My first reaction when I heard about Daniel Coyle's new book The Talent Code was sympathy. The author had apparently been scooped by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, which seemed to cover the same sorts of topics with the same thesis (practice, practice, practice), and has become a best-seller. But I bought and read Coyle's book anyway, and I am glad that I did. One should never judge a book by its cover or by other books - even really good ones - that seem similar.
Coyle's thesis is that greatness is grown, and his contribution is to explain how, at several levels.
First, he emphasizes extended practice but goes further to speculate that practice is important because it myelinates the nerves entailed in the practiced actions, making them much more efficient. I am not a neuroscientist and do not know if myelin bears the sole explanatory load. But maybe it does, and I like the idea of a neurological basis to expert performance. And I now have a rationale for my suspicion of the clichéd advice to "perform random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty" to be a better person. In my opinion, kindness is not - and should not be - random, and beauty is not - and should not be - senseless. In any event, I doubt that too many people can perform 10,000+ hours of random and senseless acts and thereby alter the myelinization of their nervous systems.
Second, he discusses talent hotbeds, referring to places from which many talented people emerge at much the same time, like Athenian Greece circa 400 BCE, Florence in the 1400s, the Bronte family in the 1800s, and in the more modern world, Brazil for male soccer players and South Korea for female golfers. Needless to say, these talented people did not simply emerge. They endlessly practiced their craft and learned from one another.
Third, Coyle talks about the importance of instigators, a talented person who first appears in a given time and place and gives other people in that time and place the idea that they too can do the same, citing - for example - the Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova who sparked so many other Russians to take up the game and excel at it.
Psychologists have been skeptical of the so-called great man/woman theory of leadership, the notion that some people will be great leaders regardless of the setting or circumstance. But instigators are a different sort of leader, and I believe they exist. I was "instigated" to study psychology during college because of three graduate students at the University of Illinois who taught courses I took as breaks from my engineering major. Henry, John, and Stan seemed so much older then (now we're the same age), but not so old that I couldn't see myself, someday, doing what they did.
Fourth, in what I think is the most interesting idea of the book, Coyle emphasizes simulations as a way to log the necessary practice and thus lay down the myelin. And he means literal simulations, like flight simulators that turned American pilots into aces, the Brazilian game of futsal (described as soccer "played inside a phone booth and dosed with amphetamines") that transfers so readily to conventional soccer, and skateboarding in empty swimming pools in Southern California that created so many new moves for the new sport. All of these simulations, according to Coyle, allowed people to improve their neural circuitry at a ferocious speed, because the necessary actions could be done so quickly, over and over.
Positive psychology concerns itself with positive emotions, positive traits, and positive institutions. Institutions that enable excellence and well-being are the least understood member of this trinity, but I think that Coyle's ideas provide a blueprint for creating such an institution. The details will of course differ depending on what the institution is intended to enable, but in general terms, one can deliberately grow talent by having a group of like-minded people, an instigator or two, and an appropriate simulation. Expert teaching is important, and another interesting part of Coyle's book is what he has to say about great teachers, identified by him as talent whisperers.
And of course: practice, practice, practice.
