psychologists who study expertise and its acquisition. Coyle's presentation of that information is wrapped in a personal travelogue. He went to various places in the world, he calls them "hotspots", which have produced a remarkable number of people talented in a specific endeavor --Soccer in Brazil, golf in South Korea, tennis is Russia, music in The Catskills. He then argues that these places have been successful because of how they teach, breaking the skill set down into component parts or "chunks" and practicing them slowly and repeatedly, focused always on detecting and correcting errors and striving always, endlessly for perfection. Someone who is on the path to becoming great at something notices even small errors and feels them deeply, often even developing a private language to describe them. The would-be expert doesn't blame others or make excuses. He or she slows down; locates the cause of the error; repeats the correct move; fixes the error and moves on. Would-be experts also push themselves always just beyond their comfort zones (Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development) so that new imperfections are bound to arise; thus they can fix those too. Coyle observes that most people try to avoid errors and to mitigate their psychological impact when they happen, two tactics which are counter-productive of expertise.

From a writing teacher's perspective, one of Coyle's more interesting examples is the Brontës sisters, three girls from a not terribly learned family raised in the middle of nowhere special who grew up to write remarkably good novels. Why? Because they played at writing novels with serious intensity from the time they were children.

Barker's work conclusively establishes two facts about the Brontës' little books. First, they wrote a great deal in a variety of forms—twenty-two little books averaging eighty pages each in one fifteen-month period—and second, their writing, while complicated and fantastical, wasn't very good. As Barker put it, “Their slap-dash writing, appalling spelling, and non-existent punctuation well into their late teenage years is usually glossed over [by Brontë biographers], as is the frequent immaturity of thought and characterization.

 The unskilled quality of their early writing isn't a contradiction of the literary heights they eventually achieved—it's a prerequisite to it. They became great writers not in spite of the fact that they started out immature and imitative but because they were willing to spend vast amounts of time and energy being immature and imitative, building myelin in the confined, safe space of their little books.

 “The fact that the creative activity of writing about an invented world was a joint exercise contributed enormously to the authors' enjoyment. It was a marvelous game, in which each participant eagerly ingested and responded to their sibling's latest installment.”

As writing coaches, when we focus on the surface level of our students' work, "appalling spelling, and non-existent punctuation", we teach at cross purposes. We make them think that grammar and punctuation are all we care about and thus that we are superficial nit picking simple minded souls when in fact we agree that such matters are trivial but nevertheless prerequisite. We want our students to feel a spelling mistake or a punctuation error or a subject verb agreement error the way a skilled musician hears a bad note or an ill-tuned instrument. We want them to wince and fix it before they turn it in so that we can then focus on the ideas, which is what we too would rather focus on. If we ignore the superficial errors, as we do when we give one grade for content and one for form, we reinforce the idea that basic conventions don't matter, but if we line item edit, we either overwhelm them with corrections after the fact, and thus they don't learn to wince, or they discount our efforts as those of superficial elitists, ignore the marks and learn to shrug instead of wince.  So we have to engage their interests, get them to question their ideas, interrogate their thinking, and then oh by the way this sentence is fused ... you need to punctuate it like this... because... Targeted practice means fitting the advice to the recipient's ways of learning and sense of what is important but with the goal that they should learn to wince at what makes us wince. So the feedback has to come quickly. Students need to write short pieces frequently and get near as possible instant feedback.

Key to the effort required for this kind of deep or targeted practice is desire, he calls it "ignition",  that comes from personal identity. The people who succeed at becoming truly outstanding at something can become so because they see themselves as the sort of person who is supposed to become an expert. To slack off, to lose focus, are alienating experiences that the would-be expert instinctively rejects. Greatness is derived from a sense of destiny, but it has to do with psychology rather than fate. Novices destined for greatness have a "vision of their ideal self" and that vision is what keeps them focused. It helps a great deal if they can readily conjure a concrete example who resembles them in many ways. That's why when Se Ri Pak won the McDonald's Master's golf tournament, South Korean girls saw a possibility they hadn't seen before. I can't help but remember the Michael Jordan Wheaties ad, "Just like Mike".

I'm not sure I've captured Coyle's point here, but I have a doubt or two about what I've just said. I'm not sure every expert grows up dreaming of playing Carnegie Hall or hoisting trophy.  Some people just love the actions involved in something to the extent that that's all they want to do. Moe Norman was a Canadian golfer who loved to stand on a range and hit golf balls all day long. And he hit them really really well, so well that he could play professionally, but professional golf didn't appeal to him. He hated the professional part. He was a bit of a savant I suppose, awkward around people and impatient with social activities. It was as if his being needed the sensation of hitting a golf ball and nothing else. Moe's vision was inward focused. Maybe this is why Tiger Woods keeps tearing down his swing. It's the sensations created by the pursuit of perfection that appeal to his being. Not the achievement, but the pursuit. At any rate, 

Expertise is also affected by great coaching. Coyle observes that "master coaches" are great intuitionists of character. They can tell what kind of work ethic a prospective student has, what kind of analogies will make sense to each one, how each student needs to be encouraged and in exactly what ways--harsh with some, gentle with others but also cerebral with some and kinesthetic with others. Great coaches don't say a great deal or spend a lot of time in inspirational talk. They watch and provide feedback on specific chunks in a sequence. They are, in effect, an extra pair of eyes and a different vantage point  for the would-be to use to refine his or her inner sense of the activity they are trying to perfect.

Practice and feedback, overseen by Shiloff's gentle but tough-minded coaching, correcting any inaccurate perceptions and pushing them to try harder, once more.

Linger in the discomfort a little longer each time.

 The Shyness Clinic. “When I thought I was born this way, then I thought, what's the use,” Andre said. “But when it's a skill, everything changes.”

 Practice staves off cognitive decline.  

Pay attention to what your children are fascinated by, and praise them for their effort.