meaning of talent essay

Essay on Talent

Students are often asked to write an essay on Talent in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Talent

Understanding talent.

Talent refers to a special ability or skill that someone has, making them exceptional in a specific area. It’s often natural, something you’re born with, but it can also be nurtured.

The Importance of Talent

Talent is vital because it can lead to great success. Talented people often excel in their fields, like sports, arts, or academics. However, talent alone isn’t enough; it needs practice and hard work.

Developing Talent

To develop your talent, you need to identify it first. Then, with consistent practice and dedication, your talent can grow. Remember, everyone has a unique talent, so never compare yours with others.

Also check:

Paragraph on Talent
Speech on Talent

250 Words Essay on Talent

The concept of talent.

Talent, a term often used to describe natural aptitude or skill, is a complex concept that extends beyond the simplicity of inherent potential. It is a blend of inherent abilities, nurtured skills, and the environment that shapes an individual’s growth.

The Nature and Nurture of Talent

The nature versus nurture debate plays a significant role in understanding talent. While some individuals are born with certain predispositions, these innate abilities must be nurtured and honed through consistent practice and learning. The environment, therefore, is as crucial as genetic predisposition in talent development, as it provides opportunities for the talent to be nurtured.

Talent and Success

Talent alone does not guarantee success. The correlation between talent and success is often misunderstood. Success is a function of various factors, including hard work, resilience, and perseverance. Talent can provide a head-start, but it is the grit and determination that carry an individual to the finish line.

The Role of Society in Talent Recognition

Society plays a vital role in recognizing and nurturing talent. It can foster an environment that allows talent to thrive or hinder its growth through restrictive norms and expectations. Therefore, society’s role is integral in creating a nurturing environment that encourages talent development.

In conclusion, talent is a multifaceted concept that intertwines nature, nurture, personal effort, and societal influence. It is not merely a birthright, but a potential that is cultivated and developed over time. Success, therefore, lies not just in recognizing talent, but in nurturing and persevering it.

500 Words Essay on Talent

Introduction to talent.

Talent refers to the natural aptitude or skill one possesses. It is an inherent ability that makes individuals excel in particular areas without significant effort. Talent is often viewed as a unique gift, setting individuals apart and allowing them to accomplish tasks more efficiently and creatively than others.

The Nature vs. Nurture Debate in Talent

The genesis of talent has been a subject of extensive debate. The nature versus nurture argument questions whether talent is an innate quality or if it can be cultivated through exposure and practice. In the realm of nature, talent is perceived as a genetic gift, inherited from our ancestors. However, the nurture perspective argues that any individual, given the right environment and dedication, can develop talent.

Recent research suggests a more nuanced approach, indicating that talent is likely a combination of both genetic predisposition and environmental factors. Genetic predispositions may set the stage, but environmental factors such as education, culture, and experiences play a crucial role in shaping and honing talent.

The Role of Passion and Persistence

While talent is undoubtedly valuable, it is not the sole determinant of success. Passion and persistence often play a more significant role. Passion fuels the drive to improve and persist, even in the face of adversity. It is the force that pushes individuals to practice and refine their skills, turning raw talent into mastery.

Persistence, on the other hand, is the ability to maintain the effort despite setbacks and failures. It is often the distinguishing factor between those who merely possess talent and those who actualize it. A talented individual who lacks persistence may easily give up when faced with challenges, while a less talented but more persistent individual might overcome obstacles and achieve success.

Talent and Society

Societal recognition and appreciation of talent vary widely. In some societies, specific talents, such as athletic or musical abilities, are highly valued and rewarded. In others, talents like empathy, communication, or problem-solving may be more prized.

The societal perception of talent can influence individual development. If a society values and nurtures certain talents, individuals with those talents are more likely to succeed. Conversely, talents that are undervalued may go unrecognized and underdeveloped.

Conclusion: The Dynamic Nature of Talent

In conclusion, talent is a complex, multifaceted concept. It is not merely an inherent gift but a dynamic interplay of genetics, environment, passion, and persistence. Recognizing this complexity can help us move beyond simplistic notions of talent as a fixed, inborn trait. Instead, we can view talent as a starting point—a raw material that can be shaped, cultivated, and refined through effort and experience. This perspective empowers us to take an active role in developing our talents and, ultimately, in shaping our destinies.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Happy studying!

Talent Matters Even More than People Think

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

If anything, it’s still underrated.

Why are some people more successful than others? Leaving aside luck, which equates to confessing that we don’t really know, there are really just two explanations: talent and effort. Talent concerns the abilities, skills, and expertise that determine what a person can do. Effort concerns the degree to which the person deploys their talents.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is the Chief Innovation Officer at ManpowerGroup, a professor of business psychology at University College London and at Columbia University, co-founder of deepersignals.com , and an associate at Harvard’s Entrepreneurial Finance Lab. He is the author of Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (and How to Fix It ) , upon which his TEDx talk was based. His latest book is I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique. Find him at www.drtomas.com . drtcp

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A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’

A reading of Eliot’s classic essay by Dr Oliver Tearle

‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ was first published in 1919 in the literary magazine The Egoist . It was published in two parts, in the September and December issues. The essay was written by a young American poet named T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), who had been living in London for the last few years, and who had published his first volume of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations , in 1917. You can read ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ here .

‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919) sees Eliot defending the role of tradition in helping new writers to be modern. This is one of the central paradoxes of Eliot’s writing – indeed, of much modernism – that in order to move forward it often looks to the past, even more directly and more pointedly than previous poets had.

This theory of tradition also highlights Eliot’s anti-Romanticism. Unlike the Romantics’ idea of original creation and inspiration, Eliot’s concept of tradition foregrounds how important older writers are to contemporary writers: Homer and Dante are Eliot’s contemporaries because they inform his work as much as those alive in the twentieth century do.

James Joyce looked back to ancient Greek myth (the story of Odysseus) for his novel set in modern Dublin, Ulysses (1922). Ezra Pound often looked back to the troubadours and poets of the Middle Ages. H. D.’s Imagist poetry was steeped in Greek references and ideas. As Eliot puts it, ‘Some one said: “The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.” Precisely, and they are that which we know.’

In short, knowledge of writers of the past makes contemporary writers both part of that tradition and part of the contemporary scene. Eliot’s own poetry, for instance, is simultaneously in the tradition of Homer and Dante and the work of a modern poet, and it is because of his debt to Homer and Dante that he is both modern and traditional.

If this sounds like a paradox, consider how Shakespeare is often considered both a ‘timeless’ poet (‘Not of an age, but for all time’, as his friend Ben Jonson said) whose work is constantly being reinvented, but is also understood in the context of Elizabethan and Jacobean social and political attitudes.

Similarly, in using Dante in his own poetry, Eliot at once makes Dante ‘modern’ and contemporary, and himself – by association – part of the wider poetic tradition.

Eliot’s essay goes on to champion impersonality over personality. That is, the poet’s personality does not matter, as it’s the poetry that s/he produces that is important. Famously, he observes: ‘Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.’

This is more or less a direct riposte to William Wordsworth’s statement (in the ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads in 1800) that ‘ poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings ’. Once again, Eliot sets himself apart from such a Romantic notion of poetry. This is in keeping with his earlier argument about the importance of tradition: the poet’s personality does not matter, only how their work responds to, and fits into, the poetic tradition.

‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ is a major work in Eliot’s prose writings, and perhaps his most famous essay. The argument he puts forward (summarised above) is perhaps surprising given modernism’s association with radical departures from artistic norms and traditions. As a modernist, Eliot might be expected to reject the great ‘canon’ or tradition of poetry that had gone before him.

But no: poetry, including Eliot’s own and that of his fellow modernists, derives its distinctiveness – and even its newness – from engaging with what earlier poets have done. Indeed, it is by drawing on the work of earlier writers and, as it were, standing on the shoulders of literary giants that a new poet asserts their own voice among the crowd.

And this is why Eliot’s other key argument in ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ is relevant. The poet should not seek to be ‘original’ by disregarding tradition altogether, but by looking for minimal ways in which they can alter what has gone before and create something slightly different and fresh. And the poet should forget about expressing an individual ‘personality’ for the same reason: a poet should be plugged into the common shared tradition of poetry rather than thinking they are working alone.

Eliot’s example of Homer is pertinent here: we know nothing of the poet who wrote The Odyssey for certain, but we don’t need to. The Odyssey itself is what matters, not the man (or men – or woman!) who wrote it. Poetry should be timeless and universal, transcending the circumstances out of which it grew, and transcending the poet’s own generation and lifetime. (Eliot’s argument raises an interesting question: can self-evidently personal poetry – e.g. by confessional poets like Sylvia Plath, or Romantics like Wordsworth – not also be timeless and universal? Evidently it can, as these poets’ works have outlived the poets who wrote them.)

For Eliot, the more mature the poet, the more his mind is able to synthesise various influences and emotions to produce something varied and complex. These influences and emotions are worked into great poetry by the self: it is inaccurate to view Eliot’s essay as a critical rejection of ‘self’ altogether. If anything, he is arguing that great poetry is forged in the deeper self, rather than the surface ‘personality’ of the poet.

We might also bear in mind that Eliot knew that great poets often incorporated part of themselves into their work – he would do it himself, so that, although it would be naive to read The Waste Land as being ‘about’ Eliot’s failed marriage to his first wife, we can nevertheless see aspects of his marriage informing the poem.

And in ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’, Eliot would acknowledge that the poet of poets, Shakespeare, must have done such a thing: the Bard ‘was occupied with the struggle – which alone constitutes life for a poet – to transmute his personal and private agonies into something rich and strange, something universal and impersonal’.

For Eliot, great poets turn personal experience into impersonal poetry, but this nevertheless means that their poetry often stems from the personal. It is the poet’s task to transmute personal feelings into something more universal. Eliot is rather vague about how a poet is to do this – leaving others to ponder it at length.

Lyndall Gordon observes a curious paradox regarding Eliot in this regard, in her biography of Eliot, The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot . She points out that although Eliot claimed that drama was less personal than poetry, the cover of drama actually gave Eliot the freedom to expose his private crises. We might extend such an idea to the earlier work, too, and see a character like J. Alfred Prufrock, not as a stand-in for young Eliot per se , but as a Laforgue -inspired mask which Eliot could adopt in order to transmute private attitudes or emotions into something more universal. In other words, Eliot knew that the best way he could plumb the depths of his own emotions and experiences was by speaking as someone else. As Oscar Wilde said, ‘Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth.’

About T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) is regarded as one of the most important and influential poets of the twentieth century, with poems like ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1915), The Waste Land (1922), and ‘The Hollow Men’ (1925) assuring him a place in the ‘canon’ of modernist poetry.

Modernist poets often embraced free verse, but Eliot had a more guarded view, believing that all good poetry had the ‘ghost’ of a metre behind the lines. Even in his most famous poems we can often detect the rhythms of iambic pentameter – that quintessentially English verse line – and in other respects, such as his respect for the literary tradition, Eliot is a more ‘conservative’ poet than a radical.

Nevertheless, his poetry changed the landscape of Anglophone poetry for good. Born in St Louis, Missouri in 1888, Eliot studied at Harvard and Oxford before abandoning his postgraduate studies at Oxford because he preferred the exciting literary society of London. He met a fellow American expatriate, Ezra Pound, who had already published several volumes of poetry, and Pound helped to get Eliot’s work into print. Although his first collection, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), sold modestly (its print run of 500 copies would take five years to sell out), the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, with its picture of a post-war Europe in spiritual crisis, established him as one of the most important literary figures of his day.

He never returned to America (except to visit as a lecturer), but became an official British citizen in 1927, the same year he was confirmed into the Church of England. His last major achievement as a poet was Four Quartets (1935-42), which reflect his turn to Anglicanism. In his later years he attempted to reform English verse drama with plays like Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He died in London in 1965.

Continue to explore Eliot’s work with our short summary of Eliot’s life , our introduction to his poem The Waste Land , our exploration of what makes his poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ so ground-breaking , and our pick of the best biographies and critical studies of Eliot . If you’re studying poetry, we recommend these five helpful guides for the poetry student .

Below is a short video written and presented by Tearle, which introduces a few of the key themes of Eliot’s most famous poem, The Waste Land . It explores how Eliot’s poem puts his theory of ‘tradition’ into action through using lines from Shakespeare and classical antiquity.

Image: T. S. Eliot (picture credit: Ellie Koczela), Wikimedia Commons .

5 thoughts on “A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’”

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A very interesting piece analyzing Elliot’s thoughts about poetry. Thank you.

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Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on April 30, 2020 • ( 1 )

T.S. Eliot’s essay Tradition and the Individual Talent was first published as an anonymous piece in The Egoist , a London literary review, in September and December 1919 and subsequently included by Eliot in his first collection of essays, The Sacred Wood, published in 1920. That it continues to exert a genuine influence on thought regarding the interrelationship among literary classics, individual artists, and the nature of the creative imagination, is a comment on its value. In any case, Eliot was able to let loose in this comparatively short essay—it runs to little more than 3,000 words—packing virtually every sentence with pronouncements that, in any other context of presentation, might have required far more elaboration and persuasive defense.

Despite these genuine virtues and the essay’s deserved renown, Tradition and the Individual Talent is rather loosely, perhaps even haphazardly constructed and is worthy of consideration far more for the power of its suggestiveness than for the precision of its organization. In essence, the essay proposes a series of key concepts that would subsequently become germane, for one thing, to readings of Eliot’s own poetry and that would also eventually become the root if not the immediate source for major critical approaches with regard to modernism in general and the methodology of New Criticism in particular. In addition to exploring the question of the relationship between the tradition—that is, works already preexisting in a national or even multicultural body of literature—and any one poet in particular (that is, “the individual talent”), Eliot also delves into and, so, makes pronouncements on the relationship between the poet as a person and the poet as a creative intellect.

He comments as well, finally, on how much or how greatly a work of literature ought to be regarded as giving expression to the personality of the poet, giving birth to the impersonal theory of poetry. Coming relatively hard upon the poetry of the English romantics, the longest-lived of whom, William Wordsworth , had been dead nearly 70 years by 1919 and whose subjective, expressive approach toward the writing of poetry still wielded excessive sway over both the composition and the reading of poetry, Eliot’s efforts to found in principle in what would later become known as the impersonal school of poetry can hardly be scanted or overlooked. While his essay may not have initiated the powerful reaction to romanticism that is now thought of as literary modernism, the essay certainly gave that movement voice and a clear agenda.

In keeping with an analytical approach, Eliot structures his central argument around various issues of separation. Specifically, and as will be examined in more detail shortly, there is the matter of the quality and degree of the separation that may or may not exist between the body of past literature, or the created tradition, and the individual living poet creating within the tradition’s most current or ongoing moment. Eliot also considers the degree and quality of separation necessary between that living poet as a fully rounded person (what he calls—perhaps a bit too colorfully—the “man who suffers”) and those aspects of that individual’s intellectual choices and other selective processes that result in the making of an actual work of literature (what he calls the “mind which creates”). Finally, Eliot takes into consideration the degree and quality of separation that is necessary between, on the one hand, the artist as an individual whose utterances may be thought to express a personality and, on the other hand, the semblance of personality that is, or can be, expressed in the work without any need for reference to the author’s own personality.

As may be apparent, there is some considerable overlap and confusion of terms here, as well as some overlap between matters that involve the act of writing—actions that involve the creation of a text—and the act of reading, which, because it is a process that involves the reception of a preexisting text, is a quite different approach. Nevertheless, the essay’s central premise, as well as its continuing critical value, is, in essence, Eliot’s argument that the creative process is an impersonal process, despite the tendencies of many readers to persist in identifying the speaker of a poem with the poet. Keeping this central premise in mind ought to demystify many of Eliot’s pronouncements on similar subjects.

