Hype Alert: Peyton Manning's Magical Powers
 Subscribe to the Three Star Leadership Blog |
| The Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. |
| Follow me on Twitter |
| For weekly tips and resources pointers, check Wally's Three Star Leadership Letter |
| Find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention. |
| Find out more about Wally's coaching services. |
 |
I was listening to ESPN's Sports Center this morning while I was working out. They did a piece on Peyton Manning. They said he had "hypermnesia."
I'd never heard the word before and I thought they might be making it up. So when I got back to my desk I checked on MedicineNet. There was the word, defined as "Abnormally strong memory of the past."
My first reaction was to the definition. What else would you have a memory of besides the past?
My second reaction was to the ESPN piece. It said, in my words, that the reason Peyton Manning was able to improvise so effectively in a game was that he had (drum roll, please) hypermnesia.
To which I say: Bullsh*t.
Why, oh why, can't hard, focused work, coupled with talent be enough? Why must we anoint the most successful among us with magical powers, in this case the biggest brain in the NFL if ESPN is to be believed.
Let's consider Peyton's life story. He has probably been playing football since he could hold one.
His father is Archie Manning, quarterback and football star at Ole Miss and with the then-hapless New Orleans Saints. His younger brother is Eli Manning, quarterback for the New York Giants. His older brother, Cooper, had a promising football career cut short by spinal disease.
Do you think Peyton might have picked up some knowledge in conversation with his father and brothers along the way? Do you think he learned anything from all the coaching he received and the hundreds of games and practices? Or is it that hypermnesia thing?
One of the blessings of my life is that I've been able to spend a chunk of time with people who loved their work and were very good at it. Peyton Manning looks like one of them to me. I can tell you something about them.
They're usually not the brightest people in their field. They're bright enough. But they have three characteristics that their brighter peers often lack.
Top achievers are starters. They usually don't sit around thinking about getting ready to make a plan to prepare for a committee meeting. They swing into action and learn as they go.
Top achievers are finishers. They don't just start books, they finish them. They don't just do experiments, they write up journal articles about the results. They don't just plan. They implement and adjust.
Top achievers are hard, focused workers. They work hard at getting better. After doing that for a while, they seem to develop two specific thinking patterns.
Top achievers develop superb pattern recognition for their field. Chess Grand Masters are the classic example.
Chess playing computer programs choose the next move by analyzing every possible move and the odds of success. Grand Masters note the pattern on the board and compare it to patterns they've seen before.
Top achievers love the minute details of their field. The great poet, Robert Frost, was asked by a student, if he really cared about all that meter and rhyme and form stuff. Frost leaned forward and growled, "I revel in them."
Peyton Manning seems more to me like Gary Kasparov or Robert Frost than he does like some freak of nature. Sure he's smart. You can't do what he does without being smart. He's got some great physical skills. But so does every other professional football player.
If you want to know why Peyton Manning is great, don't look at the size of his brain. Look at his hard, focused work habits.
Boss's Bottom Line
If you want to be a great boss, don't pine for some magical, mystical talent. Instead make the most of learning on the job. And help your team members develop their work habits so they can be great, too.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Categories: Personal Development
Tags: Personal Development
Peyton Manning's background reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's birth luck and 10,000 hours in Outliers.
Reply to this
Those are surely relevant references, Miki. Thanks for reminding us of them.
When I was growing up in New York City, I played basketball every chance I could get and in every season of the year. I remember clearing snow off a court so we could play. That was common.
In those days coaches discovered that city kids really played well compared to suburban kids and coaches like Al McGuire, Don Haskins, and George Ireland starting mining the inner cities for prospects. I'm convinced that the reason New York ballplayers of that era looked so good is that we only played basketball and we played it all the time. You can get really good with that much playing time. Suburban kids, mostly, had lots of other things to do and other sports to play, but we played basketball and got very good at it.
Reply to this
Exactly, Wally. As Gladwell points out, luck and accidents of time and place play a large role in success. What they don't do is the heavy lifting of taking advantage of them; that is up to the individual.
Said another way, opportunity knocks, but you still have to expend the effort to open the door and walk through it—usually not as simple or easy as it sounds.
Reply to this
Thanks, Miki. One of my take-aways from Outliers is that people want to credit good fortune even less than they want to credit hard work for any success.
Reply to this
You can apply this logic to every area of life. It really does go to show you that people have a hard time with good old hard work. Peyton has worked at this game his whole life. He knows the patterns just like the Chess Masters.
Reply to this
Thanks for stopping by and adding to the conversation, Susan.
Reply to this
I love how our culture changes normal people into prodigies. Yes, Payton Manning is very gifted at football and his family is also very gifted at the sport; however, it appears once again that our culture chalks it up to genetics. This fixed intelligence appears to be common knowledge to the world. They just assume that it’s in the genes or runs in the family. However, this apparent stigma is wrong. Wally Like you said Peyton was a top achiever and this is the reason he is known as one of the top quarterbacks in the league. I find it humorous that most people don’t catch on; they apparently have never read any of Carol S. Dweck’s research.
Reply to this
Thanks for sharing that, Kelsey. Dweck's research is only part of it. There are certainly genetics at work here, mostly, I suspect involving eye-hand coordination. But there's a lot of preparation and practice, all harnessed to a disciplined preparation process.
Reply to this
I admire the way you tell it like it is, Wally. The common characteristics you listed require individual personal strength and commitment - available to anyone willing to pay the price. What sets the high achievers in any field apart is their willingness to do the hard things that others won't do.
Reply to this
Thanks for those kind words, Meredith. Talent and opportunity are definitely factors in success, but, as you point out, the top performers are hard and disciplined workers.
Reply to this
I also heard about that in ESPN's Sports Center. They did a piece on Peyton Manning and about his "hypermnesia."
Seems funny to me.
Reply to this