Character Over Code: A Fresh Take on the Skills We Actually Need

Soft skills. Hard skills. Moderately moist and squishy skills. These buzzwords are thrown around all the time, but they’re neither appealing nor particularly useful. How to think differently about it?

The 'soft' and 'hard' language originally came from the US Army: hard skills relating to the ability to use military hardware; soft skills being… well, the other stuff.

Through this lens, hardly any of us are using true hard skills (no, your desk job is not urban warfare, even if some people want to believe it is). And ‘soft skills’ doesn’t exactly spark excitement.

Seth Godin has a reframe, thinking of soft skills as ‘Real Skills’. I love Seth, but can’t help feeling this does a disservice to ‘hard’ skills. They’re still valuable.

Another brilliant bald brainiac, Adam Grant opts for ‘Cognitive’ and ’Character’ skills. This, I dig.

The Character stuff is particularly fascinating.

One example Grant references comes from a team of social scientists working in West Africa.

The West African Experiment That Changes Everything

They recruited 1,500 entrepreneurs running small startups in manufacturing, service, and commerce. The founders were men and women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.

In Cognitive Skills training, founders took an accredited business course. They studied finance, accounting, HR, and pricing. They then practiced what they learned to solve challenges and seize opportunities.

In Character Skills training, they attended a class designed by psychologists to teach personal initiative. They studied proactivity, discipline, and determination, and practiced putting those qualities into action.

After five days working on Character skills, their firms’ profits grew by an average of 30% over the next two years - nearly 3x the benefit from Cognitive skills training.

Right. You might be thinking: cool story, bro. Thanks for being the 1000th person to repost some Adam Grant stuff on the internet this month.

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So, here's the real question.

How do we create environments, tools, and resources that not only enhance Character skills - but make people excited to develop them?

This is a tough nut to crack. It ain't gonna be through regular courses or training stuff. But it's a very tasty nut indeed.

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What's your take? How are you developing you and your team's Character skills?

P.S. If you're interested in the challenge of creating cool ways for people to develop their Character skills, give us a holler. It's also ok if you have a nut allergy - we don't discriminate.

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