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Mindset vs. Skillset
Success is less about what you KNOW than WHERE you’re coming from
A few years ago, as one of my clients introduced me to a roomful of people in a leadership workshop I was facilitating, something she said caught my attention: innovation skills. That’s what she told the 41 business leaders of the future they were going to learn from me.
Yes, it was true. I was going to help them learn and practice some new skills. But that was only half the story. Actually, less than half. Much less.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned these past 33 years of working as an innovation provocateur, it’s this: mindset — not skill set — is the name of the game in life these days.
When a person’s mindset (i.e. receptivity, curiosity, adaptability, enthusiasm, focus) is in the right place, skill set becomes secondary.
Is acquiring new skills useful? Of course it is. If you’re about to have surgery, you want to know that the person with the scalpel in their hands knows what they’re doing. But all the skills in the world become useless if the mind of the physician is cloudy.
I’m talking attitude. Viewpoint. Mindset.
“It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see.” — H.D. Thoreau
