The Virtuoso and the Polymath: A Career Comedy in Two Acts
Ever been to one of those events where everyone has to introduce themselves? Some people have it easy. “I’m a doctor,” they say, with the confidence of someone who’s never had to explain a job title with three slashes and an ampersand. The rest of us stand there madly spinning our mental resume – Board director? College president? Writer? Entrepreneur? – searching for the right professional identity to present in our allotted thirty seconds.
I never get this right. After years of suffering through this professional theater, I’ve concluded that most of us fall into two categories: virtuosos and polymaths. Or more simply, the specialists and the wanderers.
Virtuosos are the folks who picked a lane and stayed in it. They progress with steady determination through their chosen field, deepening their expertise with the precision of a master craftsperson. Their LinkedIn profile reads like a straight line, and their network looks like a perfectly organized family tree.
Then there are the polymaths, restless and curious explorers who move between sectors and organizations. They get excited about steep learning curves the way others get excited about promotions. They see around corners and make connections between seemingly unrelated fields. Their networks are broad rather than deep.
The psychological profiles of these paths are distinct. Virtuosos find deep satisfaction in accumulating expertise in a single domain, as demonstrated by figures like Warren Buffett, who steadily refined his investment philosophy for over 60 years. Or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, architecting women’s constitutional rights until reaching the Supreme Court. Or Roger Goodell, whose career began in the NFL mailroom and led to the Commissioner’s box at the Super Bowl. Each one honed their craft with unwavering focus.
Polymaths treat their careers like a series of interconnected adventures, with plenty of plot twists to feed their love of emerging markets and trends. Take Sara Blakely, who transformed from fax machine saleswoman to Disney World ride greeter to founder of Spanx and serial investor, each role teaching her something about consumer needs and market gaps. Or Shirley Ann Jackson, who moved seamlessly from being MIT’s first Black woman Ph.D. in theoretical physics to conducting research at Bell Labs to leading Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute while serving on corporate boards and chairing the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Then there’s Mark Cuban, who pivoted from bartender to software entrepreneur to NBA team owner to healthcare pioneer, with a promising side hustle in politics. Or Jeff Bezos, who wove together seemingly disparate threads – Wall Street analysis, online books, cloud computing, space exploration – into an empire built on seeing connections others missed. Or multifaceted artists such as Steven Van Zandt, who glides improbably between guitar hero in the E Street Band, actor on The Sopranos, radio DJ, and writer on neuroscience and music, each new venture just another song in a setlist.
In today’s job market, choosing between being a virtuoso or polymath is like choosing between a chef’s knife and a Swiss Army knife – one perfectly crafted for a specific purpose, the other ready for anything.
An enthusiastic polymath myself, I make no value judgments. Really, some of my best friends are virtuosos.
As we look ahead to 2025, anticipating an era of unprecedented technological and social change, the ideal strategy would be to combine the deep expertise of the virtuoso with the adaptable thinking of the polymath: the 21st-century equivalent of “Dress British, think Yiddish!”