Skills and Attitudes

Training legend Bob Mager wrote about skill deficits vs. attitude deficits. He posited that if you held a gun to someone’s head, and they still couldn’t so a job, then there was a skills problem. But if they could do it under threat, then there was an attitude problem. The former required training, which was easier than the latter, which required coaching.

It seems we have more and more attitude problems today, people with the skills who can do a given job but with a hundred reasons and a thousand grievances why they won’t.

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