The Living Talent and the Tradition

Eliot begins his presentation by directly addressing the essay’s ostensible topic, the relationship between tradition and the individual talent. What may seem to be the most obvious point in his opening argument is certainly the most salient, that the tradition is at any one time a completed whole that comprises all of the preceding creative endeavor out of which the individual author creates a new work. Tradition, then, is a continuum, and this point is one of the essay’s more daring stances. It may seem by now to stand to reason that the living practitioners of any one discipline add to and, so, shape and alter the accumulated store of their predecessors’ efforts—that, in other words, these past efforts live in a present that is continuously transforming itself into new efforts that then themselves become the efforts of the past, and so on.

Though such a position may sound reasonable and justified, Eliot’s taking that position, as his feeling the need to defend it to his readers should readily attest, flew in the face of the conventional wisdom to that time and that had been in place virtually from the beginnings of the European Renaissance. According to that wisdom, the ancients, meaning the classical writers of Greece and of Rome— Homer, Sophocles, Seneca, Virgil, Ovid , and others—were giants who towered over their puny modern descendants, who consequently characterized themselves as pygmies.

In that older way of casting the debate, the moderns, although by no means capable of being better or wiser than their ancient forbears, still had the advantage of being able to build on and improve such models as those ancients had left behind. Indeed, the term classic, in addition to connoting excellence in its field, implies a representative prototype within the particular genre or kind of work— epic, drama, lyric poem, and so forth. To complete the metaphor, if the ancients were giants and the moderns pygmies, those pygmies could nevertheless stand on the shoulders of the ancients and, in that way—but that way only—surpass them.

Eliot comes out firmly against any notion of couching the tradition in terms of a conflict and competition between the old and the new, the past and the present. In sharp contrast to this older idea of a combative relationship among long dead and living traditions and long dead and living artists, Eliot, who shortly before writing the essay now being considered had visited the underground caverns in southern France where cave drawings that were tens of thousands of years old had recently been discovered, could talk of a mind of Europe that had discarded nothing of its virtually timeless creative traditions along the way, as if there were in fact neither any seam nor any conflict separating the present from the past, the ancients from the moderns, or one work of art from another. Rather, there was only that constant stream of statement and restatement, adjusting and altering and coming back upon itself as each new voice is added to, and adds to, the mix. So, then, Eliot asserts that poets cannot write after the age of 25 unless they have developed what he calls the historical sense, that being a sense not of the pastness of the past, as he puts it, but of its presence.

It is at this point that Eliot’s argument takes a sudden, or at least unanticipated, turn by suggesting that the more perfect they are, the more artists express not their own personal lives and points of view so much as contribute to that living stream of creative endeavor. This abrupt turn makes much logical sense, however. Having just redefined the nature of tradition, one half of his title, Eliot is now obligated to define what he means by the individual talent, the other half.

What is talent management?

One glowing light man raising his hand among other people

In good times, it can be easy to take your company’s talent for granted. But do so at your peril—investing in talent management, or the way that your organization attracts, retains, and develops its employees (sometimes referred to as “talent” or “human capital”) can give your company an edge. Look no further than the much-discussed “ Great Resignation ,” also called the “Great Attrition” or “Big Quit,” of 2021 and its impact. Putting people first is vital to building a healthy workforce.

Get to know and directly engage with senior McKinsey experts on talent management.

Fabian Billing is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Düsseldorf office, and Aaron De Smet is a senior partner in the New Jersey office.

It’s important to manage talent and deploy it well, and leaders need to know how to rise to the occasion. To help shape workforces that have the skills to achieve, leaders can establish a talent-first culture . Too many organizations don’t consider the talent required to implement different ideas. By putting talent first, companies can improve organizational performance and potentially gain a competitive advantage.

Why is talent management important?

Analysis shows there is a significant relationship between effective talent management and an organization’s overall performance . In fact, in a 2018 McKinsey survey, 99 percent of respondents who reported their company’s talent management was very effective said they outperform their competitors, compared with 56 percent of all other respondents. And the effects may be cumulative, given that abilities to attract and retain talent seem to support outperformance as well.

What actions are linked to good talent management?

Survey findings indicate three practices that are most closely linked with effective talent management:

rapid allocation of talent—that is, being able to move people among strategic projects quickly as priorities emerge and fade
HR’s involvement in creating a positive employee experience
a strategically minded HR team

According to the research, organizations with all three practices in place (only 17 percent of the sample) are vastly more likely than their peers to say that overall performance, plus total shareholder returns, has an edge on their competition.

What’s involved in talent management?

Five areas of talent management are particularly important to the chief human resource officer’s (CHRO) playbook:

finding and hiring the right people
learning and growing
managing and rewarding performance
tailoring the employee experience
optimizing workforce planning and strategy

A more in-depth look at these topics can offer insights.

How do I find and hire the right people or attract and retain talent?

High-performing employees are up to eight times more productive than others. To quote the late Steve Jobs, the iconic leader of Apple, talent matters: “Go after the cream of the cream. A small team of A-plus players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.”

That may be easier said than done. But there are still several principles to consider if you want to hire the best people and keep them at your organization:

Focus on the 5 percent of employees who deliver 95 percent of the value. Certain employees have a disproportionate impact on creating or protecting value, and it’s not always obvious who they are. Focus efforts on the few critical areas where the best people have the biggest impact. To do so, start by looking at roles , not processes or specific people.
Make your offer magnetic, and ensure that you deliver on its promise. You might have heard of an “employee value proposition,” which is another way of saying what employees get (for example, monetary rewards, work experience) for what they give (for example, time, effort, ideas). Your company’s employee value proposition should be distinctive, targeted, and real.
Technology is a game changer. Data and analytics are already being used in recruiting and hiring, as well as in retaining top talent. Apply people analytics to bring rigor to these efforts.

In the era of the Great Resignation, many organizations are grappling with the prospect (or reality) of talented employees quitting their jobs . Companies should take a step back and make sure they understand why their employees are leaving in the first place—since it could help inform what might bring them back. What drove the historic wave of voluntary departures in the early 2020s? Several big reasons stand out: the cost of switching jobs went down significantly; employees were turned off by uncaring leaders , unrealistic performance expectations, and a limited ability to advance their careers; and many workers were exhausted and dealing with burnout , stress , caregiving demands , and more.

To repair relationships with employees amid the Great Resignation , a few core principles may be meaningful:

Money matters, even if it’s not a panacea; companies can revise compensation and benefits in ways that will attract and retain disillusioned employees.
“Sticky” workplaces can make a difference—listen to employees, anticipate and address their concerns, foster psychological safety and community, and measure outcomes.
Expand your talent pool by thinking more creatively about candidates. That includes considering nontraditional workers (such as students or people currently doing contract work), latent workers, or people who aren’t in the workforce or actively seeking a traditional job.

How can organizations help talent learn and grow?

Companies preparing for the future of work can take a variety of steps to help employees build skills and continue learning and growing—this is vital, especially considering that hiring new workers can be twice as expensive as upskilling or reskilling existing employees.

Building workforce skills , via training and reskilling or upskilling, will be essential to support new ways of working and new business priorities. And focusing on skills—particularly social and emotional skills (sometimes called soft skills), including empathy, leadership , and adaptability —can help close existing skill gaps.

You might be wondering about the difference in hard skills versus soft skills. Hard skills are learned abilities that are easy to measure. Soft skills , on the other hand, are nontechnical skills and abilities, such as personality traits and behaviors, that often relate to how a person interacts with others. For example, consider what might help an administrative assistant succeed: hard skills that might be useful include calendar management, proofreading, and competency with spreadsheet software, whereas soft skills might include phone etiquette, conflict-resolution abilities, and discretion.

When it comes to a broad skill transformation , nine key practices in three overarching areas can be applied.

Scout: Conduct workforce planning to assess potential skill gaps

assess demand and/or the need for specific skills in the future
determine the current supply of specific skills
analyze gaps (and develop a business case to close them)

Shape: Develop a skill strategy to ensure that the workforce is future-ready

design a portfolio of initiatives to close skill gaps
design tailored learning journeys and delivery plans for specific roles and/or groups of employees
decide on learning infrastructure and enablers

Shift: Reimagine infrastructure for skilling at scale

launch a “skilling hub” or other organizational structure dedicated to learning
deliver a skill transformation at scale across the organization via comprehensive capability-building programs that address the most critical skill needs
implement dynamic tracking of workforce and impact (for example, return on investment, impact on business outcomes)

Organizations that have implemented all nine practices report a nearly 100 percent chance of having a successful skill transformation. It’s also important to note that a mix of learning formats, beyond digital learning, can improve the odds of success.

Circular, white maze filled with white semicircles.

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Transforming the learning and development function may also be necessary. While good learning programs are a must, their utility will be limited if they don’t begin with an intimate understanding of what the organization needs — today and in the future.

Within the learning space, intentional learning can yield a career advantage. And if you want to get intentional when it comes to your own learning, the 3x3x3 approach can help. Here’s what it entails:

Define three development goals (for example, improve time management, expand professional network, and hone presentation skills).
Aim to achieve them in a three-month period.
Engage three other people to support you and hold you accountable to them.

Embracing continuous learning can help drive your business forward, and employees that develop a lifelong learning mindset may find that it keeps them relevant and in demand in the eyes of employers. Developing a growth mindset and setting goals that are a stretch can be part of that journey.

Some companies are also exploring apprenticeship programs to unlock continuous skill development. Modern apprenticeship is a model for learning that is driven by relationships and based on real day-to-day work, thus allowing novices to gain hands-on experience from experts to acquire skills and act more independently.

How can I improve performance management?

At a high level, strong performance management relies on the guiding principle that what gets measured gets done. Ideally, an organization would create a cascade of metrics and targets, starting with top strategic objectives and continuing down to frontline employees’ daily activities. Managers keep tabs on these metrics and meet regularly with teams to discuss progress. In the end, good performance is rewarded, and poor performance leads to actions that address the problem.

A few key principles are essential in managing employee performance more successfully:

Coach employees, and do it regularly. There’s no substitute for direct feedback and direct coaching that happens day in and day out rather than just annually.
Make sure the process is seen as fair. What’s crucial here is emphasizing how employees’ work fits into the organization’s bigger picture and ensuring that these conversations are ongoing.
Put data and analytics to use. Data and analytics can support performance reviews by giving managers objective feedback about whether employees are performing well or not.
Empower managers to give better feedback. Make sure built-in touchpoints are in managers’ schedules and that managers are clear about their roles. Train them to give constructive, strengths-based feedback while encouraging discussions that make their colleagues feel valued.
Grasp the power of differentiation. Rewards should link clearly to talent ratings . Focus on rewarding clear overperformers while also developing others—instead of trying to differentiate the broad middle.
Encourage peer-based feedback. Employees naturally work with more people as organizations become flatter. Gathering peer-based feedback from a large sample can help eliminate biases and provide a more accurate, comprehensive perspective on performance.

The way organizations manage and reward performance shifted somewhat in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was because the crisis had a big impact on goals and performance plans, and remote workers also grew more reliant on performance management as a source of feedback.

CHROs who want to help their organizations improve performance management in the postpandemic era can consider linking employee goals to business priorities . At the same time, they will want to keep some flexibility, invest in managers’ coaching skills , and celebrate the broad range of good performance while maintaining ratings for the very highest, and lowest, performers.

What about employee experience?

Companies have long considered customer experience, or CX , but there is rising interest in paying just as much attention to your workers’ experience. Tailoring the employee experience is more important than ever, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which blurred the line between work and life amid remote and hybrid setups. These days, instilling trust, building social cohesion, and leading with purpose are critical. And it can make a big impact: according to a 2020 McKinsey survey, people who report having a positive employee experience have 16 times the engagement level of those with a negative experience. They are also eight times more likely to want to stay at a company.

Nine elements, grouped into three overarching areas, can help make sure you’re asking the right questions to get employee experience right :

People and relationships. Am I seen and treated by my leaders as a significant contributor to the organization?
Teamwork. Do the people I work with every day trust and care for one another enough to create a collaborative and innovative environment?
Social climate. Am I welcome in this community, and do I feel like I belong?
Work organization. Do I have clear responsibilities, interesting work, and the resources I need to succeed in my role?
Work control and flexibility. Do I complete my work efficiently, with flexibility and positive integration in my life?
Growth and rewards. Am I given incentives and opportunities that help me learn, grow, and provide for myself and my family?
Purpose. Does my company have a purpose that aligns with mine, as well as a process to which I can contribute?
Technology. Does my company’s technology enable me to work efficiently and without friction?
Physical environment. Are my surroundings safe, comfortable, and human centered?

If your employee experience isn’t what it should be, your organization can take a systematic approach, grounded in design thinking , to improve it. Three steps can help you on your way: first, establish a baseline for employee experience and build on it; second, identify and transform employee journeys; third, equip the full organization for transforming employee experience.

The idea of finding purpose at work has also risen in importance in the past few years. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread, employees found themselves questioning business as usual. “We had this unbelievable smashing together of two worlds: the home world and the work world,” says McKinsey senior partner Bill Schaninger in an episode of The McKinsey Podcast on the search for purpose at work . “I think it’s really brought to the fore ‘What exactly does work mean to me? What do I have to get out of it? Is it merely a check that facilitates the rest of my life, or is it something more purposeful?’”

Research indicates that about 70 percent of people say they define their purpose through work—which raises the stakes for ensuring that individuals can easily connect what they do in the day to day with meaning. Only 15 percent of frontline managers and frontline employees say they’re currently living their purpose when on the job.

Individuals themselves can take action. And if you’re short on inspiration, you can explore an interactive that unpacks nine universal values (such as enjoyment, stability, and caring) that relate to purpose. Organizations, too, have a role to play in helping people connect their work to their life’s purpose . Here are two places to begin:

Start the conversation on purpose sooner rather than later. People need empathetic, caring leaders to help process their work experiences. Indeed, talking openly about pressures your employees face can go a long way. Consider periodic, guided conversations with direct reports a regular part of your leadership practice—think of these as empathetic check-ins.
Make personal reflection a business priority. Create the time and space for transparent, honest discussion of purpose—with managers and direct reports alike—to explore what matters. If you need help getting started, a simple icebreaker question such as “When do you feel most alive?” can yield surprisingly rich conversation.
Help people take action. Generate opportunities for people to live their purpose by tailoring projects, support, communication, and coaching to suit each individual’s unique circumstances.

How do I optimize workforce planning and strategy?

Workforce planning and strategy generally include three important components:

Critical roles. A small number of roles —fewer than 50—have an outsize impact on business value. You’ll need to look at the core jobs to be done, the qualities leaders need, and ensure that the roles are set up for success.
Skill pools. Looking beyond individual roles to larger pools, such as digital coders, can also help in developing an understanding of the skills required for the future and whether your organization is prepared.
Talent systems. Tools for workforce planning can help in a variety of ways. For instance, AI-enabled tools can be used in assessing people’s skills, and performance-management systems can help track skills alongside performance.

One way to gauge whether your company is long or short on talent is to embrace a view of talent supply that is expansive as well as dynamic. Companies that start by looking at skills, including which ones they need and already have, and how those could change over time, could find good ways to address mismatches.

