Can you be Great at Something without Talent?

Marcus Buckingham, in his book Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance, tells a story of a kid who hated swimming but had amazing natural ability.  When his parents encouraged him to show the school swim coach what he could do, he tried to fake incompetence but his mom saw what he was doing and yelled at him, so he swam in his normal way and soon found himself on the team.  He went through years of practices and competitions, won swim meet after swim meet, was the champion of the school, but hated every minute of it.  He eventually found another career as a musician, a career he was passionate about, that brought him immense satisfaction.

Buckingham used this story to illustrate his point that you can be great at something even if it doesn't allow you to express your most personal "talents".  Buckingham defines "talent" differently than I'm used to thinking of it.  For him, a "talent" is not an ability.  It is more of a preference or a pattern.  Based on identical twin studies, these patterns start at birth that only get MORE pronounced with age.  If you have what he calls the "talent" of "empathy", this doesn't necessarily mean you have an amazing ability to empathize.  It means, instead, that if you are doing something that allows you to apply "empathy" to the task, you're going to love doing the task.  You will get totally focused on it, losing track of time, and--looking back on what you did--you'll feel immense satisfaction.

The swimmer was a "success" at swimming by any external measure.  He had a shelf full of swimming trophies.  But he couldn't apply his best "talents" while swimming.  Therefore, it gave him no joy or passion.  Swimming was not a "strength" for him.  From the equation I shared in yesterday's post, which comes from this same book, Strength = Talent + Skills + Knowledge.  The boy had swimming Skills + Knowledge, but it engaged none of his Talents, so he had no passion for it--it brought him misery rather than joy.  He couldn't combine all three of these into a strength until he picked up a guitar.

The future Hall of Fame tennis player, Andre Agassi, may be an even more amazing example of being great at something that you hate.  I only read the first few chapters of his book, Open: An Autobiography (Vintage), but I might go back to it to see how this plays out.  Despite having one of the greatest tennis careers ever, he constantly refers to hating tennis, to being driven into tennis by his parents, to his lack of joy in the game.  Maybe he should have picked up a guitar.