By Dan Fine, Business Advisor at Hive Business.

As part of my job I have the privilege of meeting new dental practice owners. Each one of their businesses has its own character but there are often many similarities between them, and an interesting pattern has emerged. It’s always during discussions about their competition; a practice gets referenced and my client will go, “Oh, that guy just nails it.” I ask what they mean and initially they tend to list things like:

• Building
• Location
• Demographics

When I push a little further things get a little harder to define, which is understandable. It’s hard to distil the magic and explain why things seem to go right, hard to say how people make the right decisions at the right time and make it look easy. Especially when you’re on the outside looking in. And even though they are not being specific, I get what they mean. I too have been in situations where I’ve felt in awe of someone’s ability, be it on the rugby pitch or in the boardroom. I too have been unable to explain what they did. It’s like they were privy to some higher insight, or were just innately, magically gifted.

It’s easy to feel slightly depressed at that thought. You might conclude that these people just ‘get it’ better than you, and you might want to abandon hope at performing at that level — why put yourself through the disappointment of hoping? Which is kind of right and kind of not. On the one hand some people do have immutable characteristics that lend themselves to certain skill sets. On the other it doesn’t mean they will invest energy into shaping themselves.

This goes back to the question of nature versus nurture, one that I will not try to parse here. But it’s uncontroversial to say that you don’t become the best if you rely on the former. When Jonny Wilkinson was growing up he was the most talented rugby player in every team he played for, but this did not mean he took it easy. He could have, but he did the opposite and his obsessive training was notorious. It paid off in the famous 2003 world cup final thriller.

You could be forgiven for looking at that snapshot of time and thinking, “Oh, that guy just nails it,” and you would be right. But you would miss the information that is useful to you: all those hundreds and thousands of hours of training, hard work and study — they are deeply relevant, and every one of them paid dividends in the end.

Other notable examples that spring to mind are Jim (Mad Dog / Warrior Monk) Mattis, the retired US Marine Corps general and current secretary of defense, who has never been surprised on the battlefield because he reads more in a year than an average person reads in a lifetime; and Bill Belichick, the sombre-faced American football coach who obsessively watched tape recordings of games early in his career and is now the greatest coach of all time.

The curse of talent is well known to psychologists, and it’s overrated as a contributor to success. Gifted children get high grades without learning about grit and determination, and so rather than becoming the best as adults they develop a deficit in resilience, storing up problems for the future. Studies of expert performances in many fields have found that so-called innate ability is immaterial. The single greatest predictor is how many hours you devote to the activity. The hard yards make the difference because they enable you to develop the skills you need to become successful. Slow and steady wins the race.

So next time you find yourself observing an enviable practice, remember that its polished aura isn’t just down to its nature (building, location, demographics), it’s also down to the energy and effort of its leader. In every single case, it is the combination of these things that makes for apparently effortless performance.

Find out more by calling 01872 300232 or email us at hello@hivebusiness.co.uk.