Child prodigies

One of the best business books I read last year is “The Originals” by Adam Grant. Adam Grant is a big name in America and he is consultant to companies like Facebook and other big-time industries. He teaches at Wharton, authored the best selling book “Give and Take” and I had the privilege to interview him in New York two years ago.

Have you ever gotten the knee jerk reaction of exclaiming: “Oh yeah! That is so true and Adam is right!” Well, I have had plenty of such Eureka moments reading his book and would like to share a portion of it here hoping you readers will find it useful.

Adam talks about child prodigies. He says: “These geniuses learn to read at age two, play Bach at four, breeze through calculus at six, and speak seven languages fluently by eight. Their classmates shudder with jealousy; their parents rejoice at having won the lottery. But to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, their careers tend to end not with a bang, but a whimper.”

Have you ever been treated to one of those evening dinners wherein the real motive of your host or hostess was to show off their child prodigy’s talent behind any musical instrument that would bring out the admiration in you and fire up the envy inside you at the same time? And after the evening you go home and look at your malfunctioning misfits and wonder why God has not blessed you with the good fortune your friends have?

I have always been careful with this. We see some kids of our friends excelling in school in the area of science, arts or sports and they would provide a grand celebration should their children get a passing grade in their report cards. I just remind myself, they are God’s gifts to me and God has a special plan for their lives.

But Adam Grant continues. He says: “Child prodigies, it turns out, rarely go on to change the world. When psychologists study history’s most eminent and influential people, they discover that many of them weren’t unusually gifted as children. And if you assemble a large group of child prodigies and follow them for their entire lives, you’ll find they don’t outshine their less precocious peers from families of similar means.

Intuitively, this makes sense. We assume that what gifted kids have in book smarts, they lack in street smarts. While they have the intellectual chops, they might lack the social, emotional and practical skills to function in society.

When you look at the evidence, though, this explanation falls short: Less than a quarter of gifted children suffer from social and emotional problems. The vast majority are well-adjusted—as delightful at a cocktail party as in a spelling bee.”

And then here comes this Eureka moment when Grant says: “Although child prodigies are often rich in both talent and ambition, what holds them back from moving the world forward is that they don’t learn to be original.”

Wow! That blew my mind!

Look at the very successful entrepreneurs. Many of them may not have performed well in school, but when it comes to their crafts they certainly are “originals.” From creativity to ideation to actual business execution, these celebrated winners and entrepreneurs love to take educated risks to try out new things instead of mastering the same old thing.

Adam Grant says: “As they perform in Carnegie Hall, win the science olympics, and become chess champions, something tragic happens: Practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new.

The gifted learn to play magnificent Mozart melodies and beautiful Beethoven symphonies, but never compose their own original scores. They focus their energy on consuming existing scientific knowledge, not producing new insights.

They conform to the codified rules of established games, rather than inventing their own rules or their own games. “All along the way, they strive to earn the approval of their parents and the admiration of their teachers.”

Yet the creative ones, the non-conformists would never become teacher’s pets. In most cases they are labeled as “trouble-makers” and “problem-kids.” They are the ones who are called most often to the principal’s office. Many of the child prodigies grow up to become experts in their fields and leaders in their organizations, but only a few of them become true revolutionary and game-changing creators.

Psychologist Ellen Winner says: “Those who do must make a painful transition” from a child who “learns rapidly and effortlessly in an established domain” to an adult who “ultimately remakes a domain.”

Adam Grant says, “When achievement motivation goes sky-high, it can crowd out originality: The more you value achievement, the more you come to dread failure. Instead of aiming for unique accomplishments, the intense desire to succeed leads us to strive for guaranteed success.”

Your kids and mine are uniquely, beautifully and wonderfully created by the author of life and it is our responsibility to train them well and develop them to have godly character. But their purpose is original, their gifts and placement too. There is absolutely no need to envy other families for their kids because loving them is not based on their performance, but on who they are. They are your kids.

And if you happen to be like me who flunked high school (many times), yet manages to do something original, then you know what Adam Grant is talking about and you know what I mean.

(Connect with Francis Kong in www.facebook.com/franciskong2 or listen to “Business Matters” Monday to Friday 8:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. over 98.7 dzFE-FM ‘The Master’s Touch,’ the classical music station.)