Definitions - What's a Strength? Part 3 "Talent"

This clip from the television series Dilbert helps me communicate what I mean by talent.

Synonyms are Natural Abilities, Natural Aptitude, Natural Gifting or simply "A Knack". Most would agree that “Natural” is implied so we might just use the terms ability, aptitude, or gifting and mean the same thing. Gallup adds a useful distinction when they conclude, “you can’t acquire talent. Talent is innate and enduring. It is like Lady Gaga says, “Baby You We’re Born This Way”.

Gallup’s actual definition of talent is “the natural recurring patterns of thought, feelings, and behavior that can be productively applied”. When you tear it apart and work with it the definition is very useful. I would tend to add characteristics or traits to the thought, feeling, and behavior part. I believe things like height or bulk could be considered a part of talent but I understand that can be argued both ways.

It is critical to understand that a talent is only a potential strength. A talent becomes a strength when skill and knowledge are added over time. Usually it takes passion to drive that.

I believe God has given you a tremendous "HEAD START" to take part in some important mission. It's a mix of tasks you do naturally, do extremely well, and it's unique to you. To help you stay on mission He has also given you some tremendous "HANDICAPS". We all have some disabilities. We all have some things we struggle with, some things that we sit down to do and it just makes our hair hurt. Instead of viewing these disabilities as protective rail to keep us on our Strengthspath, some of us see them as challenges. I read recently of a man that took a higher math class through all 5 years of college even though he didn't really like math and wasn't very good at it. And today he says, "I still can't do math" very well".

Even if you are not extremely motivated by money you should understand this truth: "You get paid top dollar based on what you can do very well not on what you can't do". In my workshops, I sometimes ask, "How many of you can sing really well?" The ones that can't or don't I ask, "Is that a weakness?" Most of them immediately understand that it's a weakness only if you are trying to become a professional singer. If you are a gifted accountant, it doesn't matter that you can't sing. What's not as obvious because of our current education driven cultural biases, the reverse is also true. If you are a gifted singer, it doesn't matter that you struggle with accounting, math, or science.

It's hard to pick up a news magazine or paper these days without reading about new findings on neurological plasticity. In short, this is the idea that the brain has tremendous lifelong potential for re-weighting and re-wiring. If you read the headlines and first few paragraphs of these articles, they suggest anyone can do anything if they just practice long enough. If you read the fine print or read all the way to the end of the article, you find that we can all get better at anything. That's usually about 2 or 3 points improvement on a 10 point scale. Then we hit a wall or a race track based on our talent. Yes you can start with no musical background and learn to play the guitar with some competence. Do you really want to live your life with a box full of competencies? How about crazy good? Why not insanely great? I want to be wildly successful!

Marcus Buckingham says it so well: "Stop trying to put in what God left out and start trying to pull out what God left in".