Attitude VS Skills
When is it wise to hire for attitude and when for skills? Is there a general rule or shall we chose different depending on the job in hand, the industry and the market scenario?
The competitive world we live in tempts every organization to hire the best talent and no doubt it is important to hire the finest talent there is because a company is all about its people. It that however enough to perform a job? Even more is that enough to help the team succeed?
What if the candidates don’t have the required personality and temperament to meld in the team?
Ideally, we want to have in our team people with both the right attitude and the right aptitude.
What if we have only one option what is the right choice?
I would split different types of jobs in an organization into two major categories. My choices will vary also upon these 2 different categories.
A. For day to day jobs, if given to choose between attitude and skills, I would choose the person with the right attitude every single time.
B. For jobs that require innovation, big change, revolutionary thinking I would hire for skills (because we need them) and figure out how to deal with the attitude (because, all too often, it comes along with the skills).
To simplify it more if the job demands that the future hire has to work with other team members then we look at attitude first.
If the job profile requires him to work mostly isolated from a team (researcher, innovator, developer….) then skills are a big thing.
For day to day jobs, hiring for attitude and training for skills approach is backed up by studies which have shown that 80% of our success is based on our EQ and 20% on our IQ.
In his iconic book “The Intelligent Investor”, Benjamin Graham describes the “intelligent investor”, making it clear that this kind of intelligence is nothing to do with IQ scores. It means “being patient, disciplined, eager to learn”. “He must also be able to harness his emotions and think for himself”.
The game-changers at Southwest Airlines, who have prospered for nearly 40 years by challenging conventional wisdom in the airline industry, have embraced the “hire for attitude” philosophy more intensely than maybe any other organization.
Few reasons that attitude is more important than skills in day to day jobs.
1. It is easier to train aptitude than attitude.
When people have the right attitude, they are both motivated and adaptable which makes them more open to learning new skills. With the right attitude and enough effort most new skills can be mastered quickly. Whereas improving attitude is often about changing behaviors which is always much more difficult to do, as people need to want to change and without the right attitude this is unlikely to happen.
2. Attitude can impact overall performance.
One of the biggest challenges faced is to fill organizations with executives and front-line employees whose personal values are in sync with the values that make the organization tick.
When people have the wrong attitude, getting them to fit into the organization can be very difficult. They can just clash with the culture of the organization, disrupt teamwork, causing unrest and impacting overall performance.
We often see this in sports where highly skilled players just don't fit in with their teammates, causing issues and discontent. Consequently, they are let go and then almost immediately team performance improves.
3. The right attitude can overcome obstacles.
We have all heard the saying "when the going gets tough, the tough get going." Well if it were about having the right aptitude then saying would be “when the going gets tough, the smart get going”. But it is not.
We are always going to face challenges, difficult times, and it is in these moments that things like determination, tenacity and resilience come to the fore. Having the right skills but lacking the will to use them is not going to help us overcome the challenges and achieve success.
4. No one was born knowing everything.
Skills are acquired in time and everyone deserves a chance. If we would only hire those people with the right skills, fresh graduates with out of box ideas might never get a chance to prove what they can do in a certain assignment. And as they say if you do not risk you cannot win.