Skills Redux

In this morning's email, a question I get frequently comes across the screen: Are hiring and promoting for skills enough?

Let me start with the punchline: we hire people for their skills and capabilities to do a job and we fire them for their behavior far more often than the failure to execute on a skill.

In fact, when I asked in a recent conversation with a CHRO, "How many people over the last few years were fired because they failed at the skills identified when they were hired or developed while on the job?" The answer: zero. Well, "what were they fired for?" The answer: failure to work smoothly with others, failure to be a good organizational citizen, and failure to work well with leaders of the enterprise.

And we know that much depends on what you mean about the nature of skills.? Most of the time, when the word skill is used people are referring to doing a specific task, following a particular procedure, or using knowledge (e.g. formulas on an Excel spreadsheet) to achieve a specific outcome.? One source suggests that a skill is the type of activity that requires special training and knowledge.

It took skills and particular capabilities to build Machu Picchu. Not only did there have to be a vision of what it could be, but lots of analysis about the "how-tos" of the stones to be used, how to move them, and how to fit them in such a way to last hundreds of years. Organizations need people with lots of skills to produce, respond to customers, and to get stuff done.

Skills are often identified as functional (e.g. behavior that works across different job positions or roles), personal attributes like being patient or diplomatic, and knowledge-based (e.g. accounting methods and procedures).? Certification in “skill” based programs have been on a steady—exponential growth—in the last five years.? The Harvard Business Review (Skills-Based Hiring Is on the Rise by Fuller, Longer, and Sigelman) suggest a structural reset is in process throughout the economy with a focus less on having a college degree and more on identifiable hard skills.? And the benefit of this movement is that more individuals with skills will be considered for positions they might otherwise be denied.

Let’s not make the mistake, however, of thinking that these kinds of skills are enough for an individual to be successful over a career.? Yes, it is vital to have skills like computer efficiency, expertise in particular areas, and we want plenty of people who love using these skills.? And we also know that there are essential behaviors such as collaborating, demonstrating optimism, teaming, influencing, communicating in an accurate and timely manner, supporting change initiatives, managing conflict, and more.? These behavior practices are complex behaviors which require a great deal of development to execute them well.

So far, what I’ve seen suggested about skills is focused on the know-how to do a particular activity or process such as accounting procedures, programming languages, and the like, and while these are important, to ignore other very complex capabilities is a mistake.? As noted above, in all of my years of working with individuals an organizational talent management practices, I’ve never known a person to be fired because the individual lacked expertise in a particular area—the job was lost because of the way others were treated or an inability to adjust to new environments brought about by acquisitions and mergers.

So the wise play is to develop the skills needed to make an immediate contribution and demonstrate the behaviors essential to being an effective contributor.? We (@talenttelligent) know what these key Practices and Roles are for a successful career from the individual contributor, to the middle manager, and the executive at the top of the house.