Analysis of your workforce could show either a shortage or a surplus of skills. The five methods here, with samples of concrete actions to take, could be considered to address challenges:

Build: reskill, upskill, or retrain workers; increase deployable hours; reshape jobs or projects. One global manufacturer spotted opportunities to build data science talent ahead of a looming shortage, and it started by planning more meritocratic career paths and redesigning leadership tracks to help employees stay engaged and happy.
Redeploy: loan workers; shift unneeded skill sets. Deutsche Post, for instance, teamed up with an elder-care provider to test a program that used postal employees as a means of offering one city’s pensioners support and referral services.
Acquire: hire individuals; create and recruit from new talent pools. In 2011, Walmart acquired digital skills en masse when it bought a social-media company that ultimately formed the nucleus of the retailer’s digital-technology unit.
Release: encourage voluntary attrition; divest business units; create options to end contracts. Some companies have experimented with offering voluntary severance packages. These may help organizations strengthen the workforce by allowing less committed workers to exit voluntarily, while at the same time improving retention of other employees.
Rent: for strategic partnerships, outsource functions, activate the gig economy. For instance, in 2015, Mercy Health partnered with community colleges in the US state of Michigan to create a paid apprenticeship program for medical assistants.

If your organization is short on talent, your organization may need to build, acquire, or rent. And if it’s long on talent, redeploying or releasing employees may be the right path.

Longer term, employing a flow-to-work operating model for dynamic talent allocation may help match scarce skills to high-priority work, improve the way organizations develop their people, and increase business responsiveness. Companies that rapidly allocate talent to opportunities are up to twice as likely as those that don’t to perform strongly; they also deliver better results for every dollar spent.

For more in-depth exploration of these topics, see McKinsey’s Insights on People & Organizational Performance . Learn more about McKinsey’s Talent service line —and check out talent-related job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey.

Articles referenced include:

“ Gone for now, or gone for good? How to play the new talent game and win back workers ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 9, 2022, Aaron De Smet , Bonnie Dowling , Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi, and Bill Schaninger
“ Talent at a turning point: How people analytics can help ,” February 24, 2022, Bryan Hancock and Bill Schaninger
“ ‘Great Attrition’ or ‘Great Attraction’? The choice is yours ,” McKinsey Quarterly , September 8, 2021, Aaron De Smet , Bonnie Dowling , Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi, and Bill Schaninger
“ Building workforce skills at scale to thrive during—and after—the COVID-19 crisis ,” April 30, 2021, Fabian Billing , Aaron De Smet , Angelika Reich , and Bill Schaninger
“ Help your employees find purpose—or watch them leave ,” April 5, 2021, Naina Dhingra, Andrew Samo, Bill Schaninger, and Matt Schrimper

Want to know more about talent management?

Talent at a turning point: How people analytics can help

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How to Write the Georgetown “Special Talents” Essay

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by CollegeVine co-founder Vinay Bhaskara in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info.

What’s Covered:

What counts as a talent, crafting your approach.

Georgetown University ’s first supplemental essay prompt asks:

Indicate any special talents or skills you possess. (250 words)

Students often ask how creative they should get with essays like this, or any supplemental essay for that matter. An essay is usually an opportunity to be as creative as you want, although there are some exceptions depending on the nature of the question.

In cases like this where you’re asked to write about a personal skill or talent, students have free reign to be creative with their essay provided that their response aligns with the values of the college or university that they’re applying to.

The word talent can often trip students up. When you read the word “talent,” there’s a tendency to immediately jump into a discussion of your best subject in school or an extracurricular that you’re performing well in. While these can certainly be examples of talents, you’re not restricted to writing about a talent in the traditional sense. In fact, some of the best responses to this prompt are about some of our more intangible talents.

One example is being good at diffusing or navigating conflict. You could write about how you’ve leveraged your sense of humor to calm or disarm others in an incredibly tense situation. Writing about a more intangible talent or soft skill can bring a level of creativity to the essay that traditional topics like academics or extracurricular activities wouldn’t necessarily introduce.

That isn’t to say, however, that you can’t write an impressive essay about the skills or accomplishments demonstrated through your resume. The prompt allows you a lot of flexibility by not qualifying what constitutes a skill or talent, so be sure to pick something meaningful to you that you can write a compelling essay about, whatever your talent may be.

Avoid Recreating Your Resume

As you begin drafting your essay, it’s important not to simply rewrite your resume as an essay. While you can certainly call out specific accomplishments and activities relevant to your talent, the essay is an opportunity to provide context and highlight your personal voice and experiences. Consider showcasing some of the unique non-academic experiences you’ve had that relate back to your talent. For example, perhaps you are a great problem solver and you’ve learned to apply that ability to things like fixing cars or building puzzles.

Incorporate Your Voice

Finally, remember to have fun with your essay! Georgetown’s application includes some pretty serious and heavy questions, and, while it’s important to have a strong and present voice in all of your writing, the first prompt is a particularly good opportunity to have fun and really get creative.

At the end of the day, college essay prompts are indeed meant for you to speak directly to your reader about your interests, but also for you to demonstrate what you would bring to the campus as an individual learner. Therefore, you should focus on crafting a strong personal voice and showing the reader not only your talent, but what your unique experiences and reflections will bring to their community.

Looking for more insight on what makes a successful Georgetown essay? Check out this article for sample essays from real applicants as well as our take on what made each essay successful and what could make them even better!

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Hey all! I'm working on a college essay that asks about my greatest talent or skill, but I'm struggling to figure out how to write about it without sounding too braggy. Do any of you have examples or ideas on how to approach this topic?

Hi there! It's important to strike a balance between showing off your talent or skill and maintaining a humble tone. My suggestion is to focus on telling a story or two about how you discovered your talent or skill, how you've developed it, and how it has impacted your life or the lives of others in a positive way.

By doing this, you'll give the admissions committee an inside look into your personal growth and demonstrate the significance of your talent without coming off as too braggy, as you'll be focusing on your talent's broader significance rather than just your achievements (which, remember, admissions officers will already know about from your activities list).

Here's a general framework you can follow while writing your essay:

1. Introduction - Briefly introduce your talent or skill by telling a compelling story or anecdote related to it.

2. Discovery - Describe how you discovered your talent or skill. Was it through a specific event, a class, or a hobby? Explain your personal connection to it and what motivated you to pursue it further.

3. Development - Explain how you've nurtured your talent or skill over time. Have you taken any courses or attended workshops to improve? What challenges have you faced and how have you overcome them? Your resilience and hard work must be evident here.

4. Impact - Describe how your talent or skill has made a positive impact on your life or the lives of others. Have you used it to help others in some way? Have you participated in competitions, organized events, or collaborated on projects? Have you learned important things about yourself because of this talent? Mention specific examples, and detail the emotions you felt through these experiences.

5. Conclusion - Reflect on the overall importance of your talent or skill in your life and how it has shaped you as a person. Talk about your aspirations for the future and how you plan to continue developing your talent or skill in college and beyond.

Remember that a good essay is more than just a list of accomplishments - it should engage the reader and give them insight into who you are as a person. By following this framework and keeping the focus on your growth and impact, you'll be able to write a powerful essay without sounding braggy.

If you're still not sure if your approach is working, consider checking out CollegeVine's free peer essay review service, or getting a paid review by an expert college admissions advisor on CollegeVine's marketplace. Sometimes, a second set of eyes from someone who doesn't already know you is just the thing that helps you iron out the finer details of your essay.

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CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

Analysis of Tradition and Individual Talent by T.S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot, the writer of Tradition and Individual Talent , is perhaps the greatest English poet, critic, and dramatist of the century. His famous poem, The Wasteland, and his advanced theory of poetry called Imagism.

The most significant of critical essays are anthologized in selected Essays Edited by Frank Kermode. His earlier writings are known for their Motive power to attempt to fuse poetic and critical production. They are the uses of poetry (1933) and on poetry and poets (1957).

Analysis of Tradition and Individual Talent:

This is one of the seminal essays in the Literary criticism of the 20th century. Eliot attempts to relate the art of an individual artist to the tradition of the whole of European Literature. He describes the British tendency of using the term tradition in its deploring sense or as a “phrase of censure.” While attacking contemporary critics for isolating those parts of a creative writer’s work distinctive for the praise, he argues that those same parts of his work may be most derivative of other earlier writers.

The heart of the essay is his definition of tradition , which cannot be inherited; one must strive to acquire a sense of tradition. Then he says it involves Historical significance; Eliot argues:

“The historical sense involves perception not only of the pastness of the past, but its presence, the historical sense compels a man to write not merrily with his generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.”

This is Eliot’s concept of seeing literature as an organic whole. It involves a “sense of the timeless and the temporal,” which he asserts makes a writer genuinely traditional. That is, Eliot insists that an Individual writer will have no meaning “alone,” i.e., No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. He insists on evaluating a work of art by constructing the same with the works of his dead ancestor’s works. He argues that a new work alters and changes the “order” formed by existing works and consequently necessitates alteration and readjustment, i.e., “past should be altered by the present as much as the past directs the present.”

He must be aware that the mind of Europe, the mind of his own country, a mind which he learns in time to be much more important than his private mind, is a mind which changes, and that this change is a development which abandons nothing in route, which does not superannuate either Shakespeare or Homer…….. Based on this argument, he comes to his assertion that.

“The difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show.”

After all, the coming up of a work of art becomes meaningful only when the work is perceived against a literary tradition, i.e., about the past writers. Eliot argues that “it is a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written.” Notice how Eliot builds up a debate between the poetry of the present and the past; this also explains how genuinely good work of art causes a revolution in new alteration and changes in the existing order of works and vice-versa.

Read About: Analysis of Essay “The Function of Criticism at Present Time” by Matthew Arnold

Yet, one can see the point of relevance when Eliot underlines the need to develop a “historical consciousness.” Here we should see how Eliot comes in the line of poet-critics like Arnold, who did categorically declare that one should be studying languages other than one’s own that is “a poet should cross-breed English with the continental and classical tradition.”

For many critics, this essay is a manifesto of impersonality. Writing about the process of creation in the essay, Eliot states:

“What happens is a continual self-surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”

He further adds:

“It remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in this depersonalization that art may be said to approach the condition of science. I, therefore, invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy. This action occurs when a bit of finely foliated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide.”

This is Eliot’s analogy for the role of the poet’s personality in the act of creation. His analogy tries to explain the “chemical process” of creation in which the mind, like a catalyst, accelerates or decelerates the reaction, but it remains unaffected. Similarly, says Eliot;

“It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates, the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.”

For Eliot, the poet’s mind is;

“A receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.”

If a poet has to write with any enduring excellence, he must convert his mind into a receptacle for storing myriad human emotions, numberless feelings, phrases, and images. This is the ground on which, in the creative process, various particles unite to form a compound.

This essay’s significant emphasis is Eliot’s call to “divert interest from the poet to the poetry.”

One can’t afford to ignore Eliot’s emphasis on tradition, the impersonality of art, and his organic view of poetry. His idea of participating in the tradition from Homer to the present day is rooted in its classicism. His appeal for a historical consciousness and his attempts to rehabilitate a literary tradition remains unparalleled. Some still believe that tradition and individual talent are a poet’s version of living Babbitt’s Roseau and Romanticism.

Eliot is to British literary criticism what Einstein is to modern physics in our century. He is easily the most influential poet and critic of the twentieth century in the English-speaking world. Eliot argues that a contemporary writer acquires meaning only in terms of his literary ancestors and tradition with which comparison of his work is inescapable. He sees poetic tradition as a growing continue comprising all the poetry ever written in a given language. He can never be represented by an individual poet or a school of poets. He also challenged Wordsworth’s dictum of ‘spontaneous overflow…tranquillity’. He argued that the poet’s contribution does not lie in the ‘peculiar essence’ of that poet or how he differs from tradition but “that part of his work is important where it is most harmony with the dead poets who preceded him.”

For Eliot, a poet’s work is in “The degree to which he fits into tradition.” His most significant contribution lies in focusing the critic’s attention away from the poet, i.e., upon poetry, not upon a poet. For him, a poet does not express his personality in a poem but uses a medium with an impressive way of uniting myriad experiences and impressions in the most unpredictable ways. Such poets’ experiences may not be crucial in the poet’s life but maybe just marginal experiences.

Critics like M . K. Heiser and W. Allston have shown how a term like “objective correlative” today has become the standard term to denote the expression of complex emotions in art. The other term which has drawn global attention is “dissociation of sensibility.”

Eliot feels that a good critic must have a keen and abiding sensibility and highly discriminated reading; on such critics, even the most potent personalities dominate.

Eliot believes that every age should revalue the literature of the past ages according to its standards. This is what he tried to achieve in his career. He has given a fresh interpretation of Elizabethan dramatist, metaphysical poet the Caroline poets, poets of the eighteenth-century poets and romantics. Describing Eliot’s criticism, Watson says, ‘The formal properties of Eliot’s criticism are clear enough.’

Read About: Analysis of “The Study of Poetry” by Matthew Arnold

T.S. Eliot as Classicist in Literature

Eliot declared himself a classicist in literature and Anglo-Catholic in religion, and a royalist in politics. He is a classicist because he believes in order in literature, faith in the writing system, and that a work of art must conform to the tradition. The new classicists thought that the writer must follow the rules and ancients and that literature must be didactic. In ‘tradition and the individual talent,’ he says the existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for the order to persist after the supervention novelty, the whole existing order must be, altered towards the whole, and this is conformity between old and new.

Pointing out the difference between Eliot and the neo-classicist of the eighteenth-century poetry Maxwell says :

The structure of modern classical poetry is analogous to that of the eighteenth century. Each accepts a poetic framework, and makes a conscious effort to work within that framework. Satirical wit plays a vital role in both, and with it goes a concern for the necessity of cultivating precision of form and word. This requires an intellectual rather than an emotional, intuitive approach to selecting words or relating them to each other and the whole. Yet each of these similarities also involves a difference. Eliot’s system relates his poetry has a greater scope than Augustan classical authority, and it becomes a more vital part of the poetry that depends on it. By its relationship with Eliot’s poetry, the traditional system acquires a new significance, and it becomes a living part of the poetic experience transcribed in the poetry. The tradition clarifies the relation between symbol and object, reducing the need for elaboration and adding a dimension to the poem. Still, it is itself altered by relationship and so shown to be a vital force.

Summing up, despite these shortcomings, Eliot’s reputation as the leading critic of the twentieth century is secure. He made a valuable contribution to the literary criticism. He emphasizes the need for a strict critical method of applying the science of study of literature. He has faith in the draftsman – critic, provided that he possess a highly developed ‘sense of fact.’ There are clarity and severity in his prose style, which all eminent critics admire. He is more successful in judicial criticism than theoretic criticism. He analyzed the works of specific writers with clarity and subtlety. He has a vast influence in the modern age and has influence writers like F.R. Leavis. He has been rightly recognized as the leader of contemporary criticism.

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Analysis of Essay "The Function of Criticism at Present Time" by Matthew Arnold

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Tradition and the Individual Talent

T. s. eliot, everything you need for every book you read..

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on T. S. Eliot's Tradition and the Individual Talent . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Tradition and the Individual Talent: Introduction

Tradition and the individual talent: plot summary, tradition and the individual talent: detailed summary & analysis, tradition and the individual talent: themes, tradition and the individual talent: quotes, tradition and the individual talent: characters, tradition and the individual talent: terms, tradition and the individual talent: symbols, tradition and the individual talent: theme wheel, brief biography of t. s. eliot.

Historical Context of Tradition and the Individual Talent

Other books related to tradition and the individual talent.

