What is Talent?

Our definition of talent is likely too narrow

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I've recently been involved in some great conversations with people around talent, but the central issue whenever discussing it is the same; What do we actually mean by talent? It seems like a simple answer, and perhaps it is, like United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in 1964 describing his threshold test for hardcore pornography “I can’t explain it but I know it when I see it”. I’d contest, however, that what is generally accepted as talent is a far more narrow spectrum of talent than we like to appreciate, perhaps for self serving reasons.

What Is Talent

The Cambridge dictionary definition of talent is: “(someone who has) a natural ability to be good at something, especially without being taught”.

If we think about this, and my statements above, most people would probably feel like this is their definition of talent, basically; “that person is a natural”.

Here are some factors that fit this definition, and certainly are talent (at least in my opinion).

• Anthropometry (height, limb lengths, hand & foot size, relative proportions of segments of limbs)

• Eyesight

• Ligamentous laxity or rigidity

• Muscle fiber type proportions

• Propensity for body composition (there are genetic differences in propensity for body fat)

• Endurance capacity (VO2Max has genetic components for instance)

• Personality aspects (parents will agree some of this is very much more nature than nurture and coaches will attest to some of these things being crucial to success)

• Aspects of learning and processing speed we can’t quite quantify

Now I am sure aspects of this list are what you expected eg muscle fiber type or VO2max. They’re the things we often point at as talent, someone like Noah Lyles or Usain Bolt didn’t lose too many races with kids in the playground, I can assure you that. I have a feeling that other aspects of it challenged your beliefs on what talent is, or isn’t though. Possibly the most challenging would be personality traits, partially because we probably (and I am the most guilty here) tend to think that things like that are able to be developed rather than being engrained. To be honest, this is probably true, but it is also true of most of the other things too - that is, they are partially inherited and partially developed, if Usain Bolt never trained he would not have developed to the point he did, more on this later.

The one true exception to this is probably anthropometry (though nutrition, particularly in the developmental years surely does impact height and may be why the Dutch are so tall). And if you are still not sold this is ‘talent’ here is some fun data for you courtesy of Seth Stephens-Davidowitz’s book “Who Makes the NBA” (written in 30 days thanks to the assistance of AI): “Each inch of height roughly doubles your chances of making the NBA—throughout the height distribution. The probability of a man of below-average height—under 5′ 10″—reaching the NBA is 1 in 3.8 million. The probability of a man over 7 feet tall reaching the NBA is roughly 1 in 7”.

What Isn’t Talent

This may have been the more astute place to star this article (and maybe a better clickbait title, but I do my best to avoid too much of that).

The Relative Age Effect

This was really well covered in Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (for the record, I recommend unashamedly almost everything he’s produced content wise). The crux of it is such that players born earlier in the year are disproportionately represented in junior elite teams. This then means they are being challenged further, coached better and told they’re better for longer. All resulting in a disproportionate representation of these players at the elite level. A recent example in Ice Hockey “33% of players born in Q1 and 16% in Q4” illustrates the point well. The linked paper does mention the “reversal effect”, which as the name would suggest means this effect SOMEWHAT disappears.

The reason for the relative age effect (RAE) boils down to the fact those born on January 1st are for all intents and purposes, a year older than those born on December 31st of the same year (in fact twins born a minute on New Year’s Eve either side of midnight perhaps give the best example). Generally junior teams are selected based on birth year and thus, we end up with a year more of physical maturity as well as development in these kids. Who then have this doubled down on as mentioned above via selection because of their ‘talent’ which is really just the impact of a year of age.

Of note there are some means with which the RAE can be adjusted for when considering talent, including “Birthday Banding” and there’s some work on Maturation-based Corrective Adjustment Procedures (Mat-CAPs) in Australian swimming particularly.

This brings us to our next point, the sports in which the RAE has more impact. These probably don’t require much imagination but boil down to those sports where maturation helps, so anything with narrow biomotor abilities (Track & Field, swimming etc) or those where physical size is beneficial (I still have nightmares about and a less than perfect shoulder thanks to some of the 13 year olds I played rugby against who were shaving, or should have been).

Skill

This is where things get difficult and perhaps murky. Many people will have a story from childhood of that kid who was just good at everything, ‘a natural’. I’d contend if we broke this down, what was seen was a mix of a few things: some natural ability in aspects that are indeed talent (eg speed, anthropometry etc) and then some significant skill development (rather than natural ability). “But they’d never played XYZ and were good straight away” I hear you say. Sure, but skills are transferrable to a degree. For instance I remember watching an semi-elite tennis player hit a one handed golf drive around 250m dead straight as a teenager. Will Genia, is another example that comes to mind. He was undoubtedly an elite rugby player but was introduced to the game quite late and was to that point a cricketer. So whilst he was fairly good early, the reality is that was transferable skill. He was also an exceptional badminton player in his later high school years, also likely more due to skill transfer than talent (there aren’t many elite badminton players who weight 90kg+). So ultimately skill is developed through practice (both structured and unstructured - perhaps more crucially the latter though it is dying off in modern society), which is part of the reason for the “10 000 hour rule” popularised by the aforementioned Outliers amongst other books (spoiler alert: you need more than just good practice to become world class, it is necessary but not sufficient).

