Intelligence is nothing without attitude

Two accounting giants in the UK have made moves that will jolt the job market in no small way. In May of this year, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) made a decision to exclude Undergraduate Courses at University and College (UCAS) points from its employment process, in the hope of recruiting broader talent.

This week, Ernst & Young, another one of the UK’s biggest graduate recruiters, has announced it will be removing the degree classification from its entry criteria, saying there is “no evidence” success at university correlates with achievement in later life. The accountancy firm is