Television shows promising to distinguish " incredible talents ", virtuoso artists and other little geniuses of cooking, decoration or style ; fiction series featuring competition to attract a talented sportsman or actress to his stable; directorates dedicated to talent management in companies ; Human resources, coaching, consulting companies that put forward the detection, training and development of " talent " as their first commercial argument...
There is no doubt that talent is an object of contemporary fascination. But what is talent, anyway? Between (limiting ?) beliefs and attempts at objectification, mythologies and sociology, collective fantasy and individual ambition , what is talent the name of? The editorial staff of the EVE web magazine has put the concept under the microscope.
Weight in the balance
The Latin talentum refers to a unit of mass used between the eighth century BC and the fifth century AD. to measure the weight of things. In concrete terms, it is presented as an amphora whose filling rate indicates a value. This value is used as a reference convertible into silver metal to evaluate the price of goods... But also of humans ! And not only slaves : mercenaries, for example, are valued at the height of their mass-talent.
Of course, it is not their corpulence that is compared in this way but rather what these soldiers weigh, in the figurative sense, who are only driven by the attraction of pay. In other words, since they owe loyalty only to the stock market, these talented men are considered equal to the price to pay for them.
One way ticket for distinction
The higher the talent, the rarer the person worth it! Because talent is a distinctive marker, a seal of singularity , not to say exceptionality. This is the " other " lesson of the famous Parable of the Talents in which a master gives coins to three of his servants.
To the first he gives only one, to the second he gives two, to the third he gives five. The first buries his talent to protect him from the risk of loss and thieving greed, the second invests his two talents and gains two more, the third also invests and earns five more. The master punishes the former for his usual laziness by taking away his only talent in order to give it to the one who already has 10. And he concluded : " To him who has, more will be given, and he will be in abundance ; but he who has nothing will have even what he has taken away." Not really fair !
Because this is how talent goes, which is fundamentally elitist, which does not care about gaps in need, asymmetries of initial wealth, inequalities in the ability to assert one's merit. Talent can be read first and foremost by measuring results. At the risk of giving precedence to the most execrable among us as long as they produce awesomeness ?
Without work, nothing but a dirty habit ?
A risk, yes, except that... Anyone who has been gifted with talent better do something with it! At work, the musician with perfect pitch; at work, the budding writer who has a bit of a pen ; At work, the smart person who has cognitive facilities!
We get to work, because as Georges Brassens said " Without work, talent is nothing but a dirty mania ". Aren't they really irritating, these fumists who don't give a damn by implying that there is one under their feet ; It's just that they're too lazy to put the pedal to the metal but one day, we'll see what we'll see ? To the point that by dint of making the implicit promise of their (very) talent hidden under a thick layer of cossardise, we begin to doubt : what if it was a sham ?
This vision of talent as a gift that requires assiduous work is certainly imbued with morality : there is indecency in the fact of " wasting one's talent ", of not " cultivating one's assets", of " letting one's potential sleep". The entire Protestant work ethic, which strongly permeates our economic and social visions, obliges everyone to do their best with what they have and can do to produce. But this morality is contrary to the idleness of an aristocracy that defends its distinctive superior spirit all the more because it sees the rise of the " bourgeois " model, perceived as sinisterly laborious, desolately accounting, pathetically utilitarian.
The aristocracy of the " Talents "
In which the finger is pointed out to a tension intrinsic to the notion of talent : we want him to be both humbly hard-working and fundamentally aristocrat. So let's look at what aristocracy means : it is a caste, an elite, a self-containment, it is a way of being (testifying in particular to a seemingly almost innate, or at least deeply rooted, mastery of soft-skills), it is also a philosophy of existence inherited from Aristotle according to which the best must govern. It remains to be defined who the best are.
For Aristotle, they are the most virtuous, i.e. the individuals capable of achieving happiness while taking others into account; and there is nothing to indicate that the heirs possess the qualities of their ancestors... Leibniz went in the same direction, expecting members of the aristocracy to be wise first, but also experts.
Talent must be legitimized by knowledge. To which Montesquieu adds the quality of moderation, especially with regard to power, the exercise of which is in fact granted to those who belong to a small minority that distinguishes itself.
In summary, talent is defined as an individual ambition projected into a consideration of one's environment and it is expressed in an ability to produce intelligence and creation through questioning, questioning and measurement.
But isn't that what we learn in the great schools of power (political, economic, artistic, etc.)? A priori, yes ! Except that the oligarchic and reproductive functioning that would be theirs would corrupt the very objective: by creating " Heirs ", according to Bourdieu's word, these training institutions would make those who would be above all well-born familiar with the codes and the pretenders who conform to them pass off as talents.
Detecting talent or forging talent ?
Thus, the notion of talent detection is harshly criticized by a whole sociological current concerned with inequalities and their perpetuation. The search for the best, as it is practiced, consciously or not, by established selection systems or by minds accustomed to recognizing what is seen as an exception, would be presided over by criteria riddled with bias.
Among these biases, there are some that can be very immediately objectified, such as taking into account the diploma or passing through spaces of socialization and/or experimentation reputed to be " good schools " (a social environment to which a " good education " is attributed, a personal career that is supposed to testify to a temperament and/or to have led to the development of certain qualities, Professional experiences that are considered both as guarantees of quality – " not everyone can enter the company..." – and as formative adventures during which the diamond talent will have been able to chisel himself).
Other biases in the exercise of talent detection can act as a screen in a less palpable way: for example, the ease of expressing oneself can give the impression of sophisticated thinking while being clear ; the skills used in the exercise of manipulation can be seen as empathy and creativity ; the refusal to take sides, under which a lack of commitment could be hidden, presented as moderation...
Still other biases are always more pernicious in that they seem to respond more to subjective expectations: where we let ourselves be seduced by what flatters us (because it resembles us, because it amuses us, because it awakens our passions...) sincerely believing that they had got their hands on a rare pearl!
So, how do you get out of it? Some defend the culture of companionship to forge talents from a raw material rather than trying to find talent already in circulation.
This professional culture of companionship, which aims to both develop high-precision skills and reveal an authentic human being while training him or her in virtues (ethics, philosophy, personal and relational qualities, etc.), invests a community (a trade, a work group, a network of peers, etc.) with the duty to transmit knowledge and to bring out and then train in the companion his finest singular aptitudes.
In this culture of companionship, there is a golden rule: success comes when the student surpasses the masters. A great inspiration for inclusive management, capable of pushing everyone towards the best of themselves for the benefit of the general interest!
