Practice Makes Perfect–Not!
During a conversation with a client this week we discussed whether good negotiators were born, or made. His theory was that in any group of negotiators there would be some who were innately more talented than others, and that it was more effective to spend training money on the less well-endowed.
That argument cuts both ways, I said. Maybe the innately talented, with appropriate training, get to be proportionately better and their improvement in negotiating will produce a bigger return than that achievable by bringing the rookies up to a higher level.
Neither of us questioned the premise that people are born with different levels of innate talent. Both of us accepted that good training will improve effectiveness at all levels of talent. In my real world I recognize that there are people who were obviously born to excel at their chosen vocation; sport, theater, music; and that however much I practice I could never be a fraction as good as they are. The example sadly at the top of my mind as I write is Amy Wine house.
When I was a kid I wanted to play tennis like Pancho Gonzales. Not only was he the world number 1 tennis player in the late 1950's and early 1960, but he also had a great personality, and a wicked sense of humor. And, most importantly, he was self-taught. If he could do it, so could I. So I spent hour after hour hitting a tennis ball against the wall of our house, to the great annoyance of my mother and the neighbors. In terms of number of hours spent practicing, I should have been a ranking player. Needless to say I was not.
So I was skeptical when the theory about practice and hard work being more important determinants of success than talent began to gain a higher profile in the last 2 years (cf ‘Bounce’ by Matthew Syed, and ‘The Outliers’ by Malcolm Gladwell). Because we all know plenty of people who put in the