Explorathon 16

A few hardy souls braved what the Scots would call a ‘dreich’ Glasgow Friday evening for my talk on ‘The War for Talent’ in the Tinderbox on Ingram St, Glasgow.  The debate was part of the Explorathon 16 Research Night, which saw academics across Europe showcase their research in shows, talks, comedy, debates and hands on fun!  Over the Tinderbox’s great coffee, we debated whether talent is inherent and innate, or whether talent is more about nurture; and in the second half of the lecture, we debated whether investment in talent should be exclusively for the ‘most talented’, or whether it should be for everyone – inclusive.

We looked at how the musical prodigy Mozart was brought up his father was a famous music teacher, although whether his upbringing could be called nurturing, remains to be seen, as he is rumoured to have practiced 3,500 hours by the age of six!  Interestingly, he produced his first original composition aged 21, after 10 years of composing…

We also considered the successes of the Olympian Track and Field athletes in Rio, noting that the vast majority of sprinters are formerly of West African descent, while the long-distance runners were predominantly East African – coincidence?  Dr Yannis Pitsiladis, (formerly of University of Glasgow and now at the University of Brighton) conducted extensive research in Ethiopia and Kenya into the ‘nature argument’ just as the ‘sprint gene’ (ACTN3) was being widely mooted as the genetic cause of track sprinting talent.  However, he found that while 98 per cent of Jamaicans have the ACTN3 gene, so too do 82 per cent of Europeans, and Kenyans (more renowned for their endurance running) have an even higher frequency of the ‘sprint’ gene than Jamaicans!  We concluded that athletic talent is more likely to years of training at altitude than genetics.  We also looked at the work of Dr Ericsson, who is renowned as identifying that it takes 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to markedly improve performance.  I loved the fact that his research also justifies an hour long afternoon nap!  We also considered the legendary Shane Williams, the diminutive Welsh Rugby Winger who showed how motivation and determination can trump the established wisdom!

No discussion on talent development would be complete without referring to the work of Carole Dweck and her analysis of how praise can have both a positive and negative impact on learning depending on whether it encourages a fixed mindset (negatively focused on results and performance) compared to a growth mindset (learning lessons from failure and not apportioning blame).  We considered how the ‘A Players’ arrive through a ‘talent pipeline’ and live in ‘talent pools’ before considering the difficult choices for our Olympic bodies – do they invest in excellence at the expense of grassroots sports?  We finally considered the challenge faced by today’s British Army: my research will propose a definition of talent that will seek to develop everyone’s talents to be the best that they can be…