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Tóm tắt nội dung (trích từ tài liệu gốc): The Talent Code Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. here's how. Daniel Coyle Bantam Books the talent code A Bantam Book / May 2009 Published by Bantam Dell A Division of Random House, Inc. New York, New York All rights reserved. Copyright � 2009 by Daniel Coyle Book design by Glen M. Edelstein Bantam Books and the Rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Coyle, Daniel. The talent code : Greatness isn't born. It's grown. Here 's how. / Daniel Coyle. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-553-80684
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The Talent Code
Greatness Isn't Born.
It's Grown. here's how.
Daniel Coyle
Bantam Books
the talent code
A Bantam Book / May 2009
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All rights reserved.
Copyright � 2009 by Daniel Coyle
Book design by Glen M. Edelstein
Bantam Books and the Rooster colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coyle, Daniel.
The talent code : Greatness isn't born.
It's grown. Here 's how. / Daniel Coyle.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-553-80684-7 (hardcover)--ISBN 978-0-553-90649-3 (ebook)
1. Ability. 2. Motivation (Psychology) I. Title.
BF431.C69 2009
153.9--dc22 2008047674
Printed in the United States of America
Published simultaneously in Canada
randomhousebooks.com
30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23
BVG
Chapter 9
The Teaching Circuit: A Blueprint
A teacher affects eternity; he can never
tell where his influence stops.
--Henry Brooks Adams
THE FOUR VIRTUES OF MASTER COACHES
Great teaching is a skill like any other. It only looks like magic;
in fact, it is a combination of skills--a set of myelinated cir-
cuits built through deep practice. Ron Gallimore, who is now
a distinguished professor emeritus at UCLA, has a good way
of describing the skill. "Great teachers focus on what the stu-
dent is saying or doing," he says, "and are able, by being so
focused and by their deep knowledge of the subject matter, to
see and recognize the inarticulate stumbling, fumbling effort
of the student who's reaching toward mastery, and then con-
nect to them with a targeted message."
The key words of this sentence are knowledge, recognize,
and connect. What Gallimore is saying, and what Jensen,
Wooden, and Miss Mary are showing, links back to our thesis:
Skill is insulation that wraps neural circuits and grows according
178 The Talent Code
to certain signals. In the most literal sense, master coaches are
the human delivery system for the signals that fuel and direct
the growth of a given skill circuit, telling it with great clarity
to fire here and not here. Coaching is a long, intimate conversa-
tion, a series of signals and responses that move toward a
shared goal. A coach's true skill consists not in some univer-
sally applicable wisdom that he can communicate to all, but
rather in the supple ability to locate the sweet spot on the edge
of each individual student's ability, and to send the right sig-
nals to help the student reach toward the right goal, over and
over. As with any complex skill, it's really a combination
of several different qualities--what I have called "the four
virtues."
THE MATRIX: THE FIRST VIRTUE
The coaches and teachers I met at the talent hotbeds were
mostly older. More than half were in their sixties or seven-
ties. All had spent decades, usually several, intensively learn-
ing how to coach. This is not a coincidence; in fact, it's a
prerequisite, because it builds the neural superstructure that
is the most essential part of their skills--their matrix.
Matrix is Gallimore 's word for the vast grid of task-
specific knowledge that distinguishes the best teachers and al-
lows them to creatively and effectively respond to a student's
efforts. Gallimore explains it this way: "A great teacher has
the capacity to always take it deeper, to see the learning the
student is capable of and to go there. It keeps going deeper
and deeper because the teacher can think about the material in
so many different ways, and because there's an endless num-
ber of connections they can make." Or as I would put it: years
of work go into myelinating a master coach's circuitry, which
The Teaching Circuit: A Blueprint 179
is a mysterious amalgam of technical knowledge, strategy, ex-
perience, and practiced instinct ready to be put to instant use
to locate and understand where the students are and where
they need to go. In short, the matrix is a master coach's killer
application.
We'll see how the matrix functions in a moment; for now
the point is that people are not born with this depth of knowl-
edge. It's something they grow, over time, through the same
combination of ignition and deep practice as any other skill.*
One does not become a master coach by accident. Many of the
coaches I met shared a similar biographical arc: they had once
been promising talents in their respective fields but failed and
tried to figure out why. A good example is Louisiana-born
Linda Septien, who eventually founded the Septien Vocal
Studio in Dallas, Texas.
