Exactly What Is Talent

It's a fair question. "Talent" is a term you hear bandied about in a variety of contexts. It's used constantly in reference to celebrities: in show business, performers are often referred to as "the talent"; sports analysts will talk about an outstanding athlete's "raw talent." Grade-school kids impress audiences full of parents at talent shows, while the existence of talent agencies and talent brokers implies that talent is a rarefied commodity, something to be bought and sold.

But though the word is common, the concept remains elusive -- it lacks substance, specificity. Perhaps that's part of the reason so many people have trouble applying it to themselves personally. Carefully examining and refining the concept of talent may make it easier for you to recognize it in yourself and others, in order to make the most of it in your daily life. What is it, for example, that distinguishes talent from related -- but very different -- concepts, such as competency or style?

Let's start with Webster's definition of talent as "any natural ability or power." Such a broad description may not seem like much to go on, but it includes a word that is central to Gallup's perspective on talent: natural.

Talent reflects how you're hard-wired. That's what sets the concept apart from that of knowledge or skills. Talent dictates your moment-by-moment reactions to your environment -- there's an instinctiveness, an immediacy implied. Talent results in consistently recurring patterns of thought or behavior. To deviate from those patterns requires conscious effort, and such deviations are difficult to sustain.

Knowledge and skills, on the other hand, imply learned behavior, actions that require more active cognitive processing. What you know reveals more about your experiences and education than about who you are at the core. Behavior derived from knowledge and skills can be changed far more easily than talent-based behavior, as new information subordinates old in an individual's consciousness.

Talent can't be subordinated. It's constant and enduring. That's what makes it talent. Understanding the difference between the two sources of behavior changes everything.

An example will help clarify the distinction. Public speaking is an apt illustration in an election year. Few would deny that retired General Colin Powell is a world-class speaker; his speech on the opening night of the Republican National Convention in August, for example, received positive reviews for its boldness and integrity. Powell captivates audiences not simply -- or even primarily -- through the content of his message, but through the power of his delivery, the sheer chemistry that enables him to reach you across a crowded auditorium and make you believe that what he's saying is important to you.

You may be able to replicate the individual mechanics of what makes a speaker like Powell great -- his cadence, his diction, the fact that he maintains eye contact with the audience -- but there's a holistic quality which can't be taught. If you listen hard to a truly talented speaker, you'll come to realize that no single aspect of those mechanics ever noticeably emerges, because they're all acting seamlessly in concert. You can transfer a conscious understanding of the pieces and parts, but only on an unconscious level can those elements mesh perfectly without seeming contrived.