How to make it to the NHL: Be born in January
If you haven't read the original Outliers work by Malcolm Gladwell, it's interesting. Professional hockey players are overwhelmingly born in January, February, and March. How come?
- Most NHL players are originally from Canada. Canadian youth hockey leagues use a January 1 birth-date cutoff.
- A child born in January is nearly a full year older than a teammate born in December of the same calendar year. At age 8 or 9, a 10-to-11-month age gap means the January-born player is often bigger, stronger, and more coordinated.
- Coaches mistake physical maturity for superior talent, giving older kids more attention and feedback. They get access to elite travel teams, better coaching, and more practice time.
- The pattern compounds over time. The skill and opportunity gap between the January birthdays and and the December birthdays gets more pronounced every year.
You're probably not a professional hockey player (yet?), but the outlier effect is, right now, playing out in your workplace too.
I could make you a star ⭐️
Many years ago, I noticed something about myself as a manager: My natural instinct is to give some people much more feedback than others.
In my very first management gig, I had a team of four people. Three people were assigned to me, and I hired one new person myself. They all led important areas, but the new person, whom I hired for their particular skills, led our biggest bet. He was not the most tenured person on our team, but I assigned him the most strategic work anyway. In my estimation, he was the most likely to succeed with it.
I allocated the same 1-1 time to everyone on the team, but my meetings with him went deeper than the rest. Because his work was so important, I spent more of my personal brainpower on his project than anyone else's. So I was more likely to send him new ideas after hours and we were more likely to disagree and discuss.
I thought about his project all the time, so I had more chance to observe his work than anyone else's. Because we had a limited time window to make the project successful, we exchanged feedback candidly, openly, and quickly. Six months after he joined the team, I promoted him. He deserved it. He had grown by leaps and bounds.
It's not that I ignored his teammates. I diligently reviewed their work and met with them every week. I fulfilled my job description. But I gave the superstar more, and he delivered more too.
Which came first, the coaching or the superstar?
I gave my superstar more feedback because he delivered more. But he also delivered more because I gave him more feedback. Much like Malcolm Gladwell's hockey coaches, I spotted talent and I invested in that talent. In so doing, I inadvertently widened the performance gap between my highest performer and everyone else.
On the other hand, there's more to high performance than talent alone. One reason it was easy to invest in my superstar is that he wanted investment. Not just with words, but with behavior.
The superstar both gave and received candid feedback. He used the feedback to improve. He brought a non-defensive growth mindset to every interaction, which made it easy to give even highly critical feedback. This meant that he heard my honest take by default, which made it easier for him to improve and grow.
Contrast this with someone who responds to feedback defensively. When feedback conversations are hard, most managers avoid them. This is not admirable, but it is human. And of course this pattern compounds over time. When a manager doesn't offer small feedback during day-to-day work, things pile up. The feedback becomes Feedback. I have never one time seen this movie end well.
The bottom line: People become outliers at work in part because they get more investment. One reason they get more investment is that they are more coachable.
You can't control all the other reasons that some people get more investment: their skills, the projects available, your manager's biases. But you can control how coachable you are. In the right environment, that will turn you into an outlier.
Kieran
If you liked this story, why not subscribe to nerd processor and get the back issues? If you want to build high-performing and connected teams, why not try these three activities for your next team meeting?
My latest data stories | Build like a founder | nerdprocessor.com