Are Top Performer Skills Hard Wired?

Are top performer skills hard-wired? Can you really train someone (or yourself) to be successful and satisfied in a career? Can you train people to fit into jobs that they’re not naturally equipped to do?

<!–more–>

During a recent interview with Chuck Martin on my Workforce Trends Radio Show, we discussed those very questions.  I began the show by asking him what was unique about his new book Work Your Strengths. At first glance, it seems quite similar to Discover Your Strengths and Strengths Finder by Marcus Buckingham.

“What’s unique about Work Your Strengths,” Martin revealed on Workforce Trends, “is that it’s based on a psychological, scientific model. The research in the book is based on 40 years of neuroscience brain research. Martin spent two years on the project and had 113 researchers work on it at various parts of it.  In addition, thousands of people were profiled in hundreds of companies, large and small.

In the end, Martin and his research team at NFI Research Inc. found that people are born with certain characteristics that develop and lie in what’s called the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain right behind the forehead. In there are located specific functions, cognitive functions called executive skills.  “It’s an absolutely terrible, terrible name, but that’s what psychologists named them more than ten years ago, says Martin.” They’re called executive skills; they have nothing to do with executives and nothing to do with skills. But the name executive skills was given because they help people execute tasks, and because psychologists refer to the brain as the central executive.

There are twelve executive skills, or cognitive strengths, that people are born with. Executive skills are skills like time management, organization, planning and prioritization, task initiation, and so forth. They develop over time, through late adolescence and early adulthood. By the time people reach what psychologists believe is somewhere in their twenties, these skills become fully developed.  According to Martin, executive skills develop very much like your height.  You get taller and taller…and then you stop growing.  You don’t really have much control over how tall you become.  Executive skills are similar: the process is neurologically driven.

People end up with two or three executive skills that are their strongest and two or three that are their weakest.  “That’s pretty much what you’ve got,” says Martin.  The problem is people don’t always get into situations that play to their strengths. Instead they might choose a career or end up in jobs that might play to their weakest skills, which means a job or a function you’re expected to do well is unnatural for how your brain is essentially hardwired.

When Martin started his research, he wondered if there were three skills of the twelve that successful people have in common.  “Fortunately that’s not we found,” Martin shared.  “That could have been a disaster. That would mean that certain individuals would be destined to be losers.”

What Martin did find is that certain executive skills go with certain jobs. It explained things very nicely and scientifically. “What we wanted to do was to be able to help people predict scientifically where they’re likely to be successful from a percentage standpoint.”

The problem in business today is that employers we hire somebody based on their strengths.  They then spend all the time trying to fix their employees’ weakness. Take the performance review: the manager tells you that you’re doing really, really well at A, B, and C. Then the focus turns to talk about all the things you need to work on. It’s the same review year, after year, after year. Instead of getting people to look at strengths, and finding other positions and functions that can use them, because that’s what you’re really good at. Martin offered an example about an employee weak in time management.  What employers do is take an employee who’s weak in time management and send him to five or ten time management courses.  After all the training, the employee is still weak in time management.  The employee is stressed.  Management is frustrated.  And the employee’s strengths have largely been ignored.

Martin offered these words of advice for managers, for people looking for jobs, or for people who feel stuck in a career.  “Anyone who feels like he’s doing really well and he loves his job, he should find out why by looking at his strengths. For anyone who’s not happy in his job, he should discover their strong and weak executive skills and search for a situation that fits them, Find careers and companies where people like them have succeeded. 

Understanding executive skills takes all the personality and guesswork out of hiring and career searching.  The solution seems so easy – just go where others like you have gone before. That’s good news for employers and job seekers alike – there is a good job fit out there for everyone.

Click here to listen to the full show What Sets Top Performers Apart. (30 minutes)

Click here to download a transcript of What Sets Top Performers Apart.