When Fishes Climb Trees by Kingsley Obom-Egbulem

WHEN FISHES CLIMB TREES is a talent management manual written Kingsley Obom-Egbulem, Nigeria’s most authoritative voice on natural intelligence and talent management. Kingsley is a Parenting and Teens Life Coach and Heads the Junior Church of Daystar Christian Centre, Lagos where he provides leadership for a team of committed volunteers and early childhood specialists.

To help us understand the tragedy this book is meant to avert, Kingsley showed some group of people, pictures of football superstar, Lionel Messi and renown neurosurgeon, Dr. Ben Carson and asked them to tell him who is more intelligent amongst the two. Without thinking through, they said “Dr. Ben Carson”.

“When I asked them to explain the reason for their answer, one of them said “because he’s a neurosurgeon” said Kingsley. “So, I took out Ben Carson’s picture and replaced it with the picture of Beyoncé – arguably one of the most successful singers and performers today.”

This time, they were a bit confused and reluctantly said “Beyoncé”.

Finally, Kingsley flipped the pictures, and included Bill Gates and other people he considered gifted and intelligent. Alongside Messi and Beyonce, he asked them to tell him who they considered more intelligent. Again, without giving much thought to the question, they told him “Bill Gates.”

By now, it was obvious that these guys didn’t equate anything outside medicine, science, technology and academics as “intelligent”. It took reading this book for these men to be convinced that it takes intelligence to sing and play football so well. They also realised that every child is indeed born with an unusual measure of intelligence, but they only look stupid if you place them outside their comfort zones by insisting that they study courses or do jobs they are not WIRED for.

So, how do you make the best of your child’s talent and natural intelligence? How do you explore your child’s uniqueness and avoid exposing them to schools and adults who would make them feel Unintelligent because these adults lack what it takes to work with their uniqueness?

This book shows you how!