Full Title: Tradition and the Individual Talent
When Written: 1919
Where Written: London
When Published: 1919
Literary Period: Modernist Period
Genre: Non-fiction Essay, Literary Criticism
Point of View: First person

Extra Credit for Tradition and the Individual Talent

First Love. While a student at Harvard, Eliot met and fell in love with Emily Hale, whom he never forgot. After his separation from his first wife Vivienne, whom Eliot later commented that he married in order to “burn his boats and commit to staying in England,” Eliot and Emily corresponded with letters. Later, Eliot burned these letters.

Unlikely Friendship. Eliot was good friends with James Joyce, author of Ulysses . Even though Eliot thought Joyce was pompous, and Joyce doubted Eliot’s abilities, the two visited each other in Paris regularly.

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3 Excellent Essays on Talent & Its Importance

Essay on Talent | Meaning & Concept | Why Talent is Important for Success

Talent is defined as a natural aptitude or ability to do something well. It is something that we are born with or develop through practice and experience. Everyone has at least one talent, but some people have more talents than others. Some of the most common talents include singing, dancing, playing an instrument, writing, and painting.

Talent is important because it is the foundation of all success. Without talent, we would not be able to achieve our goals or reach our potential. Talent is what allows us to do something better than others. It is the key to unlocking our full potential and achieving greatness.

>>>> Read Also : ” Essay on Experience is the Best Teacher “

There are many ways to develop talent. One of the best ways is to practice regularly. The more we practice, the better we become at using our talent. Another way to develop talent is to take lessons from someone who is already skilled in that area. This can help us learn faster and improve our skills more quickly.

No matter how talented we are, we will never achieve success if we do not use our talent. We must be willing to work hard and put in the effort to achieve our goals. Talent is only part of the equation; we also need dedication, determination, and perseverance.

Everyone has the potential to be successful in life if they develop their talent and use it to their advantage. It is never too late to start developing your talent. Use your talent to achieve your goals and reach your full potential.

>>>>> Read Also : “Paragraph On an Ideal Student”

Talent is therefore an important aspect of success and should be nurtured and developed to its full potential. With hard work, dedication, and determination, anyone can achieve great things using their talent.

Essay on Talent Management:

Talent management is a term that has gained significant buzz in the world of human resources and organizational development. It refers to an organization’s efforts to attract, develop, and retain talented individuals who can contribute to the company’s success.

In today’s competitive job market, talented employees are highly sought after by organizations. These individuals possess the skills, knowledge, and abilities that are crucial for a company to thrive and stay ahead of the competition.

The first step in talent management is attracting these individuals to join the organization. This involves creating an employer brand that highlights the company’s culture, values, and opportunities for growth. This brand should be authentic and align with the organization’s overall goals and objectives.

Once talented individuals are brought on board, it is essential to develop their skills and potential. This can be done through training programs, mentoring, and providing challenging assignments that allow them to learn and grow. It is crucial for organizations to invest in the development of their employees as it not only benefits the individual but also contributes to the company’s overall success.

Retaining talented individuals is just as important as attracting and developing them. A high turnover rate can be costly for organizations, both financially and in terms of knowledge loss. Offering competitive compensation, a positive work environment, and opportunities for advancement are effective ways to retain talented employees.

Talent management also involves identifying potential leaders within the organization and preparing them for future leadership roles. This succession planning ensures that there is a pipeline of capable individuals ready to take on key positions when needed.

In conclusion, talent management is a crucial aspect of organizational success. It requires a well-defined strategy and continuous effort to attract, develop, and retain talented individuals who can contribute to the company’s growth. By investing in talent management, organizations can build a strong workforce that will drive their success in today’s competitive business environment.

So next time you hear the term “talent management,” you will have a better understanding of its importance in the world of human resources and organizational development. So, keep your eyes open for opportunities to attract, develop and retain talented individuals, because they are the key to a company’s long-term success!

Short Essay on hard work Beats Talent:

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” But what does that really mean? Is it just a catchy slogan or is there truth behind these words?

Let’s break it down. Talent refers to natural aptitude or skill in a particular area. Some people are just born with certain abilities that make them stand out in their chosen field. However, talent alone is not enough to guarantee success. It’s what you do with that talent that truly matters.

On the other hand, hard work is defined as consistent effort and determination towards a goal. It’s the blood, sweat, and tears that go into achieving something great. Hard work requires discipline, perseverance, and grit.

So why is it said that hard work can beat talent? Because without hard work, talent is essentially wasted. It may give someone a head start, but it’s the continuous effort and improvement that truly lead to success. Talent alone can only take you so far.

Take a look at some of the most successful people in the world – whether it be in sports, business, or entertainment. They all have one thing in common – they worked tirelessly to achieve their goals. They put in countless hours of practice, faced failures and setbacks, but never gave up. Their hard work ultimately paid off, surpassing even those with natural talent.

This doesn’t mean that talent is irrelevant or should be disregarded. In fact, combining talent with hard work can yield incredible results. But hard work is the key ingredient, the driving force that propels talent to its full potential.

So if you ever find yourself thinking that someone’s success is solely due to their natural ability, think again. Behind every talented individual lies a story of dedication and hard work. And if you want to achieve greatness, remember that hard work will always be your greatest asset. As Thomas Edison famously said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

In the end, it’s not about being the most talented person in the room. It’s about being the hardest working one. So keep pushing yourself, never give up, and always remember that hard work truly does beat talent. So whether you’re striving to become a top athlete, a successful entrepreneur, or a renowned artist, always remember the power of hard work and let it be your guiding force towards success.

Q: How do I write about my talent?

A: To write about your talent, describe what it is, how you discovered it, your experiences, and how you’ve honed it. Share examples and anecdotes that showcase your talent.

Q: What is talent (short note)?

A: Talent refers to a natural aptitude, skill, or ability that a person possesses in a specific area. It can be developed and honed to achieve excellence in that particular field.

Q: What is a talent speech?

A: A talent speech typically involves discussing a person’s unique skills, abilities, or achievements, highlighting their talent and what makes it special or significant.

Q: What is talent and its importance?

A: Talent is a natural aptitude or skill that individuals possess. It’s important because it can lead to personal fulfillment, career success, and contribute to society. Developing and using one’s talents can lead to a more rewarding and purposeful life.

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Tradition and the Individual Talent

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Analysis: “Tradition and the Individual Talent”

“Tradition and the Individual Talent” is regarded as one of the most influential literary essays of the 20th century. Its persuasive, confident tone invites the reader to reconsider the definitions of tradition , time, poetry, and artist. Eliot’s theories and principles reflect and informed the Modernist movement of his time while also laying the foundation for the New Criticism .

Eliot wrote this essay shortly after the end of World War I. Many writers of the time were disillusioned by the war and sought meaning in personal experience rather than social and political life. Eliot’s arguments take aim at this emphasis on the individual artist’s emotions and feelings as the center of poetry. “Tradition and the Individual Talent” suggests a new approach to criticism, giving primacy to tradition and the past. In doing so, Eliot invites readers to reconsider their assumptions about art and the nature of time. Through parallel considerations of tradition and individuality, the poet and the poem, the past and the present, and emotions and artistic process, Eliot fixes the necessity of each concept to the other without resolving the tensions between them.

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“Tradition and the Individual Talent”

by Pericles Lewis

T. S. Eliot expressed a typically ambivalent view of the past when he wrote in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” ( 1919 ). The essay gives voice to the fact that modernist experiments seldom simply destroyed or rejected traditional methods of representation or traditional literary forms; rather, the modernists sought to enter into a sort of conversation with the art of the past, sometimes reverently, sometimes mockingly.

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists…. The existing monuments [of art] form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered… the past [is] altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. [1]

Eliot emphasizes both the way that tradition shapes the modern artist and the way that a “really new” work of art makes us see that tradition anew. [2]

Full text of “Tradition and the Individual Talent”

↑ T.S. Eliot, Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, ed. Frank Kermode. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1975: 38-39.
↑ This page has been adapted from Pericles Lewis’s Cambridge Introduction to Modernism (Cambridge UP, 2007), p. 27.

Which is More Important, Talent or Hard Work? [Evaluating Keys to Success]

The debate over the primacy of talent versus hard work is as old as human endeavors itself. In every field of work, sports, and art, the question arises: what propels one to excellence — innate ability or relentless effort? While talent refers to the natural aptitudes and gifts that individuals are born with, hard work represents the dedicated time and effort one puts into developing one’s skills.

Understanding the role talent plays in personal and professional development is critical. Those with natural ability in a particular domain can often grasp concepts rapidly and excel with seemingly less effort. However, talent alone is not always sufficient for achieving success; it can lay the foundation but without the structure built by hard work, it might not yield fruitful results. On the other hand, hard work signifies a commitment to practice, improvement, and perseverance. It suggests that regardless of one’s starting point, continuous effort can bridge gaps in natural ability and lead to mastery over time.

Key Takeaways

Talent provides a starting advantage, but it’s not the sole factor for success.
Hard work signifies the commitment to consistently develop one’s skills.
Success often arises from a combination of both talent and hard work.

The Interplay of Talent and Hard Work

Talent and hard work are often seen as key contributors to success. Talent is the natural aptitude or skill that an individual is born with, while hard work involves the effort and persistence put into developing a skill or completing a task.

A young female violinist, displaying a mixture of concentration and innate grace, practicing in a softly lit room. Her expression reflects dedication and the pursuit of perfection, symbolizing the blend of natural talent and hard work.

Talent can give individuals a head start in certain fields. For example, a person with a natural ear for music may find it easier to learn to play an instrument. Yet, without sustained effort, even the most talented individuals may not reach their full potential.

Hard work, on the other hand, is a dynamic force. It can sharpen skills and lead to mastery. For those with less innate ability, dedication and effort can often level the playing field, enabling them to compete with naturally talented peers.

The fusion of talent and hard work is where the most significant achievements are often found. While talent offers the raw materials, hard work refines and enhances them. A musician might have natural ability but needs to practice regularly to perform at a high level.

In some cases, hard work leads to the development of new talents, as individuals discover capacities they were previously unaware of. It is through persistence and dedication that talents are honed and new skills are forged.

The combination of these elements suggests that neither talent nor hard work alone is sufficient. They are intertwined, and their interplay is what often leads to exceptional accomplishments.

Understanding Talent

Talent plays a critical role in shaping an individual’s potential for success. It is a complex interplay of innate abilities and learned skills that can significantly influence one’s achievements.

A male artist, perhaps in his 30s, deeply engrossed in painting in his studio. His eyes show a natural spark of creativity, highlighting his innate talent, while his hands, covered in paint, signify the hard work and practice behind his art.

Definition of Talent

Talent refers to a natural aptitude or an inherent ability that an individual exhibits in a particular field, often without prior education or training. It is an innate talent that sets certain individuals apart from others. Natural talent can be thought of as the raw material upon which skills are developed.

IQ and EQ : Reflect cognitive and emotional talents, respectively.
Innate Talent : An inherent gift in specific domains like arts or mathematics.

The Role of Talent in Success

In the journey to success, talent often provides a head start. Achievers like Michael Jordan and Serena Williams have demonstrated that talent, when paired with hard work, can lead to exceptional accomplishments. However, talent alone does not guarantee success; it must be nurtured through continuous effort and dedication.

Famous Figures : Examples include pianists showing profound musical talents at young ages.
Natural Ability : Serves as the foundation for acquiring and mastering skills.

Natural Talent vs. Learned Skills

Distinguishing between natural talent and skills developed over time is vital for understanding success. Some singers, for instance, are gifted with a natural vocal range, yet vocal mastery emerges with practice.

Natural Talent : Often evident in early childhood, exemplifying a predisposition towards certain activities.
Learned Skills : Developed through training; reflects the expertise one gains over time.

The Value of Hard Work

Hard work is often touted as a cornerstone of success, and this section examines its role in achieving professional goals, developing beneficial habits, and setting the foundation for a successful career.

A female athlete, looking determined and focused, training alone in a gym. Her expression shows resilience and dedication, emphasizing the significance of hard work in achieving athletic excellence.

Defining Hard Work and Effort

Hard work is the dedicated application of effort towards a goal. It involves not only the time and energy invested but also the perseverance and dedication one demonstrates in the face of challenges. Effort is the degree of force applied to a task and is often a clear measure of determination and a growth mindset . These elements combine to lay a pathway for personal and professional development.

Hard Work as a Predictor of Success

While talent may offer an initial advantage, it is hard work that often predicts long-term success. A review of biographical data of successful individuals across various fields indicates a strong correlation between their practice , training , and overall achievements. Quantitative studies in vocational psychology suggest that individuals who exhibit a strong work ethic are more likely to experience career advancement .

Perseverance: Increases the likelihood of overcoming obstacles.
Consistency: Results in cumulative gains over time.

Developing a Strong Work Ethic

Cultivating a strong work ethic is a process that involves habit formation and continuous self-improvement. It reflects an individual’s commitment to their career and is characterized by attributes like reliability and professionalism . Here are essential strategies for developing such an ethic:

Set clear goals.
Establish routines that encourage dedication and habit formation.
Engage in deliberate practice to refine skills.
Reflect on progress and adjust efforts as needed.

Individuals who incorporate these approaches into their training and career development are more likely to hone their skills effectively and achieve a higher level of success.

Talent vs. Hard Work in Professional Growth

The debate between the inherent value of talent and the efficacy of hard work in professional growth continues to influence career trajectories. This section examines their impact on career advancement, recruitment practices, and the role of grit in career success.

A male executive, appearing thoughtful and strategic, gazing at a city skyline from a high-rise office. His posture and expression reflect the balance of innate business acumen (talent) and strategic planning (hard work) required for professional growth.

Impact on Career Advancement

Career advancement often hinges on a combination of an individual’s talent and their willingness to work hard. Extensive studies have shown that while talent provides an initial advantage due to innate abilities, it is sustained focus and training that lead to long-term success . Employees who actively seek out experience and commit to continuous learning are more likely to be recognized for promotions .

Recruitment and Talent Selection

Recruitment processes typically aim to identify the candidate who represents the best fit for a job, which includes evaluating both talent and evidence of hard work . An interviewer may favor a less qualified candidate if they demonstrate potential for growth and a strong work ethic over a more accomplished candidate who seems complacent. Resumes that show a history of professional development and grit tend to stand out, increasing the chances to hire .

The Importance of Grit and Determination in One’s Career

The concepts of grit and determination have become integral to understanding career perseverance. They refer to the resilience and focus individuals have when facing setbacks . Successful figures in the workplace often attribute their success to persistency and the ability to overcome challenges, regardless of the talent they started with. These individuals set a clear goal and remain dedicated to achieving it, which exemplifies their grit in their career .

Cultural Perspectives on Talent and Work

Different cultures have distinct attitudes towards talent and hard work, impacting notions of success and merit within various societies.

A young, male teacher in a classroom, with a diverse group of students. He’s explaining a concept, his expression reflecting a blend of wisdom (talent) and passion for teaching (hard work), while the students display curiosity and engagement.

Naturalness Bias and Society

Naturalness bias is a psychological tendency where individuals ascribe greater value to inborn talents over acquired skills. Psychological research indicates that certain societies may prefer individuals who exhibit natural talent, perceiving them as more gifted or destined for success. For example, in arts and sports, a prodigy or a naturally gifted athlete is often celebrated more enthusiastically than those who have achieved similar levels through intensive training.

Example in Professional Situations : In the workplace, an employee may be perceived as more competent if their skills are seen as innate rather than developed through diligent effort.

