On Topic: It’s in the genes

At the end of play for the Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio, last month, Tiger Woods hung up his cap at 14-over 302.

He'd won the event five times before, a record. But after this year's tournament, he noted, 'This is a lonely sport.”

More remarkable, though, was what he'd said earlier that day. When asked about his pretty scruffy performance so far, Woods replied, 'Just because I'm in last place doesn't change how I play golf …

.”

When I heard that, I thought, really? Shouldn't it?

Now, I make no claims to being a golfer of any skill, and I've no playing advice whatsoever to offer Woods, one of the highest-paid athletes in world for a bunch of years. My best and only shot is to drive the ball straight but far too hard so that it flies well beyond where it needs to be. Every time. No doubt has to do with my childhood or something.

But Woods's comment about not changing your method of operation when what you've been doing isn't getting the required results made me think about motivation and how that fuels leadership - our own motivation as well as what we inspire and/or cajole in the people we manage.

And then there is this, from Kansas State University and the National University of Singapore: In May researchers there suggested leadership could be genetic.

That's right. All those conferences, books, audios and YouTube videos we've absorbed to make us better managers - more charismatic, clever enough to see the next disruption before it bangs against our shores, able to leap tall buildings - may not be as good as what we were born with.

Like the innate talent often ascribed to athletes, such as Tiger Woods.

The academic study points to a specific version of a specific gene, DAT1, a dopamine transporter.

(Dopamine is a chemical transmitter that's involved in sending signals to the brain - desire, cravings for chocolate, that sort of stuff. Listen, I don't claim to be any better at chemistry than I am at golf. Sorry.)

That version of the gene tends to be found in folk who are not the follower types. As teenagers, they skipped class a lot, KSU's Dr. Wendong Li suggested, and allowed them 'to explore their own boundaries.”

It's the principal that good followers don't grow up to be good leaders - which I've long believed to be a valid premise.

Li and his colleagues added, though, that fancy-schmancy genes only take you so far: 'These people were less likely to regulate their own behaviors to make a positive change …

(and) were not good at regulating behaviors, such as being persistent,” he said on KSU's website.

In other words, they may have some of the ingredients to devise rousing new ideas and to rally troops. To develop those skills, they also need the right company environment to flourish, as well as a guiding hand to suggest constructive paths along the way.

In the end, really, isn't it this, too: It's not what you come with, it's what you do with it?

' Michael Chevy Castranova is enterprise and business editor of The Gazette. (319) 398-5873; michael.castranova@thegazette.com