Rishi Sriram, an associate professor of higher education and student affairs, gave a speech to college students regarding the “5 M’s” of talent: mindset, myelin, mastery, motivation and mentorship.
Sriram connects learning to one’s efforts to attain mastery. In order to master something, one must practice. In a study of prestigious violinists, there was an undeniable positive relationship between practice and mastery, which suggests that talent is something anyone can grow.
“In the history of the universe, friends, we have never found one person, not one, who we admired for their talent, that didn’t put in thousands of hours of practice,” Sriram said.
When learning new things, there are two possible approaches. Challenges can be embraced with a growth mindset, or avoided with a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset can result in unmotivation, a critical approach to mentorship, fear of mastery and inability to form the myelin, which speeds up neural signals, necessary for building talent. A growth mindset, however, fosters the opposite: motivation, positive response to feedback, building skills and developing myelin.
“Mindsets create a personal framework in individuals that affects their goal orientations, effort attributions, and, ultimately, their behavior,” said Sriram in his 2014 study.
The things that motivate an individual involve passion, calling, agency and ignition. Sriram said the mindset people have about motivations, specifically strengths and weaknesses, makes a difference in performance. Strengths result in feeling stronger and energized, whereas weaknesses do the opposite. Properly addressing strengths and weaknesses allows utilizing time for growing in the right areas.
“It’s all about what motivates you to actually do the hard work needed for the development of talent,” said Sriram.
Mentorship also plays a key role in the development of talent. Sriram spoke about the difference between a mediocre teacher and a great teacher. The two differences are an obsession with performance and specific feedback. He also said that a good mentor is not defined by what they teach, but by what their pupil learns.
Baylor University lecturer Emily Iazzetti said for her as a teacher, mentorship was the most important role she played in the lives of her students. Iazzetti said she had never “considered how involved mentorship was in talent before,” and that she had only begun looking into a growth mindset when she became a parent.
There is a psychological aspect to learning talents, however it is also biological. Sriram said that when learning, the brain is growing myelin, which makes brain signals faster and stronger. People recognized for their talents had exceptional amounts of myelin in brain regions associated with their skills. In other regions, however, they had no more than the average person, which means everyone has room to grow in talent.