There's a great post today on Guy Kawasaki's blog about the mind-set of successful people – whether you are hiring, managing a team or raising kids, this is an important principle. Search for people who love to learn and grow. Praise effort not talent. It's one of the core concepts of Brad Smart's TopGrading interview system which is the best recruiting how-to I've seen.
Guy writes:
The article postulates that people have two kinds of mindsets: growth or fixed. People with the growth mindset view life as a series of challenges and opportunities for improving. People with a fixed mindset believe that they are “set” as either good or bad. The issue is that the good ones believe they don’t have to work hard, and the bad ones believe that working hard won’t change anything.
[snip]
Here are Dweck’s tips from Mindset:
Listen to what you say to your kids [employees], with an ear toward the messages you’re sending about mind-set.
Instead of praising children’s [employee’s] intelligence or talent, focus on the processes they used.
Example: “That homework was so long and involved. I really admire the way you concentrated and finished it.”
Example: “That picture has so many beautiful colors. Tell me about them.”
Example: “You put so much thought into that essay. It really makes me think about Shakespeare in a new way.”
When your child [employee] messes up, give constructive criticism—feedback that helps the child [employee] understand how to fix the problem, rather than labeling or excusing the child.
Pay attention to the goals you set for your children [employees]; having innate talent is not a goal, but expanding skills and knowledge is.
{ 1 comment }
Talent never hurts. And the examples of praising sound good when there was no talent present but just a lot of work…
)
Still I agree with the general idea. In fact since long ago, I called the same concept “the talent vs motivation equation”. Ideally, you would like to have someone with both, talent and motivation.
But that may be hard to find and if in an employee one skill is going to be bigger than the other one, I rather go with someone that has more motivation than talent. Motivation can make you acquire some talent, while talent without motivation in the long run will not work.