Character skills can be learned, and they are more important than cognitive skills
Summary
- Character skills such as resilience, discipline and determination are not magical. They are learned skills
- Character skills have more impact on our lives than cognitive skills such as business or marketing.
Details
- An experiment done in West Africa divided a group of entrepreneurs into 3. one group was control, the second were taught character skills and the third were taught cognitive skills.
- After just a week of training, their companies profits grew an average of 30% in the next 2 years, more than 3 x the benefit of the cognitive skills.
References
Quotes
I now see character less as a matter of will, and more as a set of skills. Character is more than just having principles. It’s a learned capacity to live by your principles. Character skills equip a chronic procrastinator to meet a deadline for someone who matters deeply to them, a shy introvert to find the courage to speak out against an injustice, and the class bully to circumvent a fistfight with his teammates before a big game. Those are the skills that great kindergarten teachers nurture—and great coaches cultivate
Recently a team of social scientists launched an experiment to test that hypothesis. They recruited 1,500 entrepreneurs in West Africa—a mix of women and men in their 30s, 40s, and 50s—who were running small startups in manufacturing, service, and commerce. They randomly assigned the founders to one of three groups. One was a control group: they went about their business as usual. The other two were training groups: they spent a week learning new concepts, analyzing them in case studies of other entrepreneurs, and applying them to their own startups through role-play and reflection exercises. What differed was whether the training focused on cognitive skills or character skills. In cognitive skills training, the founders took an accredited business course created by the International Finance Corporation. They studied finance, accounting, HR, marketing, and pricing, and practiced using what they learned to solve challenges and seize opportunities. In character skills training, the founders attended a class designed by psychologists to teach personal initiative. They studied proactivity, discipline, and determination, and practiced putting those qualities into action. Character skills training had a dramatic impact. After founders had
spent merely five days working on these skills, their firms’ profits grew by an average of 30 percent over the next two years. That was nearly triple the benefit of training in cognitive skills. Finance and marketing knowledge might have equipped founders to capitalize on opportunities, but studying proactivity and discipline enabled them to generate opportunities. They learned to anticipate market changes rather than react to them. They developed more creative ideas and introduced more new products. When they encountered financial obstacles, instead of giving up, they were more resilient and resourceful in seeking loans.