Meritocracy and the Valuation of Hard Work

Meritocracy is a cultural concept where hard work and effort are seen as the pathways to success. Societies that value meritocracy tend to reward individuals based on their accomplishments and perseverance. The idea that one can “work their way up” is ingrained in the social fabric of many cultures, reinforcing the valuation of hard work.

Appraisal in Professional Scenarios : Merit-based promotions acknowledge the importance of consistent effort, and in such environments, dedication is regarded as a vital component of professional success.

Redefining Success in Terms of Effort and Talent

Societal definitions of success often consider both effort and talent. A blend of talent and grit is increasingly recognized as a powerful predictor of long-term achievement. The narrative of success is broadening to appreciate the combination of an individual’s innate abilities and their capacity to apply themselves diligently.

Inspiration and Aspiration : Stories of individuals who have risen to prominence through a mix of inherent talent and unwavering effort can inspire others to pursue their goals with a similar balance.

By examining these cultural perspectives, it becomes apparent that both talent and hard work are valued, albeit differently across societies. Understanding and navigating these perspectives is key in both personal and professional realms, as individuals aim to align their paths with cultural definitions of success.

Practical Implications

Determining the weight of talent and hard work in achieving success has practical implications across various spheres of life. This examination helps individuals and organizations optimize their growth strategies.

A female scientist, perhaps in her late 20s, in a lab, looking through a microscope. Her focused demeanor illustrates the blend of scientific talent and the persistent hard work needed in research.

Incorporating Both Talent and Hard Work

It is essential to understand how talent and hard work complement each other. Individuals often enter fields where they show inherent talent, but without hard work and continuous development , talent alone may not lead to significant accomplishments. Organizations, on their part, can focus on identifying talents and invest in training programs to refine these skills.

Personal Life : A mix of talent and consistent effort can improve one’s personal growth and wellness.
Professional Situations : Employers can create balanced teams where naturally skilled members are encouraged to practice and refine their capabilities.

Strategies to Enhance Both Areas

Developing a strategy to maximize the potential of talent and hard work can yield remarkable outcomes. One could focus on strengths while also implementing a rigorous routine to develop weak areas.

Practice : Daily routines aimed at enhancing one’s craft can dramatically increase proficiency.
Training and Study : Structured learning and upskilling programs are fundamental for individuals to not just rely on their natural abilities but to also stay relevant and competitive.

Case Studies of Combining Talent and Persistence

Real-world examples underscore the symbiosis between talent and hard work in achieving success.

Oprah Winfrey : Started from poverty, she utilized her talent for communication and, through hard work, became one of the most influential personalities globally.
Michael Jordan : Recognized for his basketball skills, he was noted for his intense training ethic, often being the first to practice and the last to leave.
Serena Williams : Despite her natural affinity for tennis, Williams’s life story highlights the grueling training and focus required to dominate the sport.

Both talent and hard work play significant roles in achieving success. Talent acts as a natural accelerator that propels individuals to grasp concepts or skills at an above-average pace. On the other hand, hard work is the steadfast application of effort over time, often turning potential into expertise. Success stories frequently feature a blend of the two, with hard work augmenting innate abilities.

In terms of sustainability, hard work tends to have the edge. It fosters discipline and resilience, which are crucial for long-term achievement. Individuals who rely solely on talent might find themselves outpaced by those willing to put in consistent effort.

Talent can be seen as raw potential.
Hard Work equates to the process of refining that potential.

The impact of hard work often becomes most visible when talent reaches its limits. Persistence in the face of challenges is a common hallmark among high achievers. They typically maintain a growth mindset, viewing setbacks as opportunities to learn and improve.

In conclusion, while talent provides a valuable starting point, it is the cultivation of one’s abilities through hard work that truly determines success. The most successful individuals usually exhibit a combination of both, leveraging their natural strengths while committing to ongoing self-improvement.

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The Role of Talent and Hard Work in Reaching Success

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Talent Management: A Global Challenge Analytical Essay

Executive summary, introduction, hofstede model and link with cultural barriers to global talent, cultural barriers to managing global talent, reward programme, factors that will assist or hinder a successful programme, recommendation for assessing a successful programme, list of references.

The increasing levels of diversity and market dynamism have brought stiff competition among organisations, thus forcing them to engage in training of the available workforce, as well as hire competent employees in order to give them competitive edge in the crowded market. Technological developments have also brought business services into a single platform where customers in any part of the world can access products and services of an organisation from the internet (Salkey 2005).

With these drastic changes in business operations, organisations are struggling to be at advantaged positions by attracting, developing, motivating, and retaining productive employees. This move helps organisations to report high performance with the competent employees. In engaging a competent and diverse workforce organisations become sustainable in their operations, as they can successfully meet their strategic goals and objectives.

HR departments in all organisations have to ensure that they bring out the best from the existing employees. This process does not only touches on hiring and retaining the right people, but also touches on making apt decisions that benefit both employees and the organisation (Salkey 2005). Talent management engages and motivates critical talents within a firm, and directs them towards achieving the strategic goals of the firm.

With the inclusion of hiring, motivating, training, and retaining of employees under this subject, talent management is a broad process that encompasses compensation, management, learning and development, global human resources, talent acquisition, performance management, goal management, and succession management. Employees who prove worthwhile to the organisation are retained for continuous growth of the business (Srinivasan 2011).

The process helps CEOs and company managers to link employees with the business strategy, thus empowering them to make a sustainable impact on the organisation’s success (McGee 2006). Most companies are working to recruit competent employees, but do little in terms of training and retaining in order to develop their talents. In expanding its presence in the global platform, Unilever hired new employees, and aligned its objectives with the global approach on employee services in order to register high performance levels (McLeane 2012).

From a cultural perspective, talent management becomes part of an organisational culture and strategy, such that it develops the skills and increases responsibility of employees. The aspect becomes a way of operation within firms, in which it optimises the performance of each employee in respect to the expected goals. With the economic recession of 2009, companies rely on lean staffs that are well conversant with their roles.

According to Uren (2007), the move helps in cutting expenses in order to maximise the return on investment. As a commercial factor, talent management helps firms to meet and even surpass the needs of their clients, thus gaining competitive advantage over their competitors.

The concept requires strategic positioning in the competitive market in order to attract ready-to-learn employees who can increase the profitability of an organisation. In my opinion, talent management is a human resource practice of maintaining relevance in the current global and competitive market by hiring ready-to-learn workforce to increase the growth of an organisation.

Multinational corporations struggle to manage global talents given that they attract employees from diverse cultural backgrounds. Cultural diversity in terms of race, ethnic group, language, and nationality cause incompatibility of perceptions of organisational performance. According to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, culture instils values in its members, which in-turn influences behaviour (McLeane 2012).

From this presumption, countries having different cultures will have employees of different behaviours in terms of language, political systems, geographical proximity, and religious beliefs, as organisational leaders have to forge a diverse approach in handling such a multicultural workforce. Hofstede’s model analyses cultural values using power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, and femininity-masculinity.

In 1988, long/short-term orientation was added to the four dimensions. Therefore, handling employees from different nations that appraise employee performance differently will result in challenges in development of talents.

In line with power distance, which is the separation degree between subordinates and the management, different firms have practices that define the gap between employees and the top management. In a country like Argentina, where high power distance culture is practised, employees merely take orders from the top management, while in Ireland, employees interact closely with the top management.

Evidently, employees from the two countries will behave differently at the workplace. Societal behaviours are also seen from the individualism versus collectivism aspect. South American nations practice collectivism where they value group roles and value personal relationship more than the task, while in Canada, people operates on individual basis.

Therefore, in influencing behaviour of employees from these two nations requires different approaches. Integrating employees who believes in individualism in the management process of a firm requires. Uncertainty and avoidance, on the other hand, touches on the willingness to share and act on certain information (McLeane 2012).

Differences in religious beliefs and practices, language, and race act as barriers to global talent management. A close check on the dimensions of Hofstede’s model reveals the different barriers that exist in managing global talents, where employees come from countries with different practices and ideologies (Jenkins 2008).

Depending on the values of an organisation, employee retention becomes a challenging aspect since most employees leave for other companies, especially to local organisations (Cseres & Kelly 2006). Effective management of individuals of different races or nationalities requires a culturally diversified HR department in order to incorporate the practices of all employees in the strategic objectives of the organisation, especially during the design of training and motivation programmes.

China is an example of a nation that has set up talent management that focuses on specific jobs. With the globalisation aspect, organisations are competing for the same pool of talent and are trying to standardise the process of recruiting and developing new and existing talents. The move on standardisation makes it easy for other companies to imitate given the availability of data from large organisations.

However, the move to imitate talent management by other corporations complicates the issue of competitive advantage, as strategic HRM assumes that competitive advantage only exist when other firms cannot copy or imitate an idea that gives a specific firm the competitive edge (Ingham 2006).

Huawei Technologies Company built a global culture of shared values in order to create a talent base that targets specific markets (McLeane 2012). The $28 billion Chinese networking and telecommunications equipment supplier devised a culture and human resources that is capable of supporting its operations in all regions where it exists.

Talent development is key to the success of businesses in the present world; therefore, successful implementation of the talent programme is also vital for the same. A reward scheme helps in ensuring that the process becomes successful. For instance, using annual salary increments and variable commissions or allowances can improve the implementation process (Gratton 2012).

An annual salary of $15,000 and bonuses depending on the output per worker will be effective for the programme. Further, there ought to be an assessment approach that is structured to monitor the application of the learnt ideas in line with the goals and objectives of the firm. Compensation and recognition of employees and key management staff should also be in place to monitor the implementation of talent programmes in organisations that intend to remain competitive in the market.
Rewarding employees after positioning the organisation in the upper quartile of the market with a pay of $1500 for all employees will be recommendable.
In addition, a base pay of $600 will be useful to motivate employees to work towards meeting the organisational targets in the talent management.
In monitoring this programme both men and women possessing same skills will be entitled to same allowances of $800.
The implementation of the talent programme will guide employees’ movements up the pay scale. This will occur after completing the entire global talent plan. The pay will increase the recruitment, retention, motivation, and productivity of the firm from the aspect of variability, which removes predictability of occurrence (Gratton 2012). Employees get motivated from pay, but variable pays motivate them more than the fixed ones.

In restructuring new and existing talents within organisations, there are issues that hinder or assist the success of the programme. Investment in human capital remains the driver of organisational success. Even though the global talent management has numerous benefits to the overall performance of both employees and the organisation, the process of implementing the concept attracts many challenges.

Lack of HR leadership is one factor that can hinder the successful implementation of a global talent programme. Most HR executives give less time to talent development and training, but pay keen attention on tactical activities that do not add value to the growth of an organisation in the current shaky economy (Powell & Lubitsh 2007). The uncertainty in the economy has made key organisations to avoid investing in talents.

Such leadership believes in pushing employees to meet the expected targets forgetting the essence of organisational learning and development in nurturing talents of employees. The HR leadership should work closely with employees and the senior management in facilitating their employees’ talents through an integrated and proactive strategic approach (Chris & Morton 2005).

Lack of support from business leaders and unwillingness from the senior management to buy into the global talent management idea also hinder the success of the programme. Such moves create a workplace environment that does not support development of talents, thus making retention difficult. Lack of organisations’ commitment towards inculcating talent management in their management process creates negative impacts to adoption of new ideas.

However, a healthy, rewarding, and enjoyable working environment positively affects performance of organisations since employees feel motivated to learn new ideas, and apply them in their line of operations within the organisation (Swailes 2007). An organisation with a well-structured reward system for employees can enhance the success of implementing a global talent programme. Rewards coupled with an employee-talented organisation create a culture that enhances the talent of employees and the senior management.

The shifting demographics in terms of age, gender, and race, the HR department must device an inclusive approach to attract and retain skilful employees who are ready to remain updated with the current information and trends in the marketplace. Organizations can assess the success of its global talent programme by analysing its historical aspects on hiring, retention, productivity, and competitiveness in the market.

In a situation of hiring new employees, an organisation can analyse the level at which applicants increase their interest to be part of the company (Gratton 2012). Since the talent management programmes develops employees’ knowledge bases, more employees will prefer to work for organisations that enhances their personal development. If a programme is successful, an organisation will receive more applicants for a vacant position than in the periods before the implementation of the programme.

On the other hand, if the programme is not successful a few applicants will seek to occupy such positions. A successfully implemented programme can make organisations to register high retention of employees compared to the times before the implementation of the programme. An organisation will not find difficulty to find and retain employees if its talent programme is successful.

A study by Ernest and Young on refilling of vacant positions found out that 60% of employers worldwide experienced shortage of competent leadership in 2012, as well as an increase in the number of employers in India who experienced difficulties in filling vacancies in 2011 (Matthews n.d.).

In assessing the success of a talent programme, there should be less difficulty in retaining employees. In some firms, employees will voluntarily apply for extension of contracts before the expiry of their terms. The programme increases satisfaction among employees, thus making retention an easy activity.

However, the reverse will occur if the programme was not successful. Since global talent management intends to make an organisation gain competitive advantage over its competitors in the marketplace, productivity forms the core aspect of growth and sustainability of a firm.

For assessment on the success of the programme, a company should report high output from streamlined employees after the implementing the programme (Baker, Kubal & O’Rourke 2006). In case of low productivity, then, the programme was not successful. A well-implemented global talent programme ensures that there is a clear job analysis from the job design in order to match the roles employees with their specific goals, as well as those of the organisation.

Notably, organisations that do not inculcate talent management in their HR functions are only planning to lose their competitive advantage in the dynamic market. Managers who are knowledgeable in this field find it easy to identify outstanding candidates and facilitate more strategic recruitments, as well as designing training strategies basing the content on organisational goals and objectives (Uren 2007).

In addition, such managers are to design reward or compensation programmes for top performers to encourage development of talents. There is assurance of effective management and maintenance of core aspects of a global workforce in line with attributes of a country, thus aligning organisational goals and objectives with those of employees. Proper understanding of learning and development helps in designing plans that incorporates the needs of employees and the management.

Performance management helps in assessing performance of employees and developing and retaining top organisational talents. Motivation in talent management fuels the enthusiasm of employees and builds their commitment to work towards meeting the goals and objectives of the organisation throughout the period of change.

Organisations have to make training of employees a culture so that new recruits learn to adapt to the system. The broad nature of talent management requires a collective approach of all departments in an organisation for proper implementation. Line managers in organisations should help in developing the skills of employees under them. The concept of talent management has remained a significant aspect in the operations of current organisations given the fast changing needs of consumers and a combination of different workforce.

Baker, M., Kubal, D., & O’Rourke, T 2006, ‘How to use innovative approaches to retain key talent’, Emerald Journals , vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 87-105.

Chris, A., & Morton, L 2005, ‘Managing talent for competitive advantage: Taking a systemic approach to talent management’, Strategic HR Review , Vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 28-31.

Cseres, P., & Kelly, N 2006, ‘Restructuring talent sourcing at DuPont: Standardizing and simplifying talent-search and management processes’, Emerald Journals , vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 33-45.

Gratton, L 2012, ‘The Talent Factory of the Future’, Business Strategy Review , vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 20-23.

Ingham, J 2006, ‘Closing the talent management gap: Harnessing your employees’ talent to deliver optimum business performance’, Emerald Journals , vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 72-95.

Jenkins, J 2008, ‘Strategies for Managing Talent in a Multigenerational Workforce’, Employment Relations Today , vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 19-26.

Matthews, P n.d., Paradigm shift: Building a new talent management model to boost growth, Ernest and Young. Web.

McGee, L 2006, ‘CEO’s influence on talent management’, Emerald Journals , vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 22-39.

