Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Employee Development

Looking for Important Skills to Develop?

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Whether you need to take on a new challenge, prepare yourself to become promotable, or enhance your performance at work, undertaking learning and development can help. You must continually be on the lookout for new talents to add to the vast fund of knowledge you’ve accumulated over the years and add to the reservoir of experiences from which to draw.

Some skills are critical to your success throughout your career and life. Chris Anderson recently suggested a set of vital topics that must be taught in school. Anderson is the founder and curator of the Ideas-Worth-Spreading TED conferences.

TED’s Chris Anderson propunds a “Syllabus of the Future”

  • How to nurture your curiosity.
  • How to Google intelligently and skeptically.
  • How to manage your money.
  • How to manage your time.
  • How to present your ideas.
  • How to make a compelling online video.
  • The secret life of a girl.
  • The secret life of a boy.
  • How to build a healthy relationship.
  • How to listen.
  • How to calm an argument.
  • Who do you want to be?
  • How to train your brain to be what you want to be.
  • 100 role models for the career you hadn’t thought of.
  • How to think like a scientist.
  • Why history matters.
  • Books that changed the world.
  • Why personal discipline is key to future success.
  • How your reflective self can manage your instinctual self.
  • How to defend the rights of people you care about.
  • 10 hours with a kid on the other side of the world.
  • The keys to a healthy diet.
  • Why exercise matters.
  • How generosity creates happiness.
  • How immersion in nature eases stress.
  • What are the questions no one knows the answer to?

Use his “Syllabus of the Future” list to evaluate your needs in development and educate yourself in a few selected topics. Design a development plan involving regular discussions, reading articles and books, watching instructional videos, attending courses offered by a professional association, and observing and apprenticing with a mentor proficient in the skill you seek.

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. This is Yoga for the Brain: Multidisciplinary Learning
  3. Four Ideas for Business Improvement Ideas
  4. Systems-Thinking as a Trait for Career Success
  5. Some Lessons Can Only Be Learned in the School of Life

General Electric’s Jack Welch Identifies Four Types of Managers

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Jack Welch's Four Types of Managers

Four Types of Managers

Jack Welch, Chairman and CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001, described four categories of managers in General Electric’s year 2000 annual report.

Type 1: shares our values; makes the numbers—sky’s the limit!

Type 2: shares the values; misses the numbers—typically, another chance, or two.

Type 3: doesn’t share the values; doesn’t make the numbers—gone.

Type 4 is the toughest call of all: the manager who doesn’t share the values, but delivers the numbers. This type is the toughest to part with because organizations always want to deliver and to let someone go who gets the job done is yet another unnatural act. But we have to remove these Type 4s because they have the power, by themselves, to destroy the open, informal, trust-based culture we need to win today and tomorrow.

We made our leap forward when we began removing our Type 4 managers and making it clear to the entire company why they were asked to leave—not for the usual “personal reasons” or “to pursue other opportunities,” but for not sharing our values. Until an organization develops the courage to do this, people will never have full confidence that these soft values are truly real.

Live by Corporate Values

Organizations face the challenge of developing and sustaining a culture that is both values-centered and performance-driven. They begin by developing mission and value statements that, in due course, become little more than wall decorations because the organization’s leaders and managers fail to uphold these values.

Nothing hurts morale more than when leaders tolerate employees who deliver results, but exhibit behaviors that are incongruent to values of the company. For instance, an organization that thrives on teamwork will suffer, over the long term, if a manager habitually claims all credit for his team’s accomplishments.

Idea for Impact: Core Values Matter!

As a manager, drive accountability. Hold employees responsible for their behaviors. Reward employees for proper behaviors and publicly discourage behaviors that do not uphold values. Do not make exceptions—exceptions signify your own indifference to the upholding of values.

As an employee, understand that an essential requirement for your success in your organization is your fit. Your behaviors must be congruent with the character and needs of your organization. Even if you are talented, you will not fare well if your behaviors are inconsistent with the values of your organization. Reflect on your behavior. On a regular basis, collect feedback from your managers, peers and employees. Seek change.

Keep the company values front and center in people’s mind.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Seven Real Reasons Employees Disengage and Leave
  2. Fire Fast—It’s Heartless to Hang on to Bad Employees
  3. Eight Ways to Keep Your Star Employees Around
  4. How to Manage Overqualified Employees
  5. Don’t Push Employees to Change

The Skills-Attitudes Competence Model

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While poking around the internet, I recently bumped into a few articles that refer to a study by either Harvard or Stanford or both that concluded that 85% of one’s success at work is due to his/her attitudes and just 15% is due to technical skills [1, 2]. While most of us agree with this statement in principle, we could question how a survey could quantify attitudes and technical skills and the contributions of these traits to professional success.

The simple skills-attitudes competence model shown below will help quantify one’s talents and understand the relative contributions of skills and attitudes to professional success. This model is a graphical indication of one’s positioning with respect to technical skills (x-axis) and attitudes and behaviors (y-axis). Every job carries a certain level of expectation for both of these disciplines. A threshold line divides this landscape into the proficient and vulnerable zones. The position of the threshold line vis-à-vis the lines of expectation signifies a lower tolerance for poor attitudes in comparison to insufficient technical skills.

Consider six people, A to F, in the landscape. ‘A’ possesses lower than expected skills, but possesses the right attitudes to learn, grow and get things done. ‘B’ and ‘C’ possess the same level of skills as ‘A’, but possess worse attitudes and risk being labeled incompetent. ‘B’ could move into the secure zone by developing skills (transitioning along the x-axis) or by developing positive attitudes (transitioning along the y-axis) or by developing on both (transitioning along an inclined line). ‘D’ and ‘E’ may be extremely skilled; their skills may be critical to the success of the organization. However, if ‘D’ fails to fails to conform to the core values of the company or exhibits behavior that is difficult to tolerate, the organization may eliminate him from his position. ‘F’ possesses the best attitudes and skills and thrives in the organization. The farther away ‘F’ is from the threshold line, the more secure he or she is.

Use this skills-attitudes competence model to define tangible attributes of skills and attitudes expected of you in the context of your current position or your desired future position. Identify your position on this chart. Under the guidance of your supervisor and mentors, identify what skills and/or attitudes you can develop towards a successful and satisfying career.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. General Electric’s Jack Welch Identifies Four Types of Managers
  2. Ten Rules of Management Success from Sam Walton
  3. Seven Real Reasons Employees Disengage and Leave
  4. How to Manage Overqualified Employees
  5. Fire Fast—It’s Heartless to Hang on to Bad Employees