Welcome back to the show. Today's topic is nature versus nurture. It's one of the things

I get asked about most whether it's developing business leaders in raising people, not environment

or raising children. Ed, what matters? Nature or nurture? It's been a debate that's gone

on for eons. And there's really two camps. The first camp says that it's all nature.

It's all evolution. It's all genetics. How somebody's going to turn out is all their biology.

Their talents, their skills, their success level, their happiness. It's all nature, right?

The other camp says, no, it's not nature at all. It's nurture. It's the environment that

somebody has raised him. So, you know, one point of view, like a guy like John Locke,

the philosopher, he was a real big guy on that the mind is a blank slate and that we're

born into an environment and the experiences and memories that we have, the situations we

find ourselves in, the thoughts that are programmed into us, that's what develops us.

Obviously, other people think, no, that's not the case because two children can be raised

in the exact same house, can't they? Say an alcoholic home like I was raised in. One

of them turns out to be, you know, very, very successful and happy. And another child

has trouble with alcohol themselves or it doesn't have a high level of success or has

problems. And so, really, if it's all environment, why is it that two people can come out of

an environment completely different? Same time, you can't really argue the fact that some

of us are born with certain abilities, certain talents, certain predispositions. And so,

here's what I'm going to submit to you that I have stumbled onto in my life in raising

children and raising business leaders in developing them. You ready? Nurture their nature.

The great parents, the great business leaders, nurture the nature of this person. Meaning,

let's just take about it from a parenting standpoint. Your child was probably born with

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