McLeane, V 2012, ‘The future of talent’, New Zealand Management , vol. 59, no. 10, pp. 36-40.

Powell, M., & Lubitsh, G 2007, ‘Courage in the face of extraordinary talent: Why talent management has become a leadership issue’, Emerald Journals , vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 18-27.

Salkey, J 2005, ‘Talent Management for the 21st Century’, Emerald Journals , vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 243-270.

Srinivasan, M. S 2011, ‘An Integral Approach to Talent Management’, Vilakshan: The XIMB Journal of Management , vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 81-90.

Swailes, S 2007, ‘The Ethics of Talent Management’, Business Ethics: A European Review , vol. 22, no. 1, PP. 32-46.

Uren, L 2007, ‘From talent compliance to talent commitment: Moving beyond the hype of talent management to realizing the benefits’, Emerald Journals , vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 237-241.

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IvyPanda. (2024, February 14). Talent Management: A Global Challenge. https://ivypanda.com/essays/talent-management-a-global-challenge/

"Talent Management: A Global Challenge." IvyPanda , 14 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/talent-management-a-global-challenge/.

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IvyPanda . 2024. "Talent Management: A Global Challenge." February 14, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/talent-management-a-global-challenge/.

1. IvyPanda . "Talent Management: A Global Challenge." February 14, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/talent-management-a-global-challenge/.

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photo of Icon of the Seas, taken on a long railed path approaching the stern of the ship, with people walking along dock

Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

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Updated at 2:44 p.m. ET on April 6, 2024.

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MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optic nerve to try again.

The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.

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“Author embarks on their first cruise-ship voyage” has been a staple of American essay writing for almost three decades, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which was first published in 1996 under the title “Shipping Out.” Since then, many admirable writers have widened and diversified the genre. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel. I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.” But the Icon of the Seas will not countenance a shrug. The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full.

The aforementioned gangway opens up directly onto a thriving mall (I will soon learn it is imperiously called the “Royal Promenade”), presently filled with yapping passengers beneath a ceiling studded with balloons ready to drop. Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands. By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. I show my blue Suite Sky SeaPass Card (more on this later, much more) to a smiling woman from the Philippines, and she tells me to go “aft.” Which is where, now? As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. It turns out that the aft is the stern of the ship, or, for those of us who don’t know what a stern or an aft are, its ass. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD , or forward. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship. I trust that you have enjoyed this nautical lesson.

I ascend via elevator to my suite on Deck 11. This is where I encounter my first terrible surprise. My suite windows and balcony do not face the ocean. Instead, they look out onto another shopping mall. This mall is the one that’s called Central Park, perhaps in homage to the Olmsted-designed bit of greenery in the middle of my hometown. Although on land I would be delighted to own a suite with Central Park views, here I am deeply depressed. To sail on a ship and not wake up to a vast blue carpet of ocean? Unthinkable.

Allow me a brief preamble here. The story you are reading was commissioned at a moment when most staterooms on the Icon were sold out. In fact, so enthralled by the prospect of this voyage were hard-core mariners that the ship’s entire inventory of guest rooms (the Icon can accommodate up to 7,600 passengers, but its inaugural journey was reduced to 5,000 or so for a less crowded experience) was almost immediately sold out. Hence, this publication was faced with the shocking prospect of paying nearly $19,000 to procure for this solitary passenger an entire suite—not including drinking expenses—all for the privilege of bringing you this article. But the suite in question doesn’t even have a view of the ocean! I sit down hard on my soft bed. Nineteen thousand dollars for this .

selfie photo of man with glasses, in background is swim-up bar with two women facing away

The viewless suite does have its pluses. In addition to all the Malin+Goetz products in my dual bathrooms, I am granted use of a dedicated Suite Deck lounge; access to Coastal Kitchen, a superior restaurant for Suites passengers; complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream (“the fastest Internet at Sea”) “for one device per person for the whole cruise duration”; a pair of bathrobes (one of which comes prestained with what looks like a large expectoration by the greenest lizard on Earth); and use of the Grove Suite Sun, an area on Decks 18 and 19 with food and deck chairs reserved exclusively for Suite passengers. I also get reserved seating for a performance of The Wizard of Oz , an ice-skating tribute to the periodic table, and similar provocations. The very color of my Suite Sky SeaPass Card, an oceanic blue as opposed to the cloying royal purple of the standard non-Suite passenger, will soon provoke envy and admiration. But as high as my status may be, there are those on board who have much higher status still, and I will soon learn to bow before them.

In preparation for sailing, I have “priced in,” as they say on Wall Street, the possibility that I may come from a somewhat different monde than many of the other cruisers. Without falling into stereotypes or preconceptions, I prepare myself for a friendly outspokenness on the part of my fellow seafarers that may not comply with modern DEI standards. I believe in meeting people halfway, and so the day before flying down to Miami, I visited what remains of Little Italy to purchase a popular T-shirt that reads DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL across the breast in the colors of the Italian flag. My wife recommended that I bring one of my many T-shirts featuring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, as all Americans love the beagle and his friends. But I naively thought that my meatball T-shirt would be more suitable for conversation-starting. “Oh, and who is your ‘daddy’?” some might ask upon seeing it. “And how long have you been his ‘little meatball’?” And so on.

I put on my meatball T-shirt and head for one of the dining rooms to get a late lunch. In the elevator, I stick out my chest for all to read the funny legend upon it, but soon I realize that despite its burnished tricolor letters, no one takes note. More to the point, no one takes note of me. Despite my attempts at bridge building, the very sight of me (small, ethnic, without a cap bearing the name of a football team) elicits no reaction from other passengers. Most often, they will small-talk over me as if I don’t exist. This brings to mind the travails of David Foster Wallace , who felt so ostracized by his fellow passengers that he retreated to his cabin for much of his voyage. And Wallace was raised primarily in the Midwest and was a much larger, more American-looking meatball than I am. If he couldn’t talk to these people, how will I? What if I leave this ship without making any friends at all, despite my T-shirt? I am a social creature, and the prospect of seven days alone and apart is saddening. Wallace’s stateroom, at least, had a view of the ocean, a kind of cheap eternity.

Worse awaits me in the dining room. This is a large, multichandeliered room where I attended my safety training (I was shown how to put on a flotation vest; it is a very simple procedure). But the maître d’ politely refuses me entry in an English that seems to verge on another language. “I’m sorry, this is only for pendejos ,” he seems to be saying. I push back politely and he repeats himself. Pendejos ? Piranhas? There’s some kind of P-word to which I am not attuned. Meanwhile elderly passengers stream right past, powered by their limbs, walkers, and electric wheelchairs. “It is only pendejo dining today, sir.” “But I have a suite!” I say, already starting to catch on to the ship’s class system. He examines my card again. “But you are not a pendejo ,” he confirms. I am wearing a DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL T-shirt, I want to say to him. I am the essence of pendejo .

Eventually, I give up and head to the plebeian buffet on Deck 15, which has an aquatic-styled name I have now forgotten. Before gaining entry to this endless cornucopia of reheated food, one passes a washing station of many sinks and soap dispensers, and perhaps the most intriguing character on the entire ship. He is Mr. Washy Washy—or, according to his name tag, Nielbert of the Philippines—and he is dressed as a taco (on other occasions, I’ll see him dressed as a burger). Mr. Washy Washy performs an eponymous song in spirited, indeed flamboyant English: “Washy, washy, wash your hands, WASHY WASHY!” The dangers of norovirus and COVID on a cruise ship this size (a giant fellow ship was stricken with the former right after my voyage) makes Mr. Washy Washy an essential member of the crew. The problem lies with the food at the end of Washy’s rainbow. The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes—marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws—but every animal tastes tragically the same, as if there was only one creature available at the market, a “cruisipus” bred specifically for Royal Caribbean dining. The “vegetables” are no better. I pick up a tomato slice and look right through it. It tastes like cellophane. I sit alone, apart from the couples and parents with gaggles of children, as “We Are Family” echoes across the buffet space.

I may have failed to mention that all this time, the Icon of the Seas has not left port. As the fiery mango of the subtropical setting sun makes Miami’s condo skyline even more apocalyptic, the ship shoves off beneath a perfunctory display of fireworks. After the sun sets, in the far, dark distance, another circus-lit cruise ship ruptures the waves before us. We glance at it with pity, because it is by definition a smaller ship than our own. I am on Deck 15, outside the buffet and overlooking a bunch of pools (the Icon has seven of them), drinking a frilly drink that I got from one of the bars (the Icon has 15 of them), still too shy to speak to anyone, despite Sister Sledge’s assertion that all on the ship are somehow related.

Kim Brooks: On failing the family vacation

The ship’s passage away from Ron DeSantis’s Florida provides no frisson, no sense of developing “sea legs,” as the ship is too large to register the presence of waves unless a mighty wind adds significant chop. It is time for me to register the presence of the 5,000 passengers around me, even if they refuse to register mine. My fellow travelers have prepared for this trip with personally decorated T-shirts celebrating the importance of this voyage. The simplest ones say ICON INAUGURAL ’24 on the back and the family name on the front. Others attest to an over-the-top love of cruise ships: WARNING! MAY START TALKING ABOUT CRUISING . Still others are artisanally designed and celebrate lifetimes spent married while cruising (on ships, of course). A couple possibly in their 90s are wearing shirts whose backs feature a drawing of a cruise liner, two flamingos with ostensibly male and female characteristics, and the legend “ HUSBAND AND WIFE Cruising Partners FOR LIFE WE MAY NOT HAVE IT All Together BUT TOGETHER WE HAVE IT ALL .” (The words not in all caps have been written in cursive.) A real journalist or a more intrepid conversationalist would have gone up to the couple and asked them to explain the longevity of their marriage vis-à-vis their love of cruising. But instead I head to my mall suite, take off my meatball T-shirt, and allow the first tears of the cruise to roll down my cheeks slowly enough that I briefly fall asleep amid the moisture and salt.

photo of elaborate twisting multicolored waterslides with long stairwell to platform

I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: “Ayn Rand.” Jesus Christ.

I breakfast alone at the Coastal Kitchen. The coffee tastes fine and the eggs came out of a bird. The ship rolls slightly this morning; I can feel it in my thighs and my schlong, the parts of me that are most receptive to danger.

I had a dangerous conversation last night. After the sun set and we were at least 50 miles from shore (most modern cruise ships sail at about 23 miles an hour), I lay in bed softly hiccupping, my arms stretched out exactly like Jesus on the cross, the sound of the distant waves missing from my mall-facing suite, replaced by the hum of air-conditioning and children shouting in Spanish through the vents of my two bathrooms. I decided this passivity was unacceptable. As an immigrant, I feel duty-bound to complete the tasks I am paid for, which means reaching out and trying to understand my fellow cruisers. So I put on a normal James Perse T-shirt and headed for one of the bars on the Royal Promenade—the Schooner Bar, it was called, if memory serves correctly.

I sat at the bar for a martini and two Negronis. An old man with thick, hairy forearms drank next to me, very silent and Hemingwaylike, while a dreadlocked piano player tinkled out a series of excellent Elton John covers. To my right, a young white couple—he in floral shorts, she in a light, summery miniskirt with a fearsome diamond ring, neither of them in football regalia—chatted with an elderly couple. Do it , I commanded myself. Open your mouth. Speak! Speak without being spoken to. Initiate. A sentence fragment caught my ear from the young woman, “Cherry Hill.” This is a suburb of Philadelphia in New Jersey, and I had once been there for a reading at a synagogue. “Excuse me,” I said gently to her. “Did you just mention Cherry Hill? It’s a lovely place.”

As it turned out, the couple now lived in Fort Lauderdale (the number of Floridians on the cruise surprised me, given that Southern Florida is itself a kind of cruise ship, albeit one slowly sinking), but soon they were talking with me exclusively—the man potbellied, with a chin like a hard-boiled egg; the woman as svelte as if she were one of the many Ukrainian members of the crew—the elderly couple next to them forgotten. This felt as groundbreaking as the first time I dared to address an American in his native tongue, as a child on a bus in Queens (“On my foot you are standing, Mister”).

“I don’t want to talk politics,” the man said. “But they’re going to eighty-six Biden and put Michelle in.”

I considered the contradictions of his opening conversational gambit, but decided to play along. “People like Michelle,” I said, testing the waters. The husband sneered, but the wife charitably put forward that the former first lady was “more personable” than Joe Biden. “They’re gonna eighty-six Biden,” the husband repeated. “He can’t put a sentence together.”

After I mentioned that I was a writer—though I presented myself as a writer of teleplays instead of novels and articles such as this one—the husband told me his favorite writer was Ayn Rand. “Ayn Rand, she came here with nothing,” the husband said. “I work with a lot of Cubans, so …” I wondered if I should mention what I usually do to ingratiate myself with Republicans or libertarians: the fact that my finances improved after pass-through corporations were taxed differently under Donald Trump. Instead, I ordered another drink and the couple did the same, and I told him that Rand and I were born in the same city, St. Petersburg/Leningrad, and that my family also came here with nothing. Now the bonding and drinking began in earnest, and several more rounds appeared. Until it all fell apart.

Read: Gary Shteyngart on watching Russian television for five days straight

My new friend, whom I will refer to as Ayn, called out to a buddy of his across the bar, and suddenly a young couple, both covered in tattoos, appeared next to us. “He fucking punked me,” Ayn’s frat-boy-like friend called out as he put his arm around Ayn, while his sizable partner sizzled up to Mrs. Rand. Both of them had a look I have never seen on land—their eyes projecting absence and enmity in equal measure. In the ’90s, I drank with Russian soldiers fresh from Chechnya and wandered the streets of wartime Zagreb, but I have never seen such undisguised hostility toward both me and perhaps the universe at large. I was briefly introduced to this psychopathic pair, but neither of them wanted to have anything to do with me, and the tattooed woman would not even reveal her Christian name to me (she pretended to have the same first name as Mrs. Rand). To impress his tattooed friends, Ayn made fun of the fact that as a television writer, I’d worked on the series Succession (which, it would turn out, practically nobody on the ship had watched), instead of the far more palatable, in his eyes, zombie drama of last year. And then my new friends drifted away from me into an angry private conversation—“He punked me!”—as I ordered another drink for myself, scared of the dead-eyed arrivals whose gaze never registered in the dim wattage of the Schooner Bar, whose terrifying voices and hollow laughs grated like unoiled gears against the crooning of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

But today is a new day for me and my hangover. After breakfast, I explore the ship’s so-called neighborhoods . There’s the AquaDome, where one can find a food hall and an acrobatic sound-and-light aquatic show. Central Park has a premium steak house, a sushi joint, and a used Rolex that can be bought for $8,000 on land here proudly offered at $17,000. There’s the aforementioned Royal Promenade, where I had drunk with the Rands, and where a pair of dueling pianos duel well into the night. There’s Surfside, a kids’ neighborhood full of sugary garbage, which looks out onto the frothy trail that the behemoth leaves behind itself. Thrill Island refers to the collection of tubes that clutter the ass of the ship and offer passengers six waterslides and a surfing simulation. There’s the Hideaway, an adult zone that plays music from a vomit-slathered, Brit-filled Alicante nightclub circa 1996 and proves a big favorite with groups of young Latin American customers. And, most hurtfully, there’s the Suite Neighborhood.

