What is most important? Having the right skills or the right mindset?
With all the talk about the need for further specialization to drive competitive advantage, you would think that skills are super important. But in reality it is the other way around:
Mindset wins. Every single time.
Now, why is that?
It is pretty simple really:
A persons mindset says a lot about character, values, tenacity, ambition – and pretty much everything else.
It speaks to the core of the person and how that person operates, and it is precisely those things that will help carry you and your team through thick and thin, when you have onboarded that person.
As for skills, they are important too for sure. But they are much more fleeting, and they can be learned, when you need them.
Mindset cannot.
Thus it is super important that when you recruit, you’re recruiting mostly for mindset and less so for skills. Of course it is a balance, but I am sure you get the point.
After all you would rather want a decent contributor with a great mindset than what looks like a superstar but who is in reality rotten to the core.
The first one will grow into doing great things with you and your company. The second one will poison everything around him.
(Photo by kylie De Guia on Unsplash)