Septien is a tanned, youthful fifty-four-year-old who tends
toward skin-tight tracksuits and metallic sneakers, and who
possesses a natural exuberance that allows her to move past
obstacles that would discourage most people. This exuber-
ance shows itself in the way she talks (quickly, candidly, itali-
cizing key words) and drives her BMW (only seventeen
speeding tickets last year, she informs me) but also in her ap-
proach to the ups and downs of life. During our first conver-
sation at her studio, she mentioned that her house had caught
fire last year. How big a fire? I asked.
* As Anders Ericsson would remind us, reaching world-class status requires ten
thousand hours of deep practice. So why did the master coaches tend to be older?
Perhaps it was just chance, or perhaps it reflected social forces (after all, most child-
ren don't grow up wanting to become a coach in the same way they grow up want-
ing to become Tiger Woods). Or perhaps it illustrates a unique double requirement
that coaches not only grow proficient in their chosen field but also learn how to teach it
effectively.
180 The Talent Code
"I wasn't there, but my neighbors said there were some
pret-ty big explosions when the boat blew up," she said. "It
took six fire engines to put it out. I lost everything--my piano,
passport, clothing, photos, toothbrush, all burned up. My
cockatoo Cleo got singed, but she made it. I didn't mind los-
ing my stuff, but I minded losing the time--that's what's pre-
cious to me. I've had to move like six times in the last year
while we built a new place, so that isn't any fun. But you know
what?" Septien gave me a frank, dazzling smile. "I like the
new house better. I really do."
Septien has had some practice rebuilding. In her early
twenties she had a successful opera-singing career (perform-
ing with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra) and a mar-
riage to a famous football player, Dallas Cowboys placekicker
Rafael Septien. But when she was in her late twenties, her
opera career stalled out, and her marriage did likewise. In
1984, pregnant with her first child, on the verge of separating
from her husband, she went to Nashville with the idea of mak-
ing a transition to popular music and recording a Christian
album. She auditioned with a team of record producers, sing-
ing "I'm a Miracle, Lord." The audition went well, or so she
thought.
"I sang beautifully; I hit every note," she remembered.
"And when it was finished, the producers sat there silently. I
thought, `I've stunned them. They know I'm great.'"
Septien smiled ruefully. "Then they told me the truth: I
was terrible. Awful. They didn't care about notes, they cared
about feeling, and I sang with no feeling, no passion, no story.
I was a classical singer. I had no idea how to sell a song.
"I can't tell you how much this bothered me. I thought I
was really, really good, really talented, and here were some
The Teaching Circuit: A Blueprint 181
guys who said flat out that I sucked--and they were right, I
did suck. It made me really mad, and it also made me really
curious. I wanted to figure out how to do this."
Septien spent the next few months taking care of her new
baby and studying big pop and rock acts: Tom Jones, the
Rolling Stones, U2. She studied the way they sang, moved,
and spoke. She took notes, scribbling on napkins and pro-
grams, tucking her findings into large three-ring binders.
Septien approached pop music like a medical student, system-
atically dissecting its various systems. How did Tom Jones
manage his breathing in "Delilah"? How did Bono use move-
ment to convey emotion in his songs? What made Willie
Nelson's minimalist vocals so compelling? She watched audi-
ences as much as artists, "to see what really turned them on."
Despite all this work Septien's singing career failed to lift
off over the next few years. She made ends meet by selling
real estate, working as a spokesperson, modeling, and on oc-
casion teaching classical voice lessons out of her home. "It
wasn't like I was a good teacher," she said. "I was the only ad
for voice in the Dallas Yellow Pages." When youthful acts
like Debbie Gibson and Tiffany succeeded in the early 1990s,
Septien saw a growing trickle of kids who wanted to be pop
stars. "I said, why not? I knew pop music. I just had to figure
out how to teach it."
At first Septien taught pop the same way she'd learned
classical, by teaching students to follow universal principles of
technique. But that didn't work. "Really quickly I switched
and became more artist-focused," she said. "I realized my job
was to find out what worked for somebody and connect it to
what worked in pop music. There was no system for doing
that, so I had to invent my own."
