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Instead of Training Polymaths, Create Partnerships
September 13, 2009
Adapted from "Power of 2: How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships at Work and in Life" (Gallup Press, November 2009).
By Rodd Wagner
A pernicious idea has deep roots in many corporate training departments.
It goes by various names: the well-rounded person, the Renaissance man, homo universalis, or the polymath. Usually it's just an unacknowledged assumption. It is the belief that anyone can accomplish anything alone with enough determination, perseverance—and training.
In many companies, this idea shows itself as an underlying premise that—just as the Greek word polymathes means "having learned much"—an organization can create the talent it needs through education. Knowledge and skills can be taught, of course. But talent is either there or it's not.
Blame Leonardo da Vinci. His gifts for drawing and painting, his understanding of anatomy, and his penchant for inventing labeled him a universal genius and led millions to wonder why they had not done such remarkable things. Blame Thomas Jefferson, whose interests ranged from politics to science to architecture to agriculture. Or blame the creators of heroes such as Spider-Man, MacGyver, and James Bond—characters who appeal to us because they are self-sufficient in any crisis. We want to be like that.
This fallacy has tremendous traction in the popular press, and therefore in the assumptions about themselves that many employees bring to the job. Self-help gurus such as Tony Robbins chide their followers for hiding behind "excuses." "Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant," Robbins wrote in his bestseller "Awaken the Giant Within." "If you truly decide to," he wrote in bold type, "you can do almost anything."
One book purports to help the reader learn "how to think like Leonardo da Vinci." Another book by the same author promises to teach a person how to "innovate like Edison." "Genius is made, not born. And human beings are gifted with an almost unlimited potential," proclaims the back cover of the da Vinci book.
Few ideas so widely accepted are so demonstrably wrong. The polymath is a myth. It contradicts reason, the latest research on genetic inheritance, human nature, and even the Bible (which speaks of "diversities of gifts" among different people). Da Vinci was an incredible artist and thinker, but he often struggled to finish his work. For all his talents, Jefferson was horrible at handling money, dying deeply in debt. He seemed organically incapable of the kinds of constructive confrontations that were welcomed by his sometime collaborator John Adams. And fictional characters such as James Bond are just that—fiction.
Steve Martin could stake a claim on being a Renaissance man. In addition to being a comedian, he is an actor, bestselling author, playwright, screenwriter—and an accomplished banjo player who performed several times on the Late Show with David Letterman. During one of those appearances, the host asked, "Do you play other instruments besides the banjo?"
"No," he told Letterman. "But, let me ask you a question: If Yo-Yo Ma were sitting here, would you say, 'You play anything else besides the cello?'"
The pressure to be all things to all people is pervasive. But doing just a few things exceptionally well is a better path to success than spreading yourself thinly across dozens of disciplines, becoming, as they say in Spanish, aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada (apprentice of everything, master of nothing).
When people are asked to rate themselves, researchers often find what they call the "Lake Wobegon effect," nearly everyone believing they are above average on just about everything. A majority of Swedish drivers think they drive better than average. Most undergraduates believe they have above-average popularity. People scoring in the bottom 25 percent on tests of humor, of grammar, and of logic grossly overestimate their test performance and ability.
The flip side of this phenomenon is that people who excel at a task often think their work is unexceptional. They take for granted what comes naturally to them, assuming others can perform the task just as well. Their overestimation of others' abilities leads them to suffer what one study called "undue modesty" about their own strengths.
As a consequence of these misconceptions, most people see themselves as more well-rounded than they really are, above average where they are weak, and close to average where they are incredible. But they're wrong. Instead of complete circles, people are puzzle pieces. Some aspects of their aptitude dramatically exceed those of the general population, while other qualities are well below the mean.
The answer to differences in talent lies not in futile attempts to remake individuals, but in helping them form partnerships with those who have complementary strengths—people who are strong where they are weak, and vice versa. "If I were teaching students about entrepreneurship, I'd point out that many of the great start-ups of the last 30 years began as teams of two," wrote Forbes Publisher Rich Karlgaard. "Behind this phenomenon is a principle: Build on your strengths. To mitigate your weaknesses—and we all have them—partner up! Find your complement."
Admit it: You stink at some things. You have blind spots, weaknesses, areas in which others seem to perform effortlessly while you struggle just to be average. You are also overly modest about your strengths. What seems to be no big deal to you is difficult for others. Your strengths are stronger and your weaknesses weaker than you realize. You need help. You are also precisely the help someone else needs.
Your problem is not your "excuses." It's the fallacy that you can be Edison or da Vinci or anyone else except your talented and incomplete self, that talent can be trained in, or that you can be anywhere near as successful by yourself as in a powerful partnership.
Rodd Wagner is a New York Times bestselling author and principal of Gallup, Inc. He and Dr. James K. Harter are authors of "12: The Elements of Great Managing." He and Gallup World Poll leader Dr. Gale Muller are authors of "Power of 2: How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships at Work and in Life, to be released in November."
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