Something that comes naturally to you may still be underdeveloped.
That idea stayed with me from my MBA course. In StrengthsFinder 2.0, Tom Rath presents a simple development model:
Talent×Investment=Strength.
The word that caught my attention was investment.
Here’s how I’m separating the ideas:
- Interest
- Something catches your attention.
- Passion
- You care deeply about pursuing it.
- Talent
- You have a natural, recurring way of thinking, feeling or behaving.
- Strength
- You develop the ability to perform a particular activity consistently well.
Interest and passion can help you choose where to invest. They don’t, by themselves, demonstrate what you can do.
Imagine someone who naturally spots patterns in messy information. Learning analytical methods, testing their assumptions and practising with feedback can turn that tendency into something valuable: reliable analysis that helps people make better decisions.
That is a more useful development conversation than simply telling someone they are “talented.”
As a manager, it gives me a question to sit with:
What potential have I noticed in someone but never helped them develop?
Here’s a small experiment to try this week:
Choose one activity that interests you and where you’ve shown signs of ability. Identify one specific skill that would improve your performance. Practise it on a real task, get feedback and compare the result with your previous work.
Keep essential weaknesses covered, and give yourself room to discover abilities you haven’t tested yet.
Which talent will you make time to develop this week?