When I was growing up, many people, including my parents and teachers, would tell me that I was talented. Imagine a little blonde girl with chubby cheeks learning how to paint miraculous pictures, encouraged by the fact that skills were naturally passed down to her.

Now imagine the same girl, a couple of years later, learning how to read complicated novels, driven not by talent, but acquiring it from hard work. Many parents don’t know if they should raise their child to highlight their specialities, or to show them what they can improve in. This is important not only for child development, but also for the sake of working in the adult world.

Many employers conclude that having talented people will help drive their companies to remarkable places. Granted that this can be true in some areas, such as artists, it is not the best quality to have in an employee. According to research done by Michigan State University, once talent has maxed out on IQ, hard work that practices in the same field surpasses it in skilled development. In an article written by columnist and feature writer, Matthew Syed, "Talent is a phenomenon and does not provide a shortcut for success unless ‘we have resilience, grit and what is sometimes called a growth mindset.'"

Stepping back and taking a look at the bigger pictures helps shed some light on the decision ahead for bosses. The studies all add up to almost the same factor of what qualities a worker should possess. Hard work is more important in the workforce since talented people usually have a fixed mindset rather than one that evolves. Talent has proven to fall short when it applies to their studies, and lastly, hard working employees have shown more success when it comes down to stressful challenges in their field.

Why is a growth mindset of the utmost significance? The answer relies on one thing only, and that is development. A person with a fixed mindset shows no potential progress since most were told that their skill surpasses others. On the other hand, a person who has a growth mindset was always told that they can achieve more. This helped them become more resilient in perfecting themselves through practice.

David Hambrick, a psychology professor at Michigan State University, once expressed, “Research in recent decades has shown that a big part of the answer is simply practice — and a lot of it.” Many would agree with this simple statement, but actions speak louder than words. Hambrick conducted a study that showed musicians who were told that they had talent practiced less, and performed in lackluster qualities compared to people who were told they could essentially do better. He explained that the talented subjects fell just short of perfection, only because they were told that they were already there.

The ability to grow is only there if the subject knows that there is room to. The talented obviously thrived in the beginning while the hard working newcomers were dull and low in numbers. After following the graph for harder challenges, the talented subjects hit a level where the development stopped and leveled out. The hard workers otherwise, caught up to the same level and exceeded them. Famous NBA basketball player, Kevin Durant, once acknowledged, “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” So on the next hiring session you acquire, please keep in consideration that not every naturally gifted person will push to make your company even better.

Many people question why businesses can’t have the best of both worlds. In a fantasy, every worker is not only talented, but strives to be the best. Now flip back to reality and only a small percentage truly has the ability to dominate both full throttle.

Work hard and I promise you will thrive.