What we Generally Don’t Think is Talent

I previously touched on the fact we tend to not think of personality traits as talent. If we do think of anything to do with the brain or mind as talent it is generally something that’s probably not talent itself, like literacy and numeracy. “He’s naturally good at maths” when in reality this is developed (see above skill conversation). That having been said, and following on from the skill conversation itself too, there are aspects of personality that certainly could be considered talent and contribute to what I have argued is not strictly talent. Specifically, there are personality traits that will facilitate talent to flourish through practice. An example may be the inquisitive nature that allows someone to want to learn how things work, driving them down a path of engineering and ultimately to be a world changing engineer we see as talented in this field.
Another illustration is the kid I mentioned before. You know, the one we all knew when we were children; good at everything, or perhaps only one sport, but an other-worldly talent. Why didn’t they end up making it? I certainly knew a few of these, either as a coach or as a competitor/team mate when younger. Generally (and speaking in generalities is ALWAYS risky and mostly wrong, but it serves a purpose here) whilst they were very good, perhaps due to some talent, such as height, they ended up not making it for reasons related to commitment to skill work required. That is, they didn’t end up working hard enough to make it ultimately. Therein lies the answer here with respect to talent and it’s importance. As Bill Belichick famously said:

"Talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling."

So whilst talent is necessary it it is not sufficient. You need character and likely some personality related traits to enable you to unlock your true potential through the hard work to nurture the talent further.

What Are Relative Proportions of Talent vs Hard Work that Contribute to Success?

This is a pattern I have seen repeat itself in so many places I’d like to coin a term for it (so if you have any ideas please comment below). In essence the pattern goes something like this, I will use Rugby Union as an example. Rugby Union became professional following the 1995 World Cup. To that point, talent generally was both enough to make teams and succeed as a team (nothing is 100% but talent contributed a disproportionate amount to success). Following this, saw a relatively unprecedented run of performance from the teams who professionalised quickest, implementing better skill development in addition to aspects like strength and conditioning. At this point, talent was not beating those who were developing and nurturing talent better. Once the late 2000s arrived, everyone had caught up and now talent was again necessary to succeed, it needed nurturing too but without top end talent even the best programs didn’t succeed.

So to answer the question of relative proportions, once the field is advanced sufficiently, aspects of talent will be required but will not be sufficient - the work to further develop will required as well. If you want to call that 50/50 you can, I can’t be sure on specifics (and they’re likely domain specific.

Talent and our Warped Narrative

I alluded earlier to us being uncomfortable with some aspects of what was and wasn’t talent. This is in addition to us often mislabelling skill as talent.

Why?

My feeling here is a lot of this is a self serving bias (spoken from a place of guilt). Let me explain. Generally, humans attribute our success and ability to hard work, whilst attributing that of others to factors such as luck and talent. This is just part of the human experience, where we see all of our story and only part of the story of others. Additionally, it may also let us have an ‘out’ of sorts: “I am not that talented” or worse: “I’d be much better than that if I had the talent they do”.

What’s the Take Home Here?

Talent is probably a little different to what we think it is in general - specifically it’s probably less of what we can see as an output and more related to the circumstances that allowed the individual to get there. Perhaps said differently; talent is less the cake and more SOME of the ingredients that helped bake it.

We probably all have more talent than we think we do, it’s just perhaps not what we’d like it to be at times.

References

1. Lemoyne J, Trudeau F, Grondin S. The Relative Age Effect in Ice Hockey: Analysis of Its Presence, Its Fading and of a Reversal Effect among Junior and Professional Leagues. J Hum Kinet. 2023 Apr 20;87:119-131. doi: 10.5114/jhk/161573. PMID: 37229406; PMCID: PMC10203842.

2. Kelly AL, Jackson DT, Taylor JJ, Jeffreys MA and Turnnidge J (2020) “Birthday-Banding” as a Strategy to Moderate the Relative Age Effect: A Case Study Into the England Squash Talent Pathway. Front. Sports Act. Living 2:573890. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2020.573890

3. Cobley S, Abbott S, Eisenhuth J, Salter J, McGregor D, Romann M. Removing relative age effects from youth swimming: The development and testing of corrective adjustment procedures. J Sci Med Sport. 2019 Jun;22(6):735-740. doi: 10.1016/j.jsams.2018.12.013. Epub 2019 Jan 18. PMID: 30665755.

4. Abbott S, Moulds K, Salter J, Romann M, Edwards L, Cobley S. Testing the application of corrective adjustment procedures for removal of relative age effects in female youth swimming. J Sports Sci. 2020 May;38(10):1077-1084. doi: 10.1080/02640414.2020.1741956. Epub 2020 Mar 21. PMID: 32202222.

5. Abbott S, Hogan C, Castiglioni MT, Yamauchi G, Mitchell LJG, Salter J, Romann M, Cobley S. Maturity-related developmental inequalities in age-group swimming: The testing of 'Mat-CAPs' for their removal. J Sci Med Sport. 2021 Apr;24(4):397-404. doi: 10.1016/j.jsams.2020.10.003. Epub 2020 Oct 16. PMID: 33172611.

6. Hogan C, Abbott S, Halaki M, Torres Castiglioni M, Yamauchi G, Mitchell L, Salter J, Romann M, Cobley S. Maturation-based Corrective Adjustment Procedures (Mat-CAPs) in youth swimming: Evidence for restricted age-group application in females. PLoS One. 2022 Oct 7;17(10):e0275797. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0275797. PMID: 36206228; PMCID: PMC9543692.