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Strength Zone - No 1...
The Secret to Being ...
Do You Need a Push?
Are You Autotelic?
Are You Differentiat...
What Drives You?
The Intersection - R...
Your Talent Strength...
Your Talent Strength...
Personalities: The L...
The Steady Eddie Per...
Personalities: The L...
Bulldozer Personalit...
Values in the Workpl...
What Are Values and ...
What Are Values and ...
What Are Values and ...
What Are Values and ...
What Are Values and ...
The Nine Foot Sumo W...
Insanity!!!!!!!!!
Turn Insignificance ...
Olympics and Your St...
The Olympics and You...
Take TIme To Think
Farming, Fertilizer ...
Fidelity versus Conv...
Nobility and Potenti...
Fluid Leadership
Outside Your Strengt...
A Diversified Team i...
Don't Waste Time Cor...
Are You In the Zone?
Don't Get Derailed
Multiply Your Result...
Do You Need Pruning?
Becoming Fully Effec...
Competing in a Flat ...
State of the Economy
Break Free of the N...
Dealing With Extreme...
13 Qualities of Winn...
Never Confuse Moveme...
Be a Person with Ubu...
What Are Values and ...
Does Your Soul Need ...
What are Values and ...
Are Values in the Wo...
Be an Integrative Th...
Protean Corporation
Fitness Clothes Don'...
Untapped Potential
The Next Step
Technical Skills are...
Your Personal Board ...
How The Mighty Fall
THE INTERSECTION
Are You Hiring Peopl...
Network to Improve Y...
Cato's Principle: Al...
Morganization
Talent Strength Zone...
Talent Strength Zone
Strength Zone Reflec...
Strength Zone versus...
Obama's Communicatio...
Personal Brand State...
Leverage the Strengt...
Obama - Living in Hi...
Strength Zone Produc...
Strength Zone - No 1...
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Technical Skills are Not Enough!
2009-08-01 20:32:19
Technical skills are not enough! They are not enough to be successful in today’s world as a project manager, engineer, nurse, teacher, doctor or any other occupation. They weren’t enough 72 years ago when Dale Carnegie said "...about 15 percent of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 percent is due to skill in human engineering - to personality and the ability to lead people."
72 years ago the pace of business was significantly slower. In today’s society the speed of business has increased by multiple factors of 10 since the 1930s. Today, in a micro-second, we can send an email or text message or use an instant messenger service or MSN or video conference or VOIP phone to connect instantly to members of our project teams co-located globally on all continents. A fast track project 72 years ago would be a very slow project today and a fast track project today would have been impossible 72 years ago. It is in today’s society that the ability to deal with people is absolutely critical to our success!
To illustrate this, how many people have ever sent an email (or text message, instant message, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blog comment) or other sort of electronic communication that you wanted desperately to retract? I think most of us have been affected by this.
Did this negative experience make you more successful or less successful?
Were you relying on your ability to deal with others when you sent this communication? Of course not. You forgot that Technical skills are not enough!
Many of our companies, departments and projects illustrate silos where every person is working in their area of expertise and no one is communicating properly outside their area of expertise. Finance is not talking to sales and sales is not talking with engineering and engineering is not talking with marketing and on and on and on. This is the classical "silo effect" that we see inside many of our companies. Besides politics and personalities the biggest reason silos exist is because we are forgetting that only 15% of our success is dependant on our technical skills.
So if technical skills are not enough, what do we have to do to be successful?
I believe that we need to understand ourselves and our areas of strength. We then need to apply these areas of strength to every role that we have in life. This is the only way to maximize our potential as individuals. But this alone is not enough. Just doing this will result in siloing ourselves into this area of strength.
Besides identifying and growing our areas of strength we must master the art of communication. The first step in this process is defining your own Personality Strength Zone. This allows us to understand ourselves, our personality strengths and weakness. It allows us to understand where we need to be so that we can excel.
It allows us to understand the personality types of other people. Once we understand this, then we can begin to adjust our communication styles to best fit the communication styles of the people that we are dealing with each and every day. The key to this is to go the extra mile and work to understand others. Don't expect them to adapt to you…go in with the expectation that you will change you communication style to best fit theirs and you will see amazing results.
We can summarize this whole blog by this:
Define your Strength Zone….adjust your communication style to match the communication styles of those around you…..help other people find and work in their strengths.
This is the 85% factor that Carnegie was talking about because technical skills are not enough!
Tags: strengths, , strength, zone, , talents, , personality, , people, skills, , andrew, carnegie
0 Comments
2009-08-01 20:32:19
Technical skills are not enough! They are not enough to be successful in today’s world as a project manager, engineer, nurse, teacher, doctor or any other occupation. They weren’t enough 72 years ago when Dale Carnegie said "...about 15 percent of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 percent is due to skill in human engineering - to personality and the ability to lead people."
72 years ago the pace of business was significantly slower. In today’s society the speed of business has increased by multiple factors of 10 since the 1930s. Today, in a micro-second, we can send an email or text message or use an instant messenger service or MSN or video conference or VOIP phone to connect instantly to members of our project teams co-located globally on all continents. A fast track project 72 years ago would be a very slow project today and a fast track project today would have been impossible 72 years ago. It is in today’s society that the ability to deal with people is absolutely critical to our success!
To illustrate this, how many people have ever sent an email (or text message, instant message, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blog comment) or other sort of electronic communication that you wanted desperately to retract? I think most of us have been affected by this.
Did this negative experience make you more successful or less successful?
Were you relying on your ability to deal with others when you sent this communication? Of course not. You forgot that Technical skills are not enough!
Many of our companies, departments and projects illustrate silos where every person is working in their area of expertise and no one is communicating properly outside their area of expertise. Finance is not talking to sales and sales is not talking with engineering and engineering is not talking with marketing and on and on and on. This is the classical "silo effect" that we see inside many of our companies. Besides politics and personalities the biggest reason silos exist is because we are forgetting that only 15% of our success is dependant on our technical skills.
So if technical skills are not enough, what do we have to do to be successful?
I believe that we need to understand ourselves and our areas of strength. We then need to apply these areas of strength to every role that we have in life. This is the only way to maximize our potential as individuals. But this alone is not enough. Just doing this will result in siloing ourselves into this area of strength.
Besides identifying and growing our areas of strength we must master the art of communication. The first step in this process is defining your own Personality Strength Zone. This allows us to understand ourselves, our personality strengths and weakness. It allows us to understand where we need to be so that we can excel.
It allows us to understand the personality types of other people. Once we understand this, then we can begin to adjust our communication styles to best fit the communication styles of the people that we are dealing with each and every day. The key to this is to go the extra mile and work to understand others. Don't expect them to adapt to you…go in with the expectation that you will change you communication style to best fit theirs and you will see amazing results.
We can summarize this whole blog by this:
Define your Strength Zone….adjust your communication style to match the communication styles of those around you…..help other people find and work in their strengths.
This is the 85% factor that Carnegie was talking about because technical skills are not enough!
Tags: strengths, , strength, zone, , talents, , personality, , people, skills, , andrew, carnegie
0 Comments