1.

It is true that to some, talking comes naturally to them, but even those who have
natural ability for something have to work to develop it. That’s what turns a
talent into a skill.
It is to some extent agreeable that talking comes naturally to some people – the likes of former
United States President, Barack Obama, is a quintessential prove of natural gift of the gab.
However, there is also the personal self-development or skill training or development that comes
with honing a particular talent. Therefore, Barack Obama might have been a naturally good
speaker, but his years of training at Harvard Law School, combined with years of being a United
States senator culminated in further improving his innate capacity for making great speeches.

Therefore, to show the relationship between inborn talent and honing it into a skill, it is pertinent
to define both concepts, in order to indicate the core difference between the two concepts.

Some of the definitions of talent is that it is a raw skill that needs work and practice to develop it
into a competitive skill, that gives you an edge over others. Indicating that once you identify your
talent, you will need to put in hours of training and practice to perfect it.

From the definition above, it can be gleaned that the keyword in the definition is that talent is
raw and natural and requires hours of practice and conditioning before it becomes a formidable
skill. Hence, you will need to practice, take formal classes and work hard in order to turn the
talent into a marketable skill.

Skill on the other end, especially as defined by Usain Bolt is only developed by hours and hours
of work”. In essence, raw talent that has gone through several hours of training and practice
eventually develops into a skill. From the foregoing, the relationship between the two concept is
closely knitted, the core difference however is that while talent is raw, innate and comes
naturally to a person, skill on the other hand can be considered as talent that has become
improved upon and perfected through hours of disciplined dedication for improvement.

It is apposite to emphasize that the core difference between talent and skill is that talent is
perfected into a skill that comes naturally to you. Developing your skills should be a continuous
process as there are people who are better than you and there are people who have the ability to
learn and work hard and become better than you. Therefore, if you become complacent,
depending solely on your talent, there is a very high likelihood that talent, without development
will not get your far. However, a combination of talent and continuous striving to become better
at a thing turns such raw talent into a skill.

A prove of the constant need to hone ones talent into a formidable skill can be aptly captioned in
the scenario where even the most skilled musicians in the world are always practising and
learning new ways of improving their singing or skills at playing certain instruments. Life is a
continuous learning process, therefore, talent ought to constantly be put through development
and growth so as to catch up the trends and real-life development so that the talent does not
phase out or get outdated.

2|Page