Ep 673: Seeing Skills Differently: Lessons from Elite Sports

Have you ever wondered how an elite baseball player can track a 95-mile-per-hour fastball and actually connect? Or how a Premier League footballer can deliver a perfect pass over half the pitch to a moving teammate? The way elite athletes develop their attributes and build skills has big lessons for how we need to think about talent and hiring in the workplace.

We've been discussing skills-based hiring and skills-based organizations for a while now. As the need for skills agility grows, we must deepen our understanding of the attributes, skills, and potential to make better hiring decisions.

One area that uses cutting-edge science to do this is elite sport. My guest this week is Dr. Daniel Laby, a Sports Vision Ophthalmologist who works with elite athletes and top baseball teams, including the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox.

This is a really fascinating discussion with some important lessons for HR and Talent Acquisition, for example, why we should emphasize future potential over past performance, the importance of recognizing that sometimes there is a specific order in which skills need to be developed, and why average can sometimes be mistaken for best in skills assessment.

In the interview, we discuss:

How do you improve elite performance?

Working with Red Bull and Trent Alexander-Arnold

A common misconception about vision

The importance of specific attributes in specific sports

Nature, nurture and brain plasticity

The skills pyramid

How small changes make a big difference

The role of technology

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A full transcript will appear here shortly