Traits you can change, and traits you cannot
https://staysaasy.com/leadership/2022/11/06/traits-you-can-change-and-traits-you-cant.html
In my experience some personal traits can be changed, and some cannot. Mistaking one case for the other causes two of the most common and costly talent retention mistakes:
- Failing to believe in a rising star, because you thought that their weaknesses couldn’t be addressed. What it looks like: “I always knew they were talented but inexperienced, but I can’t believe how successful they’ve become.”
- Investing too much in a lost cause, because you thought that their built-in weaknesses could be coached. What it looks like: “I thought I could coach them to do better, but in the end they just couldn’t figure it out.”
Traits You Can Change
- Ability to Step Back and See the Big Picture: A common trap that skilled practitioners fall into is the tendency to fixate on solutions. … One of the most important ways that some people can learn to take a step back is by learning to question their own assumptions or initial reactions.
- Industry and Technical Knowledge
- Confidence can be increased with time. People can grow to become confident leaders with repeated wins, particularly if they’re mastering their craft in a way that shows visible progress (and can therefore see that their progress isn’t luck).
- Cultural Norms (within reason): People can adjust to cultural norms. “ came from “ isn’t a valid reason to reject them as long as they understand that they may have to adjust their approach.
- Poise (Working with Leadership): I don’t know anyone whose 30th email to an executive audience wasn’t noticeably better than their 3rd.
Traits You Can’t Change
Raw Intelligence: You can’t make someone smarter. You can give them better frameworks to work with, put them into roles where their skills can be maximally successful ie where raw IQ is less necessary, but actually making them smarter overall is impossible. … if you have someone really smart on your team you can usually throw them at all sorts of other problems and they’ll succeed.
Emotional Reactivity: People who lose their temper quickly. People who tend to react minimally to both good and bad news. People who are anxious all the time, vs people who are never anxious.
This also extends to various emotion-related traits such as anxiety, optimism / pessimism, ability to be inspirational, etc. What you see on day 1 is probably within 15% of what you’ll get on day 1000. The only mitigating factors are age and large life events - for example, a family tragedy can unfortunately be very unsettling for several months.
Natural speed: There’s a particular mix of motivation, creativity, relentlessness, and impatience that manifests as a higher typical top speed. Some people are sharks and some people are manatees and no matter how inspirational you are that manatee is never going to leap out of the water to catch a seal.
If someone gets stuff done fast, they’ll tend to do so in a wide range of situations. They’ll produce docs, code, or emails faster. They’ll hire and fire faster. They’ll convince others faster. Everything gets done faster and they just won’t seem to run into blockers as much as others. Speed is one of the greatest virtues in most work environments, and if you find someone who works fast you can place them in a variety of situations and reap the benefits. And if you have someone who is more methodical, you typically can’t rely on them to run a faster-moving process over a long time period.
Finally - inexperienced but sharp team members who have all of the raw skills that you can’t coach can make great leaders. Don’t let them leave your company.