Building Extraordinary Talent: the Mother and Father of Luis Miguel

“Es que no sabes lo que tu me haces sentir… “Debajo de la Mesa, Luis Miguel”.

The development of talent has always been a key element for success. The Cravath Model was created on the basis of an effective up-or-out system where young talent was developed using the apprentice method in an intensive on-the-job dynamic. An observation of how lawyers and firms have reacted to this challenge shows three different methods for the development of talent:

1. (a) In the past, many partners in firms thought that talent actually developed like natural flowers in the field with little active dedication. The “sink-or-swim” concept assumed that the best talent actually shone when it was left on its own to survive, since that would actually indicate the distinctive capacity of a certain professional. This strategy hid the limited interest of many lawyers to dedicate time and effort to this critical goal. Although more modern approaches consider this a weak strategy or attitude towards talent development, the difficulty of lawyers to value long-term efforts still produces cases of little or poor dedication to talent development as an active job within the firm. I would call this the “Absent Coach”.
2. (b) A somewhat opposite style to the Absent Coach would be the “Harsh Coach” method, which espouses that only extreme discipline and exhaustive effort will finally produce excellence and great talent. Some excellent lawyers have used an extremely harsh and sometimes abusive way of working with younger associates and partners. This style is extremely critical and hardly accepts any mistakes. Accomplishments are not celebrated very much and punishments are always hard and sometimes humiliating. The stress is high and difficult to cope with.
3. (c) The “Friend Coach” takes a radically different approach. This method prioritizes the relationship over the performance and therefore finds difficult to add value to the younger professional. Being nice, sometimes extremely nice, hinders many times the need to be honest and critical. This method avoids difficult conversations, tends to flatter -sometimes excessively- and overlooks faults and mistakes.

As you can see from the above, none of these approaches, in its pure format, is very helpful in developing talent. This is especially acute when you have to deal with people of extraordinary talent. Those stars -or potential stars- who look like raw diamonds ready to be turned into valuable jewelry need a certain environment, motivation and incentives to produce and grow to its highest potential. But what is the best environment and best coach model to develop extraordinary talent? Once again, I will use an example from outside our legal industry: the case of Luis Miguel, the extraordinary Mexican singer.

The fascinating Netflix series “Luis Miguel” shows the terrible drama of Luis Miguel in dealing with his father and the sad loss of his mother. But underneath the family drama that dominates the series, there are some interesting lessons about how extraordinary talent can be built.

Several people with whom I have discussed the series have the opinion that, despite the terribly abusive -almost criminal- personality of his father, he was the main influence in getting Luis Miguel to such a level of fame and quality. On one hand, it is difficult to sympathize with this interpretation since being abusive and mean can hardly be a good way to develop talent. But the truth is that extraordinary performance happens many times in extremely demanding circumstances, when our abilities and forces are stretched to the limit. In the case of Luis Miguel´s father, though pursuing only his personal interest -with little care for his son´s health and well-being- he also was stretching his son´s talent to its limit, with demands way above those normal for kids of his age. Just to clarify, I am certainly against what the father did. He typifies what a bad and abusive father would look like. But somehow, in this unhealthy environment Luis Miguel´s incredible talent started to appear.

This situation reminded me of a similar case in which I commented in another article about talent, which is the one of the movie “Whiplash”. There, an abusive and demanding drum teacher tries to get his pupils to their highest level of performance through extreme practices and humiliating exchanges. Initially, through stress and fear he obtains some exceptional results. But in the end the system collapsed since relationships, confidence and self-esteem were broken due to consistent disrespect and lack of human bonding. It ended up as a failure. So what was the difference between the case of Luis Miguel and Wiplash, with similar cases of abuse, but where one ended in failure and the other in one of the most resounding musical successes in the last decades in Latin America? I think it was the mother of Luis Miguel.

Part of the drama in this story is that Luis Miguel´s mother was left out almost completely from Luis Miguel´s musical career. The father wanted to control completely that process, and the mother -who had a beautiful relationship with her son- was a threat. That fight ultimately resulted in the total separation between Luis Miguel and his mother, the biggest tragedy in the story. But unlike the father, the mother was a beautiful person and loving mother. In every opportunity she had, she gave caring protection to this child who has suddenly been required to assume obligations way above his age. And here is where the mother´s contributions appear. While the father was demanding and abusive, with a constant humiliating attitude, the mother was supportive and caring. Her unconditional love gave Luis Miguel the level of self-esteem that he needed to bear with his father´s abuse and, ultimately, the courage to face up to him and split from him. Unconditional love is about being valuable despite your results and successes. That is what builds self-esteem. That is what good mothers do.

So being an outstanding coach that can build extraordinary talent will require after all some sort of merge or blending between the father and the mother of Luis Miguel, being both demanding and supportive, requiring high results and providing self-esteem, all mixed in a special alchemy that works as a strong combustion for developing extraordinary talent. It is also some sort of combination from the three types of coaching methods I described above.

The development of talent is probably one of the biggest contributions you can give to your firm and your people. If you do it consistently and relentlessly, you might find one day that one of your young talents look back at you with grateful eyes saying how important you have been in his/her professional career and that you have made him/her feel really special -like in the Luis Miguel song-. In that precise moment, apparently insignificant, -and more than with any Chambers or Legal 500 ranking, or juicy profitable returns-, you will be building the firm of the future. The firm of your dreams.