Mordi’s ‘The Talent Coach’ Answers Key Questions Around Talent

In his latest work, The Talent Coach, 2004 Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner, Frederick Mordi tackles key questions about talents that have been pondered upon across generations.

Published in 2023, the 205 pages novel tells the story of a celebrated orator, Dr Joe Jordan whose work visit to Nigeria, on the invitation of a leading new generation bank, saw him assist many Nigerians rediscover their hidden talents, and mine their natural endowments to build a successful life for themselves via his carefully-crafted 12 Principles.

Mordi’s motivational-like fiction aims at debunking the popular myth that talent is an exclusive a select few. It also explores the intricate relationship between nature and nurture in relation to talent in 12 topics and prologue.

In the first topic ‘Everyone Has Talent’, emphasis is made on the universality of talent, dispelling the notion that its confined to a few. The second topic ‘Nature or Nurture’ weighs in on the longstanding debate surrounding the origin of talent. ‘Remain In Your Field’ stresses the important of knowing one’s strengths and improving them. The Icarus Paradox centers on the challenges of sustaining stasis in success.

‘Practice Makes Perfect’ delineates the importance of practice in talent honing; how to overcome self-doubts and embrace one’s accomplishment in ‘Dealing With Impostor Syndrome’; and how to build-up mental and emotional strength when failure occurs in ‘What Is Your Adversity Quotient?’

A peculiar aspect of The Talent Coach is its capacity to break the fourth wall, allowing fiction to spill into reality with the protagonist’s 12 Principles and a workbook (at the end of the book) that helps readers conduct critical self-assessment of their talent, to become a better version of themselves.

A corporate communications practitioner, Mordi possesses over two decades experience in journalism, public relations, government affairs, and change, and stakeholder management. His first fiction publication The Familiar Stranger and Other Stories won a Commonwealth Short Story award in 2004.

The Talent Coach is on sale at leading bookstores across the country, and on digital stores like Amazon, Lulu and Selar.