2 photos: a ship's foamy white wake stretches to the horizon; a man at reailing with water and two large ships docked behind

I say hurtfully because as a Suite passenger I should be here, though my particular suite is far from the others. Whereas I am stuck amid the riffraff of Deck 11, this section is on the highborn Decks 16 and 17, and in passing, I peek into the spacious, tall-ceilinged staterooms from the hallway, dazzled by the glint of the waves and sun. For $75,000, one multifloor suite even comes with its own slide between floors, so that a family may enjoy this particular terror in private. There is a quiet splendor to the Suite Neighborhood. I see fewer stickers and signs and drawings than in my own neighborhood—for example, MIKE AND DIANA PROUDLY SERVED U.S. MARINE CORPS RETIRED . No one here needs to announce their branch of service or rank; they are simply Suites, and this is where they belong. Once again, despite my hard work and perseverance, I have been disallowed from the true American elite. Once again, I am “Not our class, dear.” I am reminded of watching The Love Boat on my grandmother’s Zenith, which either was given to her or we found in the trash (I get our many malfunctioning Zeniths confused) and whose tube got so hot, I would put little chunks of government cheese on a thin tissue atop it to give our welfare treat a pleasant, Reagan-era gooeyness. I could not understand English well enough then to catch the nuances of that seafaring program, but I knew that there were differences in the status of the passengers, and that sometimes those differences made them sad. Still, this ship, this plenty—every few steps, there are complimentary nachos or milkshakes or gyros on offer—was the fatty fuel of my childhood dreams. If only I had remained a child.

I walk around the outdoor decks looking for company. There is a middle-aged African American couple who always seem to be asleep in each other’s arms, probably exhausted from the late capitalism they regularly encounter on land. There is far more diversity on this ship than I expected. Many couples are a testament to Loving v. Virginia , and there is a large group of folks whose T-shirts read MELANIN AT SEA / IT’S THE MELANIN FOR ME . I smile when I see them, but then some young kids from the group makes Mr. Washy Washy do a cruel, caricatured “Burger Dance” (today he is in his burger getup), and I think, Well, so much for intersectionality .

At the infinity pool on Deck 17, I spot some elderly women who could be ethnic and from my part of the world, and so I jump in. I am proved correct! Many of them seem to be originally from Queens (“Corona was still great when it was all Italian”), though they are now spread across the tristate area. We bond over the way “Ron-kon-koma” sounds when announced in Penn Station.

“Everyone is here for a different reason,” one of them tells me. She and her ex-husband last sailed together four years ago to prove to themselves that their marriage was truly over. Her 15-year-old son lost his virginity to “an Irish young lady” while their ship was moored in Ravenna, Italy. The gaggle of old-timers competes to tell me their favorite cruising stories and tips. “A guy proposed in Central Park a couple of years ago”—many Royal Caribbean ships apparently have this ridiculous communal area—“and she ran away screaming!” “If you’re diamond-class, you get four drinks for free.” “A different kind of passenger sails out of Bayonne.” (This, perhaps, is racially coded.) “Sometimes, if you tip the bartender $5, your next drink will be free.”

“Everyone’s here for a different reason,” the woman whose marriage ended on a cruise tells me again. “Some people are here for bad reasons—the drinkers and the gamblers. Some people are here for medical reasons.” I have seen more than a few oxygen tanks and at least one woman clearly undergoing very serious chemo. Some T-shirts celebrate good news about a cancer diagnosis. This might be someone’s last cruise or week on Earth. For these women, who have spent months, if not years, at sea, cruising is a ritual as well as a life cycle: first love, last love, marriage, divorce, death.

Read: The last place on Earth any tourist should go

I have talked with these women for so long, tonight I promise myself that after a sad solitary dinner I will not try to seek out company at the bars in the mall or the adult-themed Hideaway. I have enough material to fulfill my duties to this publication. As I approach my orphaned suite, I run into the aggro young people who stole Mr. and Mrs. Rand away from me the night before. The tattooed apparitions pass me without a glance. She is singing something violent about “Stuttering Stanley” (a character in a popular horror movie, as I discover with my complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream Internet at Sea) and he’s loudly shouting about “all the money I’ve lost,” presumably at the casino in the bowels of the ship.

So these bent psychos out of a Cormac McCarthy novel are angrily inhabiting my deck. As I mewl myself to sleep, I envision a limited series for HBO or some other streamer, a kind of low-rent White Lotus , where several aggressive couples conspire to throw a shy intellectual interloper overboard. I type the scenario into my phone. As I fall asleep, I think of what the woman who recently divorced her husband and whose son became a man through the good offices of the Irish Republic told me while I was hoisting myself out of the infinity pool. “I’m here because I’m an explorer. I’m here because I’m trying something new.” What if I allowed myself to believe in her fantasy?

2 photos: 2 slices of pizza on plate; man in "Daddy's Little Meatball" shirt and shorts standing in outdoor dining area with ship's exhaust stacks in background

“YOU REALLY STARTED AT THE TOP,” they tell me. I’m at the Coastal Kitchen for my eggs and corned-beef hash, and the maître d’ has slotted me in between two couples. Fueled by coffee or perhaps intrigued by my relative youth, they strike up a conversation with me. As always, people are shocked that this is my first cruise. They contrast the Icon favorably with all the preceding liners in the Royal Caribbean fleet, usually commenting on the efficiency of the elevators that hurl us from deck to deck (as in many large corporate buildings, the elevators ask you to choose a floor and then direct you to one of many lifts). The couple to my right, from Palo Alto—he refers to his “porn mustache” and calls his wife “my cougar” because she is two years older—tell me they are “Pandemic Pinnacles.”

This is the day that my eyes will be opened. Pinnacles , it is explained to me over translucent cantaloupe, have sailed with Royal Caribbean for 700 ungodly nights. Pandemic Pinnacles took advantage of the two-for-one accrual rate of Pinnacle points during the pandemic, when sailing on a cruise ship was even more ill-advised, to catapult themselves into Pinnacle status.

Because of the importance of the inaugural voyage of the world’s largest cruise liner, more than 200 Pinnacles are on this ship, a startling number, it seems. Mrs. Palo Alto takes out a golden badge that I have seen affixed over many a breast, which reads CROWN AND ANCHOR SOCIETY along with her name. This is the coveted badge of the Pinnacle. “You should hear all the whining in Guest Services,” her husband tells me. Apparently, the Pinnacles who are not also Suites like us are all trying to use their status to get into Coastal Kitchen, our elite restaurant. Even a Pinnacle needs to be a Suite to access this level of corned-beef hash.

“We’re just baby Pinnacles,” Mrs. Palo Alto tells me, describing a kind of internal class struggle among the Pinnacle elite for ever higher status.

And now I understand what the maître d’ was saying to me on the first day of my cruise. He wasn’t saying “ pendejo .” He was saying “Pinnacle.” The dining room was for Pinnacles only, all those older people rolling in like the tide on their motorized scooters.

And now I understand something else: This whole thing is a cult. And like most cults, it can’t help but mirror the endless American fight for status. Like Keith Raniere’s NXIVM, where different-colored sashes were given out to connote rank among Raniere’s branded acolytes, this is an endless competition among Pinnacles, Suites, Diamond-Plusers, and facing-the-mall, no-balcony purple SeaPass Card peasants, not to mention the many distinctions within each category. The more you cruise, the higher your status. No wonder a section of the Royal Promenade is devoted to getting passengers to book their next cruise during the one they should be enjoying now. No wonder desperate Royal Caribbean offers (“FINAL HOURS”) crowded my email account weeks before I set sail. No wonder the ship’s jewelry store, the Royal Bling, is selling a $100,000 golden chalice that will entitle its owner to drink free on Royal Caribbean cruises for life. (One passenger was already gaming out whether her 28-year-old son was young enough to “just about earn out” on the chalice or if that ship had sailed.) No wonder this ship was sold out months before departure , and we had to pay $19,000 for a horrid suite away from the Suite Neighborhood. No wonder the most mythical hero of Royal Caribbean lore is someone named Super Mario, who has cruised so often, he now has his own working desk on many ships. This whole experience is part cult, part nautical pyramid scheme.

From the June 2014 issue: Ship of wonks

“The toilets are amazing,” the Palo Altos are telling me. “One flush and you’re done.” “They don’t understand how energy-efficient these ships are,” the husband of the other couple is telling me. “They got the LNG”—liquefied natural gas, which is supposed to make the Icon a boon to the environment (a concept widely disputed and sometimes ridiculed by environmentalists).

But I’m thinking along a different line of attack as I spear my last pallid slice of melon. For my streaming limited series, a Pinnacle would have to get killed by either an outright peasant or a Suite without an ocean view. I tell my breakfast companions my idea.

“Oh, for sure a Pinnacle would have to be killed,” Mr. Palo Alto, the Pandemic Pinnacle, says, touching his porn mustache thoughtfully as his wife nods.

“THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S your time, buddy!” Hubert, my fun-loving Panamanian cabin attendant, shouts as I step out of my suite in a robe. “Take it easy, buddy!”

I have come up with a new dressing strategy. Instead of trying to impress with my choice of T-shirts, I have decided to start wearing a robe, as one does at a resort property on land, with a proper spa and hammam. The response among my fellow cruisers has been ecstatic. “Look at you in the robe!” Mr. Rand cries out as we pass each other by the Thrill Island aqua park. “You’re living the cruise life! You know, you really drank me under the table that night.” I laugh as we part ways, but my soul cries out, Please spend more time with me, Mr. and Mrs. Rand; I so need the company .

In my white robe, I am a stately presence, a refugee from a better limited series, a one-man crossover episode. (Only Suites are granted these robes to begin with.) Today, I will try many of the activities these ships have on offer to provide their clientele with a sense of never-ceasing motion. Because I am already at Thrill Island, I decide to climb the staircase to what looks like a mast on an old-fashioned ship (terrified, because I am afraid of heights) to try a ride called “Storm Chasers,” which is part of the “Category 6” water park, named in honor of one of the storms that may someday do away with the Port of Miami entirely. Storm Chasers consists of falling from the “mast” down a long, twisting neon tube filled with water, like being the camera inside your own colonoscopy, as you hold on to the handles of a mat, hoping not to die. The tube then flops you down headfirst into a trough of water, a Royal Caribbean baptism. It both knocks my breath out and makes me sad.

In keeping with the aquatic theme, I attend a show at the AquaDome. To the sound of “Live and Let Die,” a man in a harness gyrates to and fro in the sultry air. I saw something very similar in the back rooms of the famed Berghain club in early-aughts Berlin. Soon another harnessed man is gyrating next to the first. Ja , I think to myself, I know how this ends. Now will come the fisting , natürlich . But the show soon devolves into the usual Marvel-film-grade nonsense, with too much light and sound signifying nichts . If any fisting is happening, it is probably in the Suite Neighborhood, inside a cabin marked with an upside-down pineapple, which I understand means a couple are ready to swing, and I will see none of it.

I go to the ice show, which is a kind of homage—if that’s possible—to the periodic table, done with the style and pomp and masterful precision that would please the likes of Kim Jong Un, if only he could afford Royal Caribbean talent. At one point, the dancers skate to the theme song of Succession . “See that!” I want to say to my fellow Suites—at “cultural” events, we have a special section reserved for us away from the commoners—“ Succession ! It’s even better than the zombie show! Open your minds!”

Finally, I visit a comedy revue in an enormous and too brightly lit version of an “intimate,” per Royal Caribbean literature, “Manhattan comedy club.” Many of the jokes are about the cruising life. “I’ve lived on ships for 20 years,” one of the middle-aged comedians says. “I can only see so many Filipino homosexuals dressed as a taco.” He pauses while the audience laughs. “I am so fired tonight,” he says. He segues into a Trump impression and then Biden falling asleep at the microphone, which gets the most laughs. “Anyone here from Fort Leonard Wood?” another comedian asks. Half the crowd seems to cheer. As I fall asleep that night, I realize another connection I have failed to make, and one that may explain some of the diversity on this vessel—many of its passengers have served in the military.

As a coddled passenger with a suite, I feel like I am starting to understand what it means to have a rank and be constantly reminded of it. There are many espresso makers , I think as I look across the expanse of my officer-grade quarters before closing my eyes, but this one is mine .

photo of sheltered sandy beach with palms, umbrellas, and chairs with two large docked cruise ships in background

A shocking sight greets me beyond the pools of Deck 17 as I saunter over to the Coastal Kitchen for my morning intake of slightly sour Americanos. A tiny city beneath a series of perfectly pressed green mountains. Land! We have docked for a brief respite in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis. I wolf down my egg scramble to be one of the first passengers off the ship. Once past the gangway, I barely refrain from kissing the ground. I rush into the sights and sounds of this scruffy island city, sampling incredible conch curry and buckets of non-Starbucks coffee. How wonderful it is to be where God intended humans to be: on land. After all, I am neither a fish nor a mall rat. This is my natural environment. Basseterre may not be Havana, but there are signs of human ingenuity and desire everywhere you look. The Black Table Grill Has been Relocated to Soho Village, Market Street, Directly Behind of, Gary’s Fruits and Flower Shop. Signed. THE PORK MAN reads a sign stuck to a wall. Now, that is how you write a sign. A real sign, not the come-ons for overpriced Rolexes that blink across the screens of the Royal Promenade.

“Hey, tie your shoestring!” a pair of laughing ladies shout to me across the street.

“Thank you!” I shout back. Shoestring! “Thank you very much.”

A man in Independence Square Park comes by and asks if I want to play with his monkey. I haven’t heard that pickup line since the Penn Station of the 1980s. But then he pulls a real monkey out of a bag. The monkey is wearing a diaper and looks insane. Wonderful , I think, just wonderful! There is so much life here. I email my editor asking if I can remain on St. Kitts and allow the Icon to sail off into the horizon without me. I have even priced a flight home at less than $300, and I have enough material from the first four days on the cruise to write the entire story. “It would be funny …” my editor replies. “Now get on the boat.”

As I slink back to the ship after my brief jailbreak, the locals stand under umbrellas to gaze at and photograph the boat that towers over their small capital city. The limousines of the prime minister and his lackeys are parked beside the gangway. St. Kitts, I’ve been told, is one of the few islands that would allow a ship of this size to dock.

“We hear about all the waterslides,” a sweet young server in one of the cafés told me. “We wish we could go on the ship, but we have to work.”

“I want to stay on your island,” I replied. “I love it here.”

But she didn’t understand how I could possibly mean that.

“WASHY, WASHY, so you don’t get stinky, stinky!” kids are singing outside the AquaDome, while their adult minders look on in disapproval, perhaps worried that Mr. Washy Washy is grooming them into a life of gayness. I heard a southern couple skip the buffet entirely out of fear of Mr. Washy Washy.

Meanwhile, I have found a new watering hole for myself, the Swim & Tonic, the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world. Drinking next to full-size, nearly naked Americans takes away one’s own self-consciousness. The men have curvaceous mom bodies. The women are equally un-shy about their sprawling physiques.

Today I’ve befriended a bald man with many children who tells me that all of the little trinkets that Royal Caribbean has left us in our staterooms and suites are worth a fortune on eBay. “Eighty dollars for the water bottle, 60 for the lanyard,” the man says. “This is a cult.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. There is, however, a clientele for whom this cruise makes perfect sense. For a large middle-class family (he works in “supply chains”), seven days in a lower-tier cabin—which starts at $1,800 a person—allow the parents to drop off their children in Surfside, where I imagine many young Filipina crew members will take care of them, while the parents are free to get drunk at a swim-up bar and maybe even get intimate in their cabin. Cruise ships have become, for a certain kind of hardworking family, a form of subsidized child care.

