Talent: Talent-based education system (Post #3 of 4)

This is Post # 3 from a Series of 4 Posts

Previous post in the series: Talent: Determining Talent (Post #2 of 4)

The need of the hour is an Education System that focuses on the Talent!. For this, the system should do the following;

1. Identify talents in the students, early on.
2. Explain the student's talent to the student's parents first and get them onboard with the concept of talent and how it helps in the future.
3. Determine ways to nurture and develop the student's inborn talents.
4. Determine and provide the options to move forward (higher education, career etc.)

The student's parents play a pivotal role in the whole process, so they must be involved from the beginning. If the parents are not on board with the idea, it is sure to fail. And, this must be an optional enrollment for the parents. If they are not convinced, there is no point for the teachers to bang their heads against a wall!

Usually, the parents are driven by their own circumstances and this is what they do!

• They aspire on the student's behalf and then 
• they set expectations from the student 

The parents do this, with all good intentions, without any consideration to whether they can actually achieve the goals or not, leave alone whether the student will actually feel successful later on. While it may work for the parents initially, it is the student who pays the price for the choices (education, career etc) at a later point in time.

On the other hand, if the student's talents are identified and honed upfront, the student, the parent, and the teachers make an informed decision regarding the student's career choices in the years ahead. This way the student is motivated to build a relevant skill-set and will always enjoy their profession and their careers, whatever that may be.

After talking to many people about education and career choices, young and the old, I have discovered that career choices are made based on the following;

1. Salary offered by the career choice (highest possible starting salaries of course!),
2. Opportunity to grow as quickly as possible (salary again and designation!), 
3. Opportunity to travel and possibly relocate to a more promising city or country, and last but not necessarily the least,
4. Fancy office environment!

When Talent is the core objective of the education system, all the points mentioned above are rendered meaningless. Today, opportunities are many and a candidate can look forward to earning a decent income by being an accountant, an artist, a photographer, a social media analyst or for that matter anything else as far as it revolves around the candidate's core strengths or talent.

When people pick jobs revolving around their inborn talents, they don't just work to get by, they work to excel. Mastery and excellence are keys to motivation first and success later.

Identifying one's talent(s) can happen at any stage in one's career. If you are already working in a company and are not too satisfied with what you are doing, then it may be a right time to go back to the drawing board and start looking closer at your core strengths, think about what you enjoy doing and then make a plan for your career transformation. [My book titled Deconstructing Career Success will help lay the foundation in your endeavor. (Indian buyers click here, International buyers click here)]

My next post (and the last one in the series) revolves around the philosophy that "Lacking talent for a job does not always guarantee failure". Here I will discuss a situation when an individual does not possess adequate levels of talent but has already made a career choice.

Next post in the series: Talent: Overcoming the lack of Talent! (Post #4 of 4)

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