Why Attitude Matters as much as Skills
When Mark Murphy, bestselling author and CEO of Leadership IQ, tracked 20 000 new hires over a three-year period, and then discovered that a whopping 46% of them failed within 18 months, he wasn’t telling us anything new. After all, as bad as that result sounds, it is consistent with the findings of other similar studies. Murphy, however, did offer something interesting when he went on to explain in his book, Hiring for Attitude, the reasons why those hires failed. Only 11% of them failed because of a deficiency in skills. The top four reasons for failure all had to do with a deficiency in attitude – 26% were unresponsive to coaching, 23% had low levels of emotional intelligence, 17% lacked motivation and 15% had temperament issues.