182 The Talent Code
Septien dug into her binders and, over the next few years,
created a curriculum that applied the rigor and structure of
classical training to the world of pop. She mined Whitney
Houston vocals for scale exercises. She developed programs
for diaphragm exercises, ear training, and scat singing. Like
Feinberg and Levin at KIPP, she was constantly experiment-
ing with new approaches, discarding, trying again. She made
performing a central element, arranging gigs for her students
at malls, schools, and rodeos. She required students to write
their own songs, importing professional songwriters to teach
them how. Over the years the matrix of her knowledge ex-
panded. That expansion accelerated in 1991, when an eleven-
year-old named Jessica Simpson showed up at Septien's studio
for a lesson.
"She sang `Amazing Grace,'" Septien recalled. "Jessica
had an infectious personality--real sweet, but she was pain-
fully shy on stage. Plus, her voice needed a lot of work. It was
beautiful, but it was churchy, which made sense because her
dad was a minister. She had a big vibrato." Septien demon-
strates, filling her office with pulsating sound. "You can't sing
pop music with a vibrato. You ever seen a pair of vocal cords?
They're pink and shaped like a V--they're muscles, basically.
The vibrato meant that Jessica wasn't controlling her cords
properly, so we had to work at tightening them up, like you
would a guitar string.
"The other thing with Jessica was that she had no feel, no
expression, no connection to the emotion of the music, the
same as I was when I started out. So we had to work a lot on
that, on gestures, movement, connection to the audience,
which is a whole skill in itself. The audience is like a big ani-
mal out there; you've got to learn to control it, connect to it,
The Teaching Circuit: A Blueprint 183
and make it breathe hard for more. Your voice can be incredi-
ble, but if you can't connect, it doesn't matter. But Jessica was
a hard, hard worker. She really dove in."
It took two years to fix the vibrato, and a few more to learn
stagecraft. By the time she was sixteen, after five years of
working with Septien, Simpson had a record deal; three years
later she had a 3.5 million�selling album and a platinum sin-
gle, "I Wanna Love You Forever." Simpson was hailed as an
overnight success, a term that continues to entertain Septien.
"Everybody said Jessica was a Texas girl who'd been sing-
ing in her church choir. That's ridiculous--that girl worked to
become the singer she was. They said [American Idol winner]
Kelly Clarkson was a waitress, like she never sang before. Wait-
ress? Excuse me? Kelly Clarkson was a singer--we all knew
Kelly Clarkson. She had training, and she worked her tail off like
anybody else does. She didn't come from nowhere any more
than Jessica came from nowhere. It's not magic, you know."
After Simpson, one thing led to another. Septien briefly
worked with a rising Houston-area singer named Beyonc�
Knowles, then used her ever-growing skills to develop and
launch Ryan Cabrera, Demi Lovato, and several future
American Idol finalists; her small studio became known as a
star factory. On the day I was there, I heard singers from High
School Musical and Barney and Friends, and a half-dozen pint-
size Christina Aguileras. Septien was embarking on a road-
show for investors, seeking $100 million to expand the school
to what her financial adviser called "the Gap of music
schools." More important, her matrix is now complete. As
Septien puts it, "Someone can walk in that door, and I know I
can figure them out in twenty seconds."
"There 's nothing she hasn't considered, nothing you can
184 The Talent Code
stump her with," says Sarah Alexander, an ex-lawyer-turned-
recording-artist who's worked with Septien. "She has the cog-
nitive understanding of what my vocal cords are doing at any
moment and exactly how they could be better. She always had
an explanation that made the problem surmountable. Linda
takes good care of the small steps."
"People see all the glitter and stage stuff, and they forget
that vocal cords are just muscles," Septien said. "They . . . are . . .
just . . . muscles. What I do for myself as a teacher is no differ-
ent from what I ask my students to do. I know what I'm doing
because I put a lot of work into it. I'm no different from them.
If you spend years and years trying hard to do something,
you'd better get better at it. How dumb would I have to be if I
didn't?"
