3 keys for succeeding in your career:
- Talent.
- Determination.
- Hard work.
Talent is overrated.
We have swung from a focus on grit and diligent effort to people being gifted and talented.
Getting a great score on your ACT or SAT is not a guarantee for success.
Likewise, a lack of talent doesn’t mean you’re doomed to be an underachiever.
So, what’s going on behind the scenes that drives success if it isn’t ability?
In this video, you’ll find out what makes all the difference.
Keep reading after the video to find out more.
The full video transcript is below:
“Talent is overrated. We live in a society obsessed with achieving maximum performance.
We test, test, test. We test in grade school for the TCAPs here in Tennessee, where my kids go to school, the s80, the GRE. We’re trying to determine how smart and great these kids are, right?
They do the same thing in baseball. For example, recent statistics – I saw this – where only 5.6% of the kids in high school, the best players, make it to play in college and only 10.5% of those kids have the ability after college to go on and play baseball at any level professionally.
Very few of those people ever progress out of double-a ball or triple-a ball, into the major leagues. Less than 0.5% of the kids drafted in high school ever see a major league inning.
Talent is overrated.
The NFL draft is coming up and they have the NFL Combine. What they do is bring these kids in, thinking that the short-term tests – how high they can jump, their vertical leap, their broad jump, how many times they can bench press 250, how fast they can run the 40 – are going to equate to how great of an NFL player they are.
They do the same things in business. For example, in supermarkets, the management times the checkers to see how quick and accurate they are.
Now, let me ask you a question: If you’re running a grocery store, just because a person is the fastest, most accurate checker over a 10 minute period, does that mean they’re the person you want face-to-face in front of your customers, day after day? That eight-hour shift may not be a correlation.
How many people do you know who got a 1600 on their SAT and they’re brilliant, but you would never hire them?
Maybe they even have a PhD, but they’re unemployable because they lack those social skills, right?
Talent is overrated.
With the NFL combines, it’s a short-term test. They might be strong, they might be fast, but what’s their heart? Do they have any guts? Do they have grit? They have the determination? They have the will to stick with something when it’s difficult?
That’s the problem. What they found is that those key character traits are often more valuable than raw talent.
One of my favorite scenes from the movie Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt, is when all the old scouts think they know how to find a great player because they’re strong, they can throw, they can hit and they think from watching them, they’re great.
And then they brought over one little statistician and what does Brad Pitt say? He says, ‘Hey, why should we draft that guy?’
What does he say? ‘Gets on base, gets on base, gets on base,’ over and over and over.
They want the guys who can get on base so they can score more runs.
Here’s what I’d like to share with you. We have a trophy generation of kids right now. We over-praise and they think they’re talented.
Talent isn’t enough.
It takes consistent, deliberate practice to get to where you want to go. Talent is vastly overrated because, I’m sure you’ve seen people in your career who had all the talent in the world and couldn’t stick with it. They didn’t have the desire, they didn’t have the guts.
Maybe you’re talented, but maybe it’s going to take more than your talent to get to where you want to go in your career.”
