Nick Saban’s Definition of Talent and How it Applies to Your Mindset
The definition of talent that Nick Saban provides in his book “How Good Do You Want to Be?” is the most practical definition of talent I’ve ever read. If you Google the definition of talent you get things like:
- natural aptitude or skill,
- the natural endowments of a person,
- the capacity for achievement or success you are born with
- a natural ability to be good at something, especially without being taught.
Unquestionably, each of these definitions focus on the nature aspect of talent and ignore nurture. Moreover, this is the most common way to define talent in popular culture. However, Nick Saban is anything but common, so it’s not surprising that his definition takes the complete opposite view on the nature vs. nurture debate. Nick Saban’s definition is as follows:
Talent is putting skills into productive use.
As you see, Nick Saban’s definition of talent starts with the process of first learning a skill, and then applying that skill to something productive. Given that, no one can be born with talent. You must first invest in your skills before you can have talent. What’s more, investing in your skills requires work and nurturing. Nature may be able to help, but nature can’t get you from skill to talent.
How You Define Talent Also Defines Your Mindset
Obviously, just because Nick Saban is arguably the greatest college football coach of all time doesn’t make his definition of talent better than Merriam-Webster or Cambridge. But the definition you adopt for yourself does define how you are orienting your mindset in the nature vs. nurture debate.
On the one hand, the pop culture view of talent uses a fixed mindset. On the other hand, Nick Saban’s view of talent uses the growth mindset. If you adopt the fixed mindset, you concede that you are a finished product at birth. You either have talent in a specific area or you don’t. If you adopt the growth mindset, you see yourself as a piece of clay that you can mold into many different things. Yes, if you’re 5 foot 5 it will be extremely hard to be an NBA all-star, but that doesn’t mean you can’t develop a talent to be a productive basketball player in high school or college if you have a deep passion for the sport. This thinking applies to nearly all areas of skill and talent.
As far as what I do in my mental skills coaching programs, I always encourage those with a fixed mindset to seriously consider how they can change to a growth mindset. As a result, I find Nick Saban’s definition of talent to be superior to any other definition.
I encourage all of my clients to throw out all the other definitions of talent and buy-in to Nick Saban’s definition. It’s best to always believe that nurture and hard work can overcome nature. Although nature can and does create barriers to entry in certain fields of talent, there are still ways to navigate through those barriers using the growth mindset coupled with hard work.