Practice, Motivation, and Coaching Are Keys to Developing Talent

There’s no secret to unlocking talent. Three elements—deep practice, high motivation, and effective coaching—are all it takes, says Daniel Coyle.

Daniel Coyle signs copies of his book, The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How., for attendees at the National Workforce Development Conference.

The author of The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. shared his insights during the ACT Workforce 2011: National Workforce Development Conference.

In his research for the book, Coyle visited “talent hotbeds” around the world to learn how they consistently yield large numbers of extraordinary performers. On the surface, some of the hotbeds seemed like environments unlikely to produce much success, such as a tennis club in Moscow that has only one ramshackle court but has produced more top 20 players over the past five years than the entire United States, and an inner-city school in San Jose, California, that increased the number of its college-going students from 8 percent to 100 percent.

He found that there’s a pattern common to all of the talent hotbeds—certain methods of training, motivation, and coaching. This pattern has to do with the fundamental mechanisms through which the brain acquires skill.

The talent hotbeds cracked what Coyle calls the talent code, which is built on recent scientific discoveries involving a neural insulator called myelin. Some neurologists believe myelin is the key to acquiring skill. It grows in response to stimulus and, the thicker it gets, the faster and more accurate a person’s movements and thoughts become.

The amount of myelin the brain produces is in proportion to the number of hours spent practicing. Coyle suggests 10,000 hours as the threshold for mastering a skill.

“The people in the talent hotbeds have one thing in common: they spend a lot of time intensely training in their particular areas. They reach, make mistakes, fix the mistakes, and repeat. With each repetition, they build their skill level.”

Motivation—or what Coyle calls ignition—is also essential to breaking the talent code. High achievers are strongly committed to developing their skills and have tangible visions of where they are going to be in five or ten years. “If you can see the vision of your future self, that motivates you to reach and repeat.” Coaches are the third element to developing skill. The best coaches fuel passion, inspire deep practice, and bring out the best in people, he said.

“The coaches at the talent hotbeds break down the components of a skill so their students can master it one piece at a time.”

For example, the coach at the Russian tennis club teaches players to swing their rackets correctly before ever hitting tennis balls. The director of a music camp has students perfect one page of music at a time. A teacher at the San Jose inner-city school spends hours going over a math formula until all students can correctly apply it.

“These are underdog stories of people who started out not being very good at what they do and then got better with practice, motivation, and coaching,” said Coyle.

“America is an underdog right now in terms of its workforce and skills gap. We can break the talent code by motivating people to develop their skills and providing the right kind of training and coaching along the way.”