PERCEPTIVENESS: THE SECOND VIRTUE
The eyes are the giveaway. They are usually sharp and warm
and are deployed in long, unblinking gazes. Several master
coaches told me that they trained their eyes to be like cameras,
and they share that same Panavision quality. Though the gaze
can be friendly, it's not chiefly about friendship. It's about in-
formation. It's about figuring you out.
When Gallimore and Tharp studied John Wooden in 1974,
they were surprised to find that he distributed praise and criti-
cism unevenly. Which is to say, certain players got a lot of
praise; others got a lot of criticism. What's more, he was open
about this. During the team's preseason meeting each year,
Wooden would say, "I am not going to treat you players all
the same. Giving you the same treatment doesn't make sense,
because you're all different. The good Lord, in his infinite
wisdom, did not make us all the same. Goodness gracious, if
he had, this would be a boring world, don't you think? You
The Teaching Circuit: A Blueprint 185
are different from each other in height, weight, background,
intelligence, talent, and many other ways. For that reason,
each one of you deserves individual treatment that is best for
you. I will decide what that treatment will be."
Almost all the master coaches I met followed Wooden's rule.
They wanted to know about each student so they could cus-
tomize their communications to fit the larger patterns in a stu-
dent's life. Football coach Tom Martinez, whom we'll meet
later, has a vivid metaphor for this process. "The way I look at
it, everybody's life is a bowl of whipped cream and shit, and my
job is to even things out," he said. "If a kid's got a lot of shit in
his life, I'm going to stir in some whipped cream. If a kid's life is
pure whipped cream, then I'm going to stir in some shit."
On the macro level, the coaches I met approached new stu-
dents with the curiosity of an investigative reporter. They
sought out details of their personal lives, finding out about
family, income, relationships, motivation. And on the micro
level, they constantly monitored the student's reaction to their
coaching, checking whether their message was being ab-
sorbed. This led to a telltale rhythm of speech. The coach
would deliver a chunk of information, then pause, hawkeye-
ing the listener as if watching the needle of a Geiger counter.
As Septien put it, "I'm always checking, because I need to
know when they don't know."
"They are listening on many levels," Gallimore said.
"They are able to use their words and behaviors as an instru-
ment to move the student forward."
THE GPS REFLEX: THE THIRD VIRTUE
"You gotta give them a lot of information," said Robert
Lansdorp, the tennis coach. "You gotta shock 'em, then shock
'em some more."
186 The Talent Code
Shock is an appropriate word. Most master coaches deliv-
ered their information to their students in a series of short,
vivid, high-definition bursts. They never began sentences
with "Please, would you" or "Do you think" or "What
about"; instead they spoke in short imperatives. "Now do X"
was the most common construction; the "you will" was im-
plied. The directions weren't dictatorial in tone (usually) but
were delivered in a way that sounded clinical and urgent, as if
they were being emitted by a particularly compelling GPS
unit navigating through a maze of city streets: turn left, turn
right, go straight, arrival complete.
For example, here is a transcript of three minutes of Linda
Septien working with eleven-year-old singer Kacie Lynch on
a song called "Mirror, Mirror." On the page it reads as a
monologue, but like any coaching it was actually a conversa-
tion: Kacie 's part was sung, Septien's was spoken.
Kacie: (sings)
Linda: Okay, it's a dance song, it's not pretty, it's not a
power ballad. It moves quick, so be quick. Sing it like a
trumpet.
K: (sings)
L: Add a scat on each of the ends--sing it like this: "You
know how much he caa-aaares."
K: (sings)
L: Fade the ending--it should be like a balloon running out
of air.
K: (sings)
The Teaching Circuit: A Blueprint 187
L: Use your diaphragm, not your face. Hold your tongue
tighter there for a clearer sound.
K: (sings)
L: Get your cheeks back on the scats . . . almost . . .
almost . . . there it is.
K: (sings)
L: Use your yawn muscles--you're using wimpy muscles
there. There it is.
K: (finishes song)
L: That was okay, but I think you've got a better one in
you.
K (nodding): Uh-huh.
L: Now you gotta go practice that a bunch bunch bunch
bunch bunch.
K: Okay.
