should you hire for talent or attitude?

This is a question that just keeps popping up everywhere. Over and over again.

Why are we still quibbling about the wrong details?

News Flash: The world of business has changed. Fundamentally. It’s time you raised your organization to the next level. Let me explain —

 

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The hiring debate basically has two camps:

One one side is the talent/experience camp. Sometimes also known as the skills camp. Skills like engineering, accounting, scheduling, selling, marketing, machining, programming et al.

On the other side is the attitude camp. This camp argues that what’s most important is things like spirit, teamwork, self-motivation, EQ, ownership.

And there are some with feet in both camps.

But they’re all quibbling about the wrong details.

There’s something else that’s far, far more important than either talent or attitude — and that is “how insightful is the employee?”

Why is insightfulness so much more important?

Imagine an individual who has a great attitude but is not that insightful. Such an individual would happily and constantly pick the wrong strategies, tactics and techniques. Big fail.

On the flip side, imagine an individual who has all the right hard skills. For example, an accountant proficient with spreadsheets and ledgers and cost accounting and P&L statements et al. But what if this individual is not insightful enough to read between the numbers and so, misses the opportunities and threats to the business? Big fail. Again.

Or, imagine a leader who is up-to-date with all the latest leadership insights. But is not insightful enough to understand what an employee or a customer is really complaining about. Disaster.

Now, rise up to the next level.

Consider an insightful individual — insightful about himself/herself, and so is motivated and engaged; insightful about others, and so is an excellent, empathetic team player, leader and/or marketer; and insightful enough to separate the signal from the noise — and read between the lines and the numbers and everything else; and also, insightful enough to understand what’s necessary to become great at leadership, innovation, effectiveness, et al.

What if your job was on the line?

And in case you’re still not convinced, consider this scenario:

Imagine you’ve just been handed a project that will make or break your career. You need to pick one employee to make this project happen. How would you pick such a person? Be honest. You would instinctively look beyond education, experience, skills and attitude — and all those things everyone is quibbling about. Instead, you would home in on the person who is insightful enough to identify and execute the fastest, surest path to success. Isn’t that true?

Insightfulness trumps everything else. If you don’t hire for insightfulness, it will break your career. It’s just a matter of time. If you do hire for insightfulness, it will make the single biggest boost to your career.

Why is insightfulness in such short supply?

I can already hear you protesting, “But insightful people are so rare!”

Indeed, they are. But they’re only rare because we, as leaders, quibble about the wrong details. They’re only rare because we don’t hire for insightFULness, we don’t train for insightFULness and we don’t promote for insightFULness.

They’re only rare because we confuse being FULL of insights with being insightFUL. There’s a huge difference.

We train our people to be FULL of insights. We don’t even think about training them to be insightFUL.

We promote people based on how FULL of insights they are. We don’t even realize they’ll inevitably fail if they’re not insightFUL — not matter what their attitude.

Going back to the original question in the headline: Yes, both talent and attitude are
important, to different degrees, depending on the job and the responsibility. But you should consider them only after you’ve screened or trained people for being insightful.

And forget that age-old myth that you need age or experience to become insightFUL. Surely you’ve met at least one young person who’s an “old soul.” Their age or experience clearly has no bearing on their acuity. They’re perceptive simply because they’ve learned to ask themselves the questions that lead them to what matters most.

This means you can actually train your people (many of them!) to become insightFUL. Are you training them? Are you at least trying?

Read related post.

The sad reality is that most companies today are littered with people who are FULL of insights, their spirits broken because they haven’t been groomed to be insightFUL enough to bring real results.

What are you waiting for? Isn’t it time you bucked the trend?

Aman
(Aman Motwane)

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that is insightFUL.
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