Talent! Is It Only "Practice Makes Perfect?"
When we were children, exhortations to do our work were regularly accompanied by the adage "practice makes perfect." Today, I in a radio interview with Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code, I heard a new and fascinating twist on this idea. Coyle's thesis is that through reinforcement - 'deep practice' as he calls it - particularly when it is accompanied by the opportunity to make mistakes that we can learn from - our brain develops pathways that become more efficient.
This has been talked about for a long time in terms of the brain being a system where the more we use particularly pathways, the more bandwidth they carry. The myelin sheath around the neurons actual 'thicken' allowing information to flow faster and more efficiently.
Coyle combines this information with observations of how practice--carried out under supervision (i.e., via teachers or coaches) can 'ignite' breakthroughs in the learner. He makes clear that good coaching is not, as is commonly thought, based primarily on strong leadership and charisma. it's much more about micro manipulation on the edge of an individual's or team's capabilities.
Coyle came to his ideas by studying small, very effective centers that have had extraordinary success in training athletes, musicians and other talented professionals. So it is not simply that practice makes perfect, but that perfection also requires the right training techniques. For anyone who believes, as I do, in the extraordinary power of effective teaching, his message is an exciting one--offering a world of possibilities.
You can learn a lot more about this intriguing topic by going to Coyle's book http://thetalentcode.com/author/ or even faster, by seeing a clip of him speaking on utube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY7QNxXbziA
