Determination or Skill … What will matter?

When we have energy, we are able to motivate ourselves and we get the job done, was it our skill or our determination that mattered?

In the world today we often talk about a skills shortage and technical skills may be missing from many of the organisations. I say may as if they were really missing then the companies without the skills would close down or certainly not continue making profits. Perhaps the workload of the skilled  has become more because of this lack of skills, or perhaps the skilled have not become uncomfortable enough to find better positions and move.

The reality is that we are more resourceful than we seem to think, skills contribute to our success but it is only our determination that gets the job done. There are many knowledgable people who lack the will to get moving. Perhaps they believed the lie that knowledge was important, no knowledge is nothing if it is not exercised and shared. Having the knowledge to know we can do something means very little without the action needed to do the actual task.

Things get done because people are determined to succeed regardless of whether we think they have the skills or not. Edison did not have the skills to invent the lightbulb, he had the determination to make sure what he had created actually produced light. You can have all the necessary skills to be an engineer, but unless you tackle a project and complete something, gaining the experience needed you cannot actually call yourself an engineer.

Life and the skills we think we need are learnt in the doing, I often speak about relationships and the philosophy of leadership. You might think you have all the skills necessary to build a relationship, but unless you actually build and maintain a relationship, you cannot say you are good at relationships. We are wrong to assume we can train leaders and give them theory, but the reality is we cannot. Only when someone has personally developed their relationship skills (using their own determination) and are able to successfully engage with others building trust will they be considered influential.

Photo credit: Dana Lookadoo – Yo! Yo! SEO / Foter / CC BY