Mattering through Mastery: Learning from the Masters
Nov 14 Written By Isaac Prilleltensky
Mattering is about feeling valued and adding value. By adding value we mean making a contribution, helping others, or otherwise improving a situation. In our upcoming book, How People Matter: Why it Affects Health, Happiness, Love, Work, and Society (Cambridge University Press), Ora and I elaborate on ways to add value. One way to learn how to add value is to observe what exemplary people do.
People who add value, to themselves and others, make five kinds of commitments. We call them the five T’s:
1. Tenacity: Persevering and following through
2. Time: Dedicating thousands of hours
3. Thought: Concentrating and creating mental representations of the subject matter
4. Training: Practicing to reach stretch goals and acquire skills with a coach
5. Trust: Believing in yourself, your mentors, and the process
We have seen in Matan, our son, many of the attributes that experts display on their way to excellence. Matan is passionate about chess. He pushes himself all the time to be a better player and a better coach. This is no passing fad. He started playing chess when he was eight years old, 25 years ago. He has built an amazing library of chess books, invested thousands of hours studying, working with a coach, playing in tournaments, taking students to tournaments, and building a fantastic coaching program that has benefited hundreds of kids, including many champions. He has also won some pretty amazing competitions himself and has achieved the ranking of national master. A hobby turned into a passion, into an occupation, into a calling, into a way of personal development and helping kids develop their potential. All this resulted in a very successful chess academy.
Let’s explore the five commitments that Matan and other masters have made in areas as diverse as chess, community activism, music, or science.
Tenacity. This depends on two things: passion and perseverance. Passion is the devotion to one thing you are fascinated by. It is a goal you must conquer. People who want to get better at something consistently show a passion for it, be it swimming, spelling, music, or social justice. They want to make a difference in their capacities and often in the world as well. This is how Angela Duckworth put it in her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance:
What ripens passion is the conviction that your work matters….It is therefore imperative that you identify your work as both personally interesting and, at the same time, integrally connected to the well-being of others….exemplars of grit invariably tell me, ‘My work is important—both to me and to others.
People who want to get better at something consistently show a passion for it, be it swimming, spelling, music, or social justice. They want to make a difference in their capacities and often in the world as well. Social justice advocates often display this kind of passion. That was the case with civil rights activists Ella Baker and Rosa Parks, or disability rights activist Judith Heumann.
Time. Anders Ericsson, an expert on expertise, showed in definitive terms the impact of practice in his book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. He proved the common refrain that practice makes perfect. In a study of gifted violinists at the best music academy in Germany, he divided the students into three groups based on performance: good, better, and best. The first group had practiced an average of 3,420 hours by the time they turned eighteen. The second had practiced an average of 5,301, and the third and best group had practiced an average of 7,410 hours. The amount of time spent practicing was the distinguishing factor among all the gifted players who were admitted into the prestigious academy. According to Ericsson, no matter which area of study—music, dance, sports, competitive games, or anything else with objective measures of performance—you find that the top performers have devoted a tremendous amount of time to developing their abilities.
Thought. There is no doubt that people who achieve greatness in diverse fields stretch their mental capacities through focus and concentration. Chess grand master and philosopher Johnathan Rowson discusses at length the topic of concentration in his new book The Moves that Matter. For Rowson,
Concentration is about building an alliance between parts of ourselves for whatever purposes we are caught up in. We succeed in concentrating when we manage to convene the dispositions that matter; for instance our awareness, attention, discernment and willpower, and then the assorted emotions that co-arise and come along for the ride, like fear, anger, determination, joy and hope.
Rowson claims that two experiences confer satisfaction to the chess player: competence and concentration. We can definitely see this in Beth Harmon, the main protagonist in the popular series The Queen’s Gambit.
Training. The evidence demonstrates that to improve your skills you must set ambitious goals. You must push yourself beyond your comfort zone, and you must work with a coach. The latter is essential because you need to learn from someone who has already mastered the skill you are trying to acquire. To develop your skills, you must get specific feedback on what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong.
The best way to train, Ericsson claims, is through deliberate practice. This is a type of training defined by very specific goals that are just beyond your current abilities. It is a methodic approach guided by a coach who can design a detailed plan for improving particular aspects of your performance. Our son Matan employs the Dutch Steps Program to coach his chess students. It is highly structured and builds gradually students’ mastery of chess.
Trust. To master a skill, to make a difference in yourself and others, you must have trust in your abilities, in the process, and in your mentors. Two psychology professors at Stanford University, working independently, made major contributions to our understanding of what it means to trust your abilities. The first, Albert Bandura, demonstrated the powerful impact of believing in yourself. He called this trait self-efficacy. Self-efficacy has been shown to affect your physical and mental health, your work, your relationships, educational progress, life satisfaction, conscientiousness, and optimism.
The second famous Stanford psychologist is Carol Dweck. Through the concept of mindset, she showed that children and adults with a growth mindset approach success and failure much differently from those with a fixed mindset. The former believe that they can develop skills and talents through hard work, help from mentors, training and strategies. The latter, in turn, believe that talent is fixed and innate. The former group approaches failure with a learning attitude; whereas the latter do so with a judgmental attitude. Having a growth mindset is essential for learning because it basically means that learners trust their ability to develop their talents.
In summary, people who devote themselves to mattering through self-improvement and devotion to a cause display some common traits. They push beyond the limits of their present abilities. They wish to transcend expectations for what is the best possible state of affairs, for themselves or others. They invest thousands of hours in training, focus on their goals, engage in deliberate practice, show tenacity, and trust themselves and the process. Of course, not everyone grows up in conditions that prepare them to add value in exemplary ways. This is why we must pay attention not only to distributive justice but to contributive justice as well. We must value not only those who rise to the top of their vocation, but everyone. As Michael Sandel notes in his new book The Tyranny of Merit, we must recognize the dignity of everyone’s work, not just those who enjoy fame and recognition. We should learn from those who use their talents to make sure that everyone’s talents are recognized and nurtured.
Isaac Prilleltensky is an award-winning scholar and practitioner. He currently serves as Vice Provost for Institutional Culture at the University of Miami, where he holds the Mautner Endowed Chair in Community Well-Being. He is the former Dean of the School of Education and Human Development. He is also a coach and a humor writer. For more information visit www.professorisaac.com