In his book “Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are" (1), Professor Robert Plomin, a leading behavioural geneticist who works at King's College in London shares the conclusion of his lifetime scientific research. He demonstrates that genetics is the primary factor that predicts our psychology or school performance. It appears as a revolutionary finding in the Nature vs Nurture debate. His work is obviously controversial as it could lead to an upheaval in the fields of treating mental disease, psychology and educational sciences. Not to mention all the dystopic political projects that could use these findings wrongly as a ground for giving some “intelligent groups” the absolute power over “less intelligent” ones, living or yet to be born.
Pr. Plomin states that genetics predicts for 50% of the educational performance. In his view, among other factors that are usually considered as environmental, such as the education of the parents or the number of books at home, many result also from a genetic dimension as they are linked to the parents’ own heritage. According to his research, education, though important, contributes less to performance than genetics.
Other significant discoveries have already been made about the role of genes in different personality traits such as emotional intelligence or risk taking. Behavioural genetic or psychogenetic has also studied leadership. In 2013 a team of Researchers (Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Slava Mikhaylov, Christopher T. Dawes, Nicholas A. Christakis & James H. Fowler) published their discovery of a specific genetic marker that has a significant relationship with the propensity to occupy a leadership role (2).
In a not-so-distant future, cheap genetic testing for intelligence and propensity to leadership may be available. There is little doubt that some HR professionals will want to use them as part of their process of recruiting, promoting or identifying “high potentials”. These professionals would most likely consider it as the natural and modern extension of psychometrics already in use by corporations. Corporate training and coaching could also be adjusted to the genetic potential of each individual. Welcome in Gattaca! (3)
From an ethical stand, this would be highly problematic, to say the least. From a purely technical perspective, it would also be questionable.
Management, talent development & coaching as leveraging the “epigenetic of talents”
First of all, just because an individual has a particular variation in their DNA doesn’t mean that they will necessarily display the characteristics associated with it. Most often, there is not one gene involved but a combination of many genes, which result in a span of probability for demonstrating a specific character or disease.
Most genetic discoveries show the contribution of a specific gene or sequence to the psychological trait, that is to which percentage genetics accounts for. Environment is also an explaining factor to be taken into account, even if in some cases a minority one. Therefore, as epigenetic shows, a change in the environment, lifestyle, diet or experiences doesn’t change the genetics but may impact the regulation or activation of the gene expression.
Thus, we can argue that even if the environment contributes for a moderate part to some personal traits such as intelligence, there is definitely a leverage effect that can be activated by acting upon the environment - or by training and developing activities. In this process, it is fair to say that a small difference makes a big difference.
The Pygmalion & the Golem Effects
Coaching, just as management by empowerment is about enabling each one to reach their full potential, and beyond! Knowing their genetics heritage could deprive individuals from developing or reaching their potential as it would create a psychological glass ceiling.
As Harvard professor Robert Rosenthal showed in an experiment back in 1964, that became very famous, the teacher’s expectation can influence a student performance. In an elementary school South of San Francisco, Rosenthal had all kids from all classes take a regular IQ test. He covered up the test and presented it to the teachers as a new test, which was predictive of the kids’ growth in their IQ. He then picked children at random in all classes and told their teachers that these kids had a higher potential and were destined to succeed. After several months the kids for whom the teachers had greater expectations had indeed increased their IQ more than the others from the “control group”. One of the explanations given was that the teachers had adjusted their attention and interaction to this group of “high potential” children.
The same self-fulling prophecy also applies to management.
Two mirroring processes are at stake. A manager’s opinion in an individual’s capacity may impact the individual’s own opinion about their ability and self-worth. Likewise, a team member’s level of self-confidence may lead to their manager perceiving them as "limited" or “made for success”. This is a subtle intertwined dynamics that has impact on performance.
The negative corollary of the positive Rosenthal or Pygmalion effect is the Golem effect, when lower expectations placed upon individuals either by the managers, or the individual themselves, lead to poorer performance.
Thus, the quality of the relation between manager and their teams will impair or boost performance. Between coach and coachee, the relation mode and its underlying beliefs are at the core of their work together. In both contexts, raising self-confidence and expectations, setting challenging while attainable goals may lead to increasing success and performance.
Coaching & Talent development as Nurture, in line with or against Nature
As a conclusion for this article, we might soon be facing a choice that seems dichotomous, both in terms of process and ethics.
The first approach is to consider the latest scientific discovery of behavioural genetics as an opportunity for HR and management to be even more relevant and performant. In our opinion, this would be a pretty limited approach :
The risk is great from a technical perspective. New discoveries are often incomplete and carry many biases. The propension to rely mostly on “scientific” results would lead to isolate some factors from a much complex reality.
Moreover, it will be pretty difficult to know what would be really relevant to measure. For instance, intelligence could have different definitions depending on situations & stakes. The question is even more complex in an uncertain and ever-changing environment.
A major pitfall would be putting people in pigeon holes, and so doing, capping their potential development and performance.
Lastly and before all, this approach would raise major ethical problems.
The second approach is to focus first and foremost on the individuals’ potential for growth and development. It is based on creating the best conditions for stretching their current abilities.
Human genius, its development and evolution cannot be reduced to genetics. Even when heritage constitutes a dominant factor, environment has its role. Nurture also shapes Nature.
Believing in people and offering them the best environment, opportunities, experiences, training, support and feed-back will boost their development and also their level of performance. Whatever their genetic heritage, it is about activating the best in them.
From ancient wisdom, we know that part of personal and professional development may include experiences and roles where people do not march to the beat of their own drum. Just as for actors, it will sometimes result in the best play and the best stretch for them. To this extent, there are times when coaching goes “against Nature”.
The emerging field of behavioural epigenetic reveals how environment impacts the genes and their expression. In the future, it may become an important scientific ground for identifying the best conditions for development.
Focusing on people’s development rather than categorising them in a definite way is not a less scientific approach. However it seems much preferable in terms of ethics.
2 Born to lead? A twin design and genetic association (Article in ScienceDirect®)
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