business training: talent or technical skills?

An experienced consultant in HR is asking in a forum whether priority in professional training should be focussing on either talent & interpersonal skills or mainly on technical skills.

Let me just give you an everyday example I am facing ( allow me to highlight the extremes in order to help draw conclusions).


SCHOOL A.
Children aged 8 are looking for information for themselves ( more or less true, more or less consistent) through books, internet, etc. They must be able to present this information to the rest of their classmates ( so, careful with having too much information! ). They make group essays, where they must interact and cross-learn from others, they must cooperate to finish the task. An 8 years-old student is asking her parents to buy a pen drive in order to have her files and information available.
5th grade students have created a bill that have presented and defended in front of other 5th grade students from other schools in a Parliament session with the attendance of Hble Sr Ernest Benach (president of the Catalan Parliament). They had to propose amendments and vote for the bills.
Some parents of this school believe that the contents the children learn are a bit poor.
At the end of the trimester they get home with an album that is under 100 pages/worksheets. The album follows a chronological order, mixing all the learning subjects.

SCHOOL B.
Children aged 8 are used to patiently and obediently wait for the instructions.
When they’re given a worksheet they will ask “Can I start now?” or “Can I colour it with markers?”
When asked to bring some information, some students will produce a 30 pages document, nicely stapled and with a front page ( ...that parents have printed from wikipedia. Obviously, they are incapable of explaining this information). Individual performance is very good ( but team work ends up in too many competitive disputes).
Children from 5th grade come home with a set of consolidation exercises to complete after a day trip where they have visited the Parliament, the zoo and the surrounding gardens.
The quarterly albums are over 150 pages, including an index, objectives, etc. All classified by dates and with colourful papers to separate the subjects.


In business terms, one would say that children in school B are very efficient, they reach their objectives and know what it means to work hard and accomplish the goals. The school A looks too lax, goals may not be accomplished with not bad consequences after all. Good children will always perform well in this type of school, and children with difficulties will spend a nice time but not really meet the goals.

However, if I had to choose a school for my children I’d would go for the school A without any doubt. The school A is focussing in the methods more than in the contents. The school A is teaching the children to learn to learn, to work cooperatively and develop both their intellectual, group and emotional skills.

Living in a fast changing environment, those who are not capable of adapting to changes – thus, being able to identify opportunities and being prepared to work efficiently with new people, new job, etc – will sooner or later fail at being a competent worker and a happy person.

My answer to this HR consultant is then: your technical skills will be constantly changing anyway . Focus on talent & interpersonal skills since without the latter you will get stuck !