Fine Lines is a weekly newsletter at the intersection of organisational prosperity and human development - for leaders who have already tried the obvious fixes and are now asking better questions. Each Tuesday: one idea from real experience and research, examined with enough rigour to be useful and enough honesty to sting slightly. The equation running underneath every edition: Capability × Ability = Performance. Most interventions address the Ability side. Fine Lines addresses the variable nobody is measuring. If you want frameworks and inspiration there are better newsletters. If you want your thinking challenged and, occasionally, your assumptions dismantled then you are in the right place.
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There’s one question you need to ask…..
Published over 2 years ago • 4 min read
July 19, 2024
Hey Reader
It's Friday, no time for dallying, so onward into your next edition of 'Fine Lines'.
Read time = 4 minutes
At a Glance....
An Important Question - how are you looking at talent & development?
A Masters Voice - Leadership Lessons from passage of books I've read.
This week on YouTube - a growing resource for leaders highlighting issues, remedies and opportunities.
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Across 25 years in the field of sports performance I’ve found that there’s one factor that gets to the core of being a leader in sport (as opposed to the doing); people development.
And when it comes to people development and facilitating the development of the ‘next wave’ of talent I think there’s one question leaders need to frame front and centre….
Image Credit: Getty Images
The important question
Borrowing from Ken Robinson’s work on creativity I’ve come to see that we need to invert a central question when it comes to people development.
Instead of asking “How talented are they?’ we should be asking “How are they talented?”
This slight pivot will help us foster an environment and culture of growth mindset as opposed to fixed mindset.
Looking at the work of Carol Dweck we can see that people who have their ‘growth mindset’ facilitated & supported will tend to embrace the challenge of development and are more naturally resilient to the peaks and troughs that development brings.
Learning becomes a love.
But simply looking through a lens of “how talented are they?” can blinker leaders & cause pigeon-holing. In turn people develop a fixed & binary win:lose mentality. This can breed insecurity and a negative cycle over their abilities.
No one is completely one or the other in terms of mindset and so the environment you create and nurture is vital towards growing the growth mindset.
Crucially the environments that embrace that development are messy and nonlinear. And they embrace that failure is ok i.e. a win:learn:change open loop vs. the closed loop win:lose mentality.
But you as the leader need to pop on the wide vision lens and really study people to see how their talent shines through versus simply noticing what’s on the surface level. Often the surface level ‘talent’ is simply a support for what can lie latent underneath.
In his book “Creativity”, Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi examines high-achievers across many domains and across a wide timeline. They tend towards curiosity and drive. And their drive to follow their curiosity trumped their conventional ‘talent’ - but, and this is vital, their environments fuelled that deep curiosity.
So, what's the upshot for leaders and how do we breathe life beyond asking the vital “How are they talented?” question?
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Look differently and ask a different question i.e.reframe present approaches and processes.
Craft environments (virtual talent ‘laboratories’ where experiments are continually taking place) that engage and allow curiosity and challenge to flourish; top down and bottom up across all touchpoints. Places where, at their core, there is, of course, competition but where people are primarily competing with no else bar themselves. Paradoxically these environments will bring hardship through challenge but also the security that comes from the patience shown for the development process.
Develop broad skill sets and allow people to connect the dots so that they develop a broad pattern recognition aptitude instead of being locked into a regimented preparation program and narrow, domain-specific outlooks and understanding that is in direct opposition to the chaos they will face in their performance role. (Note: it’s worth checking out the work of Brian Klaas on ‘Chaos Theory’ to help understand this some more)
Develop a culture where it all ‘feels like play’. This is not to downplay the seriousness of any role or the development process but again and again in life we see the benefits of gamifying any process. Small, incremental steps forward both engage and excite and complement our natural learning physiological responses.
Deep curiosity is a common thread among high achievers. In fact it’s our natural state - witness the string of “why” questions a child will ask or their incessant efforts to learn and improve through the iterations each time they are faced with a new life puzzle. Think of development as a muscle and challenge it with your actions in creating a fertile environment and your deeds within that environment.
So perhaps your main question to complement ‘how are they talented?’ is ‘how can we craft and evolve a learning experience that ensures ‘people development’ work is work that feels like play?
Thanks again for investing your time here. People development is such a broad and deep topic. And it’s largely an infant field in terms of our understanding. Let’s chat some more if you’d like…I’m always at pclarkeperform@gmail.com or let’s connect on Linkedin. Better still if you fancy a virtual coffee and chat then let’s arrange a Zoom call.
Please also check out my YouTube channel - I’ll be posting long & short form videos to get into more detail about what we’re chatting through here.
A Master's Voice....
How valuable would it be to listen to yourself and ask "where might I be wrong here?" or "What am I missing?"
And then progress to tasking somebody else with asking you and vice-versa.
You learn little when you're talking but lots when you're listening.
This Week on YouTube
Check out what I've been posting over on my YouTube channel...
"Fine Lines" - For leaders in commercial, sport & volunteer-led organisations who'd rather be told the truth than told they're doing fine. We talk weekly about human performance under sustained pressure.
Fine Lines is a weekly newsletter at the intersection of organisational prosperity and human development - for leaders who have already tried the obvious fixes and are now asking better questions. Each Tuesday: one idea from real experience and research, examined with enough rigour to be useful and enough honesty to sting slightly. The equation running underneath every edition: Capability × Ability = Performance. Most interventions address the Ability side. Fine Lines addresses the variable nobody is measuring. If you want frameworks and inspiration there are better newsletters. If you want your thinking challenged and, occasionally, your assumptions dismantled then you are in the right place.
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