Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else » (Unabridged, 1 MP3-CD, 7 hours 30 min.)

Geoff Colvin draws on his experience as a classroom teacher and administrator, researcher at the University of Oregon and a national public school consultant. Recognized as a national expert on the subjects of school safety and violence prevention, Colvin has provided in-service training for teachers and administrators in more than 100 school districts and agencies nationally and internationally. He recently served as research associate at the University of Oregon and independent consultant in the areas of school wide discipline, school climate, school safety and violence prevention, and has also directed a juvenile detention school and a program for seriously emotionally disturbed youth. Colvin has authored more than sixty publications, books, book chapters, journal articles and video programs on the subject of teaching and managing students with problem behavior.

One of the most popular Fortune articles in many years was a cover story called "What It Takes to Be Great." Geoff Colvin offered new evidence that top performers in any field - from Tiger Woods and Winston Churchill to Warren Buffett and Jack Welch - are not determined by their inborn talents. Greatness doesn't come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades.

And not just plain old hard work, like your grandmother might have advocated, but a very specific kind of work. The key is how you practice, how you analyze the results of your progress and learn from your mistakes, that enables you to achieve greatness.

Now Colvin has expanded his article with much more scientific background and real-world examples. He shows that the skills of business - negotiating deals, evaluating financial statements, and all the rest - obey the principles that lead to greatness, so that anyone can get better at them with the right kind of effort. Even the hardest...

1 The Mystery 1

Great performance is more valuable than ever-but where does it really come from?

2 Talent Is Overrated 17

Confronting the unexpected facts about innate abilities

3 How Smart Do You Have to Be? 36

The true role of intelligence and memory in high achievement

4 A Better Idea 52

An explanation of great performance that makes sense

5 What Deliberate Practice Is and Isn't 65

For starters, it isn't what most of us do when we're "practicing"

6 How Deliberate Practice Works 84

The specific ways it changes us, and how that makes all the difference

7 Applying the Principles in Our Lives 105

The opportunities are many-if we think about our work in a new way

8 Applying the Principles in Our Organizations 126

Few do it well, and most don't do it at all; the sooner you start, the better

9 Performing Great at Innovation 145

How the principles we've learned take us past the myths of creativity

10 Great Performance in Youth and Age 167

The extraordinary benefits of starting early and continuing on and on

11 Where Does the Passion Come From? 187

Understanding the deepest question about great performance

Afterword 207

Acknowledgments 214

Sources 216

Index 227