Peter Delves Blog.
All the latest from Peter.
How Champions are Made
While in sunny Corfu recently I read a great book called 'Bounce - How Champions are made' by Matthew Syed. This appealed to my interest in optimum performance and fulfilment of potential.
The thrust of the book is that champions are grown and not born. In fact any skill is acquired solely through practise. He backs up his assertions by drawing on solid research and his own experience as a national table tennis champion. He develops his points to say that telling people that they have talent is actually counterproductive and detrimental to performance.
One of the many things I like about the book is how the concepts apply beyond sport and apply to eduction and business. Syed refers to Enron 'the ultimate talent company' and how the culture led to deception and ultimately to collapse.
In a world where 'talent management' is now commonly used I thing we have to be clear in what we mean by the term, and ensure that the concept stands up to scrutiny. Otherwise the direction could be towards failure rather than success.
Last updated: 29 June 2011