Stop asking how you can retain top talents : Talent does not Exist !

Adrien Liard
Nov 3 · 4 min read

I often read or hear managers asking : “How can we keep our top talents ?” or “How can we identify our top talented people (so we can keep them) ?”.

Those questions (and subsequents tentative answers and how to articles) are inherently flawed for a very simple reason : TALENT DOES NOT EXISTS.

More specifically: There’s no scientific evidence that talent exists.

The Science Of Expertise

According to the dictionnary, the definition of talent is a “natural aptitude or skill”. That is, talent is something you’re born with. Either you have it or not.

K. Anders Ericsson, a swedish psychologist and professor at the University of California, dedicated years of research to study human expertise and preformance. In 2016, he published (with Robert Pool) a book summarizing his findings : PEAK, Secrets from the new science of expertise.

Maybe you’ve heard or read about the 10k hours rule ? This rule, popularized by Malcom Gladwell in his bestseller Outliers states that to be an expert in any field you have to dedicate 10,000 hours of practice.

This 10k hours rule is derived from Ericsonn’s research on experts violonists. In his book, he firmly states that this rule is an oversimplification but it is still based on a scientific fact : To be an expert you have to work, work real hard! You have to dedicate a huge amount of time to practice your craft to ever achieve an expert level.

And here’s the main takeaway from this book : there’s no shortcut!

Fairy tales are lies

Talent is grown, not born

Ericsonn dedicated his life to understand how experts and top performers reached excellence. He worked with chessmasters, world’s best musicians and top atheletes and … He found absolutely no evidence that some people are naturally born with a gift or skill that let them reach excellence without hard work and hours and hours of dedicated practice. There’s no shortcut!

Talent does not exists! Nobody is born a natural chess masters, a world class athlete or a great painter. Every experts worked hard to reach excellence. There’s no shortcut.

Stop worrying about retaining your top talent. Ask how you can grow talent !

Talent does not exists, so you don’t need to worry about retaining your talented people and you don’t need to ask how you can identify talented people. Relieved ?

There’s no talent, therefore there’s no talented people.

There’s is only experts and top performers : people who worked really hard to become better at what they do. People who dedicated hours and hours to practicing their craft, constantly challenging themselves, relentlessly finding ways to improve.

As a manager, what you need to worry about is :

  • How can I help my people to grow their skills ?
  • How can I help them become experts in their field ?
Yes, I’m a Dilbert fan

You don’t retain talent, you attract people who want to be the best.

Here’s the best part : top performers and so-called talented people are attracted (and stay) at companies where they can grow.

People serious about becoming experts go and stay where they can become the next best version of themselves. (If you need to be convinced about that mastery is a motivation driver, you can reach for Daniel Pink’s book DRIVE, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.)

If you’re serious about helping your people grow, you will not have to worry about attracting them and making them stay. People serious about getting better look for an environment where they can improve, and when they found one they’re less likely to leave.

And if you find yourself asking :

“What if I help my people to be the best and then they leave?”

Ask yourself instead:

“What if I don’t and they stay ?”

Note: all illustrations are mine (drawn with Procreate on IPad), including the fake Dilbert cartoon 🙄

Adrien Liard

Written by

Formal sociology student turned software developper turned scrum master. Passionate about helping teams succeed. Father of twins

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