Personnel managers often ignore a truth about human nature known to any mother who's had more than one kid: People are not the same.

Children of the same parents, raised in the same home, with the same rules and routines, emerge with dramatically different personalities. One is her own attorney, able to perfectly construct compelling arguments for buying a cell phone or going to a friend's party. Her brother is off the charts in math and able to retain everything in history class without taking a single note. Their younger brother is athletic and ambidextrous.

Parents scratch their heads at the variety within their own offspring and conclude that each is "his own person" or "one of a kind." Most moms and dads trace their children's talents and interests to unique hints that first appeared in the child's earliest years.

Contrast these common observations with a strange piece of audio left on the CD "Yanni Live at the Acropolis." Standing at the center of the Herodian Amphitheater, surrounded by a full orchestra that had just finished playing one of his songs, John Yanni Christopher philosophizes: "Everything great that has ever happened to humanity has begun as a single thought in someone's mind. And if any one of us is capable of such a great thought, then all of us have the same capability, because we're all the same." The audience applauds loudly.

Choosing the right side of the argument is crucial for managers. If Yanni is right, companies shouldn't worry about matching the right person with the right job. Instead, they can invest heavily in molding people into the kinds of employees they need in specific roles. If Mom is right, all the re-education and incentives in the world won't make a numbers person into a wordsmith or convert an introvert into someone who excels in making cold calls.

A wealth of research says that Mom is right, and Yanni is wrong.

Doing what you do best

The ramifications of matching a person to what he or she naturally does best are so profound that this aspect of work life emerged as the Third Element of Great Managing, one of 12 elements that best predict the performance of an employee or team. This element is measured by one's intensity of agreeing with the statement, "At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day." (See sidebar "The 12 Elements of Great Managing.)

In many circles today, the idea that a person has a unique combination of talents may seem like common sense. But for many decades, the opposite view held sway in psychology, and vestiges of these discredited theories lie at the heart of human resources strategies in some companies.

Although he may not realize it, Yanni's opinion of human potential has its roots in a psychological approach called behaviorism, which was accepted wisdom from the early to mid 1900s. Its chief proponents argued that an individual's personality is simply the sum of adaptations he made to match his environment. Under this theory, people are infinitely malleable, each a collection of Pavlovian drooling responses to the world's dinner bells. "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select -- doctor, lawyer, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors," wrote American psychologist John B. Watson.

More frequently than one might imagine, companies hesitate to put too much emphasis on any one person's abilities or accomplishments for fear others will feel hurt or left out. "There's a lot of 'Harrison Bergeron' thinking around here," one personnel executive confides, referring to the 1961 short story by Kurt Vonnegut that begins: "The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal." The story describes a future in which government "handicappers" snuff out all forms of exceptional performance. "Nobody was any smarter than anyone else," it says. "Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else."

But people are different. We certainly recognize it in sports, where the physical differences that correlate with success can't be ignored. Basketball players must practice for years to refine their games, condition their bodies to perform, and train their reflexes to hit a three-point jump shot. Yet none of this is sufficient by itself to make it into the National Basketball Association, where the average player is over 6-foot-7, compared with the average American man's height of 5-foot-9½. Does anyone doubt that, in addition to years of coaching and practice, Houston Rockets' star Yao Ming owes much of his success to being 7 feet, 6 inches tall?

"You can't coach height," says the old bromide. Pro basketball players are first born, then made.

Copyright Ó 2006 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted with permission.  Visit The Gallup Management Journal at http://gmj.gallup.com/

Article from The Gallup Management Journal