There is another man I would like to befriend at the Swim & Tonic, a tall, bald fellow who is perpetually inebriated and who wears a necklace studded with little rubber duckies in sunglasses, which, I am told, is a sort of secret handshake for cruise aficionados. Tomorrow, I will spend more time with him, but first the ship docks at St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Charlotte Amalie, the capital, is more charming in name than in presence, but I still all but jump off the ship to score a juicy oxtail and plantains at the well-known Petite Pump Room, overlooking the harbor. From one of the highest points in the small city, the Icon of the Seas appears bigger than the surrounding hills.

I usually tan very evenly, but something about the discombobulation of life at sea makes me forget the regular application of sunscreen. As I walk down the streets of Charlotte Amalie in my fluorescent Icon of the Seas cap, an old Rastafarian stares me down. “Redneck,” he hisses.

“No,” I want to tell him, as I bring a hand up to my red neck, “that’s not who I am at all. On my island, Mannahatta, as Whitman would have it, I am an interesting person living within an engaging artistic milieu. I do not wish to use the Caribbean as a dumping ground for the cruise-ship industry. I love the work of Derek Walcott. You don’t understand. I am not a redneck. And if I am, they did this to me.” They meaning Royal Caribbean? Its passengers? The Rands?

“They did this to me!”

Back on the Icon, some older matrons are muttering about a run-in with passengers from the Celebrity cruise ship docked next to us, the Celebrity Apex. Although Celebrity Cruises is also owned by Royal Caribbean, I am made to understand that there is a deep fratricidal beef between passengers of the two lines. “We met a woman from the Apex,” one matron says, “and she says it was a small ship and there was nothing to do. Her face was as tight as a 19-year-old’s, she had so much surgery.” With those words, and beneath a cloudy sky, humidity shrouding our weathered faces and red necks, we set sail once again, hopefully in the direction of home.

photo from inside of spacious geodesic-style glass dome facing ocean, with stairwells and seating areas

THERE ARE BARELY 48 HOURS LEFT to the cruise, and the Icon of the Seas’ passengers are salty. They know how to work the elevators. They know the Washy Washy song by heart. They understand that the chicken gyro at “Feta Mediterranean,” in the AquaDome Market, is the least problematic form of chicken on the ship.

The passengers have shed their INAUGURAL CRUISE T-shirts and are now starting to evince political opinions. There are caps pledging to make America great again and T-shirts that celebrate words sometimes attributed to Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” With their preponderance of FAMILY FLAG FAITH FRIENDS FIREARMS T-shirts, the tables by the crepe station sometimes resemble the Capitol Rotunda on January 6. The Real Anthony Fauci , by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears to be a popular form of literature, especially among young men with very complicated versions of the American flag on their T-shirts. Other opinions blend the personal and the political. “Someone needs to kill Washy guy, right?” a well-dressed man in the elevator tells me, his gray eyes radiating nothing. “Just beat him to death. Am I right?” I overhear the male member of a young couple whisper, “There goes that freak” as I saunter by in my white spa robe, and I decide to retire it for the rest of the cruise.

I visit the Royal Bling to see up close the $100,000 golden chalice that entitles you to free drinks on Royal Caribbean forever. The pleasant Serbian saleslady explains that the chalice is actually gold-plated and covered in white zirconia instead of diamonds, as it would otherwise cost $1 million. “If you already have everything,” she explains, “this is one more thing you can get.”

I believe that anyone who works for Royal Caribbean should be entitled to immediate American citizenship. They already speak English better than most of the passengers and, per the Serbian lady’s sales pitch above, better understand what America is as well. Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

And because most of the Icon’s hyper-sanitized spaces are just a frittata away from being a Delta lounge, one forgets that there are actual sailors on this ship, charged with the herculean task of docking it in port. “Having driven 100,000-ton aircraft carriers throughout my career,” retired Admiral James G. Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, writes to me, “I’m not sure I would even know where to begin with trying to control a sea monster like this one nearly three times the size.” (I first met Stavridis while touring Army bases in Germany more than a decade ago.)

Today, I decide to head to the hot tub near Swim & Tonic, where some of the ship’s drunkest reprobates seem to gather (the other tubs are filled with families and couples). The talk here, like everywhere else on the ship, concerns football, a sport about which I know nothing. It is apparent that four teams have recently competed in some kind of finals for the year, and that two of them will now face off in the championship. Often when people on the Icon speak, I will try to repeat the last thing they said with a laugh or a nod of disbelief. “Yes, 20-yard line! Ha!” “Oh my God, of course, scrimmage.”

Soon we are joined in the hot tub by the late-middle-age drunk guy with the duck necklace. He is wearing a bucket hat with the legend HAWKEYES , which, I soon gather, is yet another football team. “All right, who turned me in?” Duck Necklace says as he plops into the tub beside us. “I get a call in the morning,” he says. “It’s security. Can you come down to the dining room by 10 a.m.? You need to stay away from the members of this religious family.” Apparently, the gregarious Duck Necklace had photobombed the wrong people. There are several families who present as evangelical Christians or practicing Muslims on the ship. One man, evidently, was not happy that Duck Necklace had made contact with his relatives. “It’s because of religious stuff; he was offended. I put my arm around 20 people a day.”

Everyone laughs. “They asked me three times if I needed medication,” he says of the security people who apparently interrogated him in full view of others having breakfast.

Another hot-tub denizen suggests that he should have asked for fentanyl. After a few more drinks, Duck Necklace begins to muse about what it would be like to fall off the ship. “I’m 62 and I’m ready to go,” he says. “I just don’t want a shark to eat me. I’m a huge God guy. I’m a Bible guy. There’s some Mayan theory squaring science stuff with religion. There is so much more to life on Earth.” We all nod into our Red Stripes.

“I never get off the ship when we dock,” he says. He tells us he lost $6,000 in the casino the other day. Later, I look him up, and it appears that on land, he’s a financial adviser in a crisp gray suit, probably a pillar of his North Chicago community.

photo of author smiling and holding soft-serve ice-cream cone with outdoor seating area in background

THE OCEAN IS TEEMING with fascinating life, but on the surface it has little to teach us. The waves come and go. The horizon remains ever far away.

I am constantly told by my fellow passengers that “everybody here has a story.” Yes, I want to reply, but everybody everywhere has a story. You, the reader of this essay, have a story, and yet you’re not inclined to jump on a cruise ship and, like Duck Necklace, tell your story to others at great pitch and volume. Maybe what they’re saying is that everybody on this ship wants to have a bigger, more coherent, more interesting story than the one they’ve been given. Maybe that’s why there’s so much signage on the doors around me attesting to marriages spent on the sea. Maybe that’s why the Royal Caribbean newsletter slipped under my door tells me that “this isn’t a vacation day spent—it’s bragging rights earned.” Maybe that’s why I’m so lonely.

Today is a big day for Icon passengers. Today the ship docks at Royal Caribbean’s own Bahamian island, the Perfect Day at CocoCay. (This appears to be the actual name of the island.) A comedian at the nightclub opined on what his perfect day at CocoCay would look like—receiving oral sex while learning that his ex-wife had been killed in a car crash (big laughter). But the reality of the island is far less humorous than that.

One of the ethnic tristate ladies in the infinity pool told me that she loved CocoCay because it had exactly the same things that could be found on the ship itself. This proves to be correct. It is like the Icon, but with sand. The same tired burgers, the same colorful tubes conveying children and water from Point A to B. The same swim-up bar at its Hideaway ($140 for admittance, no children allowed; Royal Caribbean must be printing money off its clientele). “There was almost a fight at The Wizard of Oz ,” I overhear an elderly woman tell her companion on a chaise lounge. Apparently one of the passengers began recording Royal Caribbean’s intellectual property and “three guys came after him.”

I walk down a pathway to the center of the island, where a sign reads DO NOT ENTER: YOU HAVE REACHED THE BOUNDARY OF ADVENTURE . I hear an animal scampering in the bushes. A Royal Caribbean worker in an enormous golf cart soon chases me down and takes me back to the Hideaway, where I run into Mrs. Rand in a bikini. She becomes livid telling me about an altercation she had the other day with a woman over a towel and a deck chair. We Suites have special towel privileges; we do not have to hand over our SeaPass Card to score a towel. But the Rands are not Suites. “People are so entitled here,” Mrs. Rand says. “It’s like the airport with all its classes.” “You see,” I want to say, “this is where your husband’s love of Ayn Rand runs into the cruelties and arbitrary indignities of unbridled capitalism.” Instead we make plans to meet for a final drink in the Schooner Bar tonight (the Rands will stand me up).

Back on the ship, I try to do laps, but the pool (the largest on any cruise ship, naturally) is fully trashed with the detritus of American life: candy wrappers, a slowly dissolving tortilla chip, napkins. I take an extra-long shower in my suite, then walk around the perimeter of the ship on a kind of exercise track, past all the alluring lifeboats in their yellow-and-white livery. Maybe there is a dystopian angle to the HBO series that I will surely end up pitching, one with shades of WALL-E or Snowpiercer . In a collapsed world, a Royal Caribbean–like cruise liner sails from port to port, collecting new shipmates and supplies in exchange for the precious energy it has on board. (The actual Icon features a new technology that converts passengers’ poop into enough energy to power the waterslides . In the series, this shitty technology would be greatly expanded.) A very young woman (18? 19?), smart and lonely, who has only known life on the ship, walks along the same track as I do now, contemplating jumping off into the surf left by its wake. I picture reusing Duck Necklace’s words in the opening shot of the pilot. The girl is walking around the track, her eyes on the horizon; maybe she’s highborn—a Suite—and we hear the voice-over: “I’m 19 and I’m ready to go. I just don’t want a shark to eat me.”

Before the cruise is finished, I talk to Mr. Washy Washy, or Nielbert of the Philippines. He is a sweet, gentle man, and I thank him for the earworm of a song he has given me and for keeping us safe from the dreaded norovirus. “This is very important to me, getting people to wash their hands,” he tells me in his burger getup. He has dreams, as an artist and a performer, but they are limited in scope. One day he wants to dress up as a piece of bacon for the morning shift.

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC (the Icon of the Seas is five times as large as that doomed vessel) at least offered its passengers an exciting ending to their cruise, but when I wake up on the eighth day, all I see are the gray ghosts that populate Miami’s condo skyline. Throughout my voyage, my writer friends wrote in to commiserate with me. Sloane Crosley, who once covered a three-day spa mini-cruise for Vogue , tells me she felt “so very alone … I found it very untethering.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in an Instagram comment: “When Gary is done I think it’s time this genre was taken out back and shot.” And he is right. To badly paraphrase Adorno: After this, no more cruise stories. It is unfair to put a thinking person on a cruise ship. Writers typically have difficult childhoods, and it is cruel to remind them of the inherent loneliness that drove them to writing in the first place. It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

A day or two before I got off the ship, I decided to make use of my balcony, which I had avoided because I thought the view would only depress me further. What I found shocked me. My suite did not look out on Central Park after all. This entire time, I had been living in the ship’s Disneyland, Surfside, the neighborhood full of screaming toddlers consuming milkshakes and candy. And as I leaned out over my balcony, I beheld a slight vista of the sea and surf that I thought I had been missing. It had been there all along. The sea was frothy and infinite and blue-green beneath the span of a seagull’s wing. And though it had been trod hard by the world’s largest cruise ship, it remained.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “A Meatball at Sea.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

A Solar Eclipse Means Big Science

By Katrina Miller April 1, 2024

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On April 8, cameras all over North America will make a “megamovie” of the sun’s corona, like this one from the 2017 eclipse. The time lapse will help scientists track the behavior of jets and plumes on the sun’s surface.

There’s more science happening along the path of totality →

An app named SunSketcher will help the public take pictures of the eclipse with their phones.

Scientists will use these images to study deviations in the shape of the solar surface , which will help them understand the sun’s churning behavior below.

The sun right now is approaching peak activity. More than 40 telescope stations along the eclipse’s path will record totality.

By comparing these videos to what was captured in 2017 — when the sun was at a lull — researchers can learn how the sun’s magnetism drives the solar wind, or particles that stream through the solar system.

Students will launch giant balloons equipped with cameras and sensors along the eclipse’s path.

Their measurements may improve weather forecasting , and also produce a bird’s eye view of the moon’s shadow moving across the Earth.

Ham radio operators will send signals to each other across the path of totality to study how the density of electrons in Earth’s upper atmosphere changes .

This can help quantify how space weather produced by the sun disrupts radar communication systems.

(Animation by Dr. Joseph Huba, Syntek Technologies; HamSCI Project, Dr. Nathaniel Frissell, the University of Scranton, NSF and NASA.)

NASA is also studying Earth’s atmosphere, but far from the path of totality.

In Virginia, the agency will launch rockets during the eclipse to measure how local drops in sunlight cause ripple effects hundreds of miles away . The data will clarify how eclipses and other solar events affect satellite communications, including GPS.

Biologists in San Antonio plan to stash recording devices in beehives to study how bees orient themselves using sunlight , and how the insects respond to the sudden atmospheric changes during a total eclipse.

Two researchers in southern Illinois will analyze social media posts to understand tourism patterns in remote towns , including when visitors arrive, where they come from and what they do during their visits.

Results can help bolster infrastructure to support large events in rural areas.

Our Coverage of the Total Solar Eclipse

Dress for the Occasion: What should you wear for the eclipse? Our fashion critic weighs the options , including an unexpected suggestion from scientists.

Free to View: Six inmates in upstate New York prisons who sued the state won their lawsuit to view the eclipse , arguing it “is a religious event.” But a statewide prison lockdown during the eclipse will remain in place.

Hearing the Eclipse: A device called LightSound is being distributed to help the blind and visually impaired experience what they can’t see .

Sky-High Hotel Prices: One Super 8 hotel in the eclipse’s path is charging $949 a night . Its normal rate is $95.

Animal Reactions : Researchers will watch if animals at zoos, homes and farms act strangely when day quickly turns to night.

A Rare Return: A total solar eclipse happens twice in the same place every 366 years on average. But people in certain areas will encounter April 8’s eclipse about seven years after they were near the middle of the path of the “Great American Eclipse.”

No Power Outages: When the sky darkens during the eclipse, electricity production in some parts of the country will drop so sharply that it could theoretically leave tens of millions of homes in the dark. In practice, hardly anyone will notice a sudden loss of energy.

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0 892 7 minutes read. Thomas Stearns Eliot, the writer of Tradition and Individual Talent, is perhaps the greatest English poet, critic, and dramatist of the century. His famous poem, The Wasteland, and his advanced theory of poetry called Imagism. The most significant of critical essays are anthologized in selected Essays Edited by Frank Kermode.
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The Nature and Nurture of Talent

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The Role of Society in Talent Recognition

500 Words Essay on Talent

The Nature vs. Nurture Debate in Talent

The Role of Passion and Persistence

Talent and Society

Conclusion: The Dynamic Nature of Talent

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Talent Matters Even More than People Think

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A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent

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How do I find and hire the right people or attract and retain talent?

How can organizations help talent learn and grow?

Scout: Conduct workforce planning to assess potential skill gaps

Shape: Develop a skill strategy to ensure that the workforce is future-ready

Shift: Reimagine infrastructure for skilling at scale

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Talent at a turning point: How people analytics can help

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‘Great Attrition’ or ‘Great Attraction’? The choice is yours

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Analysis of Tradition and Individual Talent by T.S. Eliot

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Tradition and the Individual Talent

Tradition and the Individual Talent: Introduction

Historical Context of Tradition and the Individual Talent

Extra Credit for Tradition and the Individual Talent

3 Excellent Essays on Talent & Its Importance

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Tradition and the Individual Talent

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“Tradition and the Individual Talent”

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