Executive Summary
Reskilling and upskilling are now enterprise imperatives. But organizations that define “skills” too narrowly risk undermining long-term workforce effectiveness.
While technical and functional capabilities remain essential, research increasingly shows that attributional qualities, often labeled soft or durable skills, are among the strongest predictors of leadership effectiveness, manager performance, and individual contributor success.
For talent management professionals, the question is no longer whether to invest in skills. It is how to define them. High-impact competency models must integrate knowledge, skills, and behavioral attributes to ensure workforce sustainability, career resilience, and organizational performance.
In our recently published article, we promoted one of the best practices for organizations and individuals to survive and thrive in both ever-evolving work environments and market dynamics, by sharing that…
“Providing robust reskilling and upskilling initiatives is now an enterprise imperative for talent management professionals seeking to empower workforce evolution and foster career resilience.”
We, and astute talent management professionals, stand by that statement and the accompanying, multiple strategies noted in the article, which can be deployed to achieve the desired benefits.
But what did you read into or think about when you took in the words quoted above?
The Skills Movement and the Limits of Hard Skills
Many of us are locked in on “skills” as being the knowledge or hard skills needed to meet a job requirement. We often think of coding, programming, pipefitting, powerline installation, crane operation, or a specialty such as mechanical engineering or biochemistry. That’s natural, and to earn any of these jobs, candidates prepare to interview for them by citing line and verse for how they meet or exceed each needed knowledge or skill requirement.
The skills movement and related skills marketplaces have most often been centered on such skills—the “what” of what is needed to do any particular job and/or to ready oneself for the next job to ensure employability and relevance, and for the organization to ensure sustainability.
What’s lacking in too many skills models, skills marketplaces and organizational competency models today are the necessary “how” elements—the human attributional qualities that, after IQ, are commonly the most important variables for success in any job. These characteristics describe how a person acts or behaves, rather than what they know. Consider this recent HBR article, “Soft Skills Matter Now More Than Ever, According to New Research.”
It’s important to ask yourself the question, “How are we defining ‘skills’?”
You’ve heard these one-liners from us over the years:
- You’ll get hired for what you know, but you’ll get fired for how you behave.
- We hired for knowledge and skills, but the whole darn person showed up.
Attributional Skills That Drive Performance
Research on the attributional behaviors that matter is represented in our levelled performance libraries for leaders, managers/supervisors and individual contributors. While there is modest overlap for the behaviors that are needed to be effective no matter the organizational level (such as having a growth mindset or being resilient), there are distinct attributes that are the most highly correlated to effectiveness and success at each distinct level.
Consider what might go poorly, or might not get done, if the following attributional examples aren’t visible and effectively lived by the various players:
Leaders
- Emotional self-management
- Comfort with ambiguity
- Developing others
- Political savvy and agility
Managers/Supervisors
- Relating and managing up
- Managing individuals differently
- Managing team boundaries
- Fostering innovation
Individual Contributors
- Taking initiative
- Being responsive and coachable
- Relating well with customers
- Providing added support when needed
Anecdotes from far and wide are often republished about toxic employees being tolerated to the extent that other talented employees choose to leave. About turnover in a manager’s ranks that is so high that it eclipses their financial value to the organization. About leaders who are so emotionally volatile that their direct reports go silent. The list of negative experiences is long, yet rarely includes the lack of either knowledge or a hard skill.
Where Soft Skills and Durable Skills Show Up in Modern Competency Models
Modern competency models have sought to include more soft/durable skills such as those related to emotional intelligence and those that represent desirable cultural attributes such as belonging, inclusion, happiness, and similar constructs. That is progress!
Yet too many of their job-specific profiles still omit attributional requirements, even when these are obvious to success.
We all see values stenciled on lobby walls, printed in annual reports and expressed in company and employee social media posts. These are reinforcing and powerful when they are truly lived behaviors. That’s encouraging!
A Whole-Person Approach to Talent Management
Take a “whole person” approach to leader, manager, and individual effectiveness. Powerful and complete success profiles—for organizations and for specific jobs—must include knowledge, skills, and attributes. Leaving off one of the KSAs can be fatal to individual and team effectiveness, to career advancement, and to organizational performance and brand reputation.