This is Septien's GPS reflex in action, producing a linked
series of vivid, just-in-time directives that zap the student's
skill circuit, guiding it in the right direction. In the space of a
three-minute song, Septien sent signals on:
1. The goal/feeling of the whole song ("it's a dance
song . . . like a trumpet").
2. The goal/feeling of certain sections (". . . like a bal-
loon; caa-aaares").
3. Highly specific physical moves required to hit certain
notes ("cheeks back, tongue tighter, yawn muscles").
188 The Talent Code
4. Motivation/goals ("you've got a better one in you . . .
gotta go practice a bunch").
Septien was concise, locating mistakes and their solutions
in the same vivid stroke. She highlighted the crucial moments
when Kacie hit the desired mark. ("There it is.") Septien's skill
is not only her matrix of knowledge but also the lightning-fast
connections she makes between that matrix and Kacie's ef-
forts, linking where Kacie is now with actions that will take
her where she ought to go.*
Patience is a word we use a lot to describe great teachers at
work. But what I saw was not patience, exactly. It was more
like probing, strategic impatience. The master coaches I met
were constantly changing their input. If A didn't work, they
tried B and C; if they failed, the rest of the alphabet was hol-
stered and ready. What seemed like patient repetition from the
outside was actually, on closer examination, a series of subtle
variations, each one a distinct firing, each one creating a
worthwhile combination of errors and fixes that grew myelin.
Of the many phrases I heard echoing around the talent
hotbeds, one stood out as common to all of them. It was:
"Good. Okay, now do____." A coach would employ it when
a student got the hang of some new move or technique. As
soon as the student could accomplish the feat (play that
chord, hit that volley), the coach would quickly layer in an added
difficulty. Good. Okay, now do it faster. Now do it with the har-
mony. Small successes were not stopping points but stepping-
stones.
"One of the big things I've learned over the years is to
* It must have worked: a few months after this rehearsal, Kacie signed a recording con-
tract with Universal Records.
The Teaching Circuit: A Blueprint 189
push," Septien said. "The second they get to a new spot, even
if they're still groping a little bit, I push them to the next
level."
"Push the buttons, push the buttons, push the buttons, and
see what you can do," Lansdorp said. "A mind is such a hands-
on kind of thing. It's fantastic!"
THEATRICAL HONESTY: THE FOURTH VIRTUE
Many of the coaches I met radiated a subtle theatrical air.
Robert Lansdorp wore a snow-white pompadour and a black
leather jacket and spoke in a booming Sinatra baritone.
Septien's sheeny outfits and flawless hair evoked a Hollywood
star. Larisa Preobrazhenskaya (who trained in her youth as an
actress) favored Gloria Swanson turban-style head wraps and
spotless white track suits, and could go from a Brezhnev
glower to a Betty White smile in a heartbeat. Lansdorp took
positive glee in the characterizations he would play. "I'm a to-
tal put-on," he said. "I raise my voice, lower my voice, ask
questions, figure out how they react. I have all kinds of things
I do; sometimes I'm mean and tough, sometimes I'm easygo-
ing. It depends what works for that kid."
It would be easy to conclude, from this pattern, that master
coaches traffic in hokum. But the longer I saw them work, the
more I saw that drama and character are the tools master
coaches use to reach the student with the truth about their per-
formance. As Ron Gallimore said, moral honesty is at the core
of the job description--character in the deeper sense of the
word. "Truly great teachers connect with students because of
who they are as moral standards," he said. "There 's an empa-
thy, a selflessness, because you're not trying to tell the student
something they know, but are finding, in their effort, a place to
make a real connection."
190 The Talent Code
Theatrical honesty works best when teachers are perform-
ing their most essential myelinating role: pointing out errors.
For example, consider a KIPP math class taught by Lolita
Jackson, whom we met earlier. For an hour and forty-five
minutes, Jackson worked the room like a master heavy-equip-
ment operator, flicking levers, controlling every move with
the instrument of her voice, her body, her eyes. She was warm
and encouraging one second, surprised the next, terrifying the
next. At one point she found that a student named Geraldo
had been figuring the circumference of a circle using the
wrong formula.
"So why did you multiply by four?" she said, disbelief ris-
ing in her voice. Her finger jabbed the paper, a witness identi-
fying a criminal in a lineup. "You had two right there. Right
here! That's where you made your error--right there. Right
there!"
She turned to the class, and her face suddenly became
friendly and open. The crime witness was gone, replaced by
your kindest aunt. "Who else was confused about that? Don't
be shy. I'll make sure you're not confused by the time you
leave here."
Midway through class she mentioned that another student,
Jos�, who'd been struggling, recently scored well on a test.
She walked over and stood close.
"You tell your parents [about the test]?"
Jos� nodded.
"Did they like it? Did they like it? You gonna be like this
until the end of the year?"
Jos� said, "Yes, Ms. Jackson."
She looked at him sternly. "You know what, Jos�, I don't
like it. I don't like it," she said.
The class held its breath, and Ms. Jackson held the mo-
The Teaching Circuit: A Blueprint 191
ment. Then she released a sunburst of a smile. "I don't like
it--I love it! I love it! I LOVE it!"
The class then did the circumference problem again, and
again, and once again. First 80 percent of the class got it right,
then 90, then 95 percent, then 100 percent, which they celebrated
with a group stomp-clap.
"Do we have a better understanding? A better understand-
ing?" Ms. Jackson said, summing up. "You don't have a com-
plete understanding of this, no way, we haven't done it
enough. But do we have a better understanding? YES!"
"I can connect with them because I know what I'm talking
about," Jackson told me afterward. "I didn't go to college un-
til my kids were in high school, and so I've been on both sides
of that. I know the world they live in. This isn't about math.
I'm not teaching math. It's about life. It's about every single
day being a new day, and each time you wake up, you look at
the sky you've got as a gift. The day is here. What are you go-
ing to do with it?"
CIRCUIT-GROWING: WHY TEACHING SOCCER IS
DIFFERENT FROM TEACHING VIOLIN
Given the coaches we 've met so far, it's tempting to conceptual-
ize a master coach as a busy electrician, always zapping the
student with helpful signals, soldering the myelin connections.
That is often the case. But many other times the most masterful
coaches are completely silent. Consider this conundrum: both
Brazilian soccer academies and Suzuki violin instruction pro-
grams are remarkably good at developing world-class talent. Yet
Brazilian soccer coaches talk very little, while Suzuki violin
teachers talk a lot. To see why, let's first look at them one by one.
192 The Talent Code
Brazilian futsal practices are the essence of simplicity. The
coach begins with a few cursory drills, then divides the team
into two sides and lets them play an intense, full-throttle
game, during which the coach rarely says a word. The coach
is attentive. He occasionally smiles or laughs or says oooooooo
for a close play as a fan would. But he doesn't coach in the
regular sense of the term, which is to say he doesn't stop the
game, teach, praise, critique, or otherwise exert any control
whatsoever. On the surface, this laid-back approach would
seem to violate the basic precepts of master coaching. How
can you build skill if you don't stop the action, give informa-
tion, praise, and correct?
At the other end of the spectrum is a Suzuki violin lesson.
Here the teacher monitors beginners with microscopic preci-
sion. Some programs do not permit the student to play a note
until she has spent several weeks learning how to hold the bow
and violin. (In Japan many Suzuki students aren't allowed
even to touch the violin for the first few weeks but are given
shoeboxes with strings to practice the holds.) Suzuki training
is the photographic negative of Brazilian futsal: it's 100 per-
cent structure and zero free play. Yet judging by impressive
results, both coaching techniques (or seeming lack thereof )
seem to work extremely well. Why?
The answer lies in at the nature of the skill circuits that
each technique is trying to develop. From the myelin point of
view, the two coaches only look as if they are doing the oppo-
site thing. In fact, they are both doing precisely what good
coaches should do: they are helping the right circuit to fire as
often as possible. The difference is the shape of the circuits
each is trying to grow.
In skill circuits, as in any electrical circuit, form follows
function. Different skills require different patterns of action,
The Teaching Circuit: A Blueprint 193
thus differently structured circuits. For instance, visualize
what's happening inside the nervous system of a soccer player
as she moves downfield on a breakaway. The ideal soccer cir-
cuitry is varied and fast, changing fluidly in response to each
obstacle, capable of producing a myriad of possible options
that can fire in liquid succession: now this, this, this, and that.
Speed and flexibility are everything; the faster and more flexi-
ble the circuit, the more obstacles can be overcome, and the
greater that player's skill. If ideal soccer circuitry were ren-
dered as an electrician's blueprint, it would look like a gargan-
tuan hedge of ivy vines: a vast, interconnected network of
equally accessible possibilities (a.k.a. fakes and moves) lead-
ing to the same end: Pel� dribbling downfield alone.
Now visualize the circuitry that fires when a violinist plays
a Mozart sonata. This circuit is not a vinelike tangle of impro-
visation but rather a tightly defined series of pathways de-
signed to create--or more accurately, re-create--a single set
of ideal movements. Consistency rules; when the violinist
plays an A-minor chord, it must always be an A-minor chord,
and not a smidgen off. This circuit of precision and stability
serves as the foundation on which other, increasingly complex
patterns can be constructed to form that Mozart sonata. If
ideal violin-playing circuitry were also rendered as an electri-
cian's blueprint, it would look like an oak tree: a solid trunk of
technique growing straight upward, branching off into realms
of pure fluency--Itzhak Perlman flying through high canopies
of sixteenth notes.
During that "uncoached" futsal practice in S�o Paolo, the
players' flexible-skill circuits are firing with great speed and
intensity. The game serves as a factory of precisely the sort of
encounters that coaches want to teach, along with the benefit
of instant feedback: when a move doesn't work, the ball is
194 The Talent Code
taken away, and humiliado results; when it does work, the re-
sult is the ecstasy of a goal. To stop the game in order to high-
light some technical detail or give praise would be to interrupt
the flow of attentive firing, failing, and learning that is the
heart of flexible-circuit deep practice. The lessons the players
teach themselves are more powerful than anything the coach
might say.*
The beginner violinist represents the opposite case. Here
the circuit needs not just to be fired but to be fired correctly.
The high level of coaching input is a reflection of a crucial
physiological fact: this circuit will form the core of the oak's
trunk. The coach's actions form a kind of trellis, to direct the
seedling's growth precisely where it needs to go. (Which
doesn't mean the process needs to be unnecessarily solemn,
by the way. The Suzuki teachers I've met are charming and
charismatic, able to turn holding a shoebox into an enjoyable
game.)
Skills like soccer, writing, and comedy are flexible-circuit
skills, meaning that they require us to grow vast ivy-vine cir-
cuits that we can flick through to navigate an ever-changing
set of obstacles. Playing violin, golf, gymnastics, and figure
skating, on the other hand, are consistent-circuit skills, de-
pending utterly on a solid foundation of technique that en-
ables us to reliably re-create the fundamentals of an ideal
performance. (This is why self-taught violinists, skaters, and
gymnasts rarely reach world-class level and why self-taught
* It's also a lot more fun--a point not lost on Fernando, the twenty-something son of
Emilio Miranda, the professor of soccer at the University of S�o Paolo. Fernando went
to college in Virginia and came back mystified by the coach's role in the game. "In
America, everyone is yelling all the time. Telling the kids, `Shoot the ball, pass the ball!'
I once saw a kid wearing a shirt that said `THERE ARE NO EASY DAYS.'" Fernando
made a confused face. "No easy days, when you're ten? The play should be easy, fun,
nice. To be so serious is not good."
The Teaching Circuit: A Blueprint 195
novelists, comedians, and soccer players do all the time.) The
universal rule remains the same: good coaching supports the
desired circuit. The passive Brazilian coach and the highly in-
volved Suzuki teacher only seem to use different methods;
when we look closer, we see that their goal is the same as that
of John Wooden or Mary Epperson or any other master
coach: to get inside the deep-practice zone, to maximize the
firings that grow the right myelin for the task, and ultimately
to move closer toward the day that every coach desires, when
the students become their own teachers.
"If it's a choice between me telling them to do it, or them
figuring it out, I'll take the second option every time,"
Lansdorp said. "You've got to make the kid an independent
thinker, a problem-solver. I don't need to see them every day,
for chrissake. You can't keep breast-feeding them all the time.
The point is, they've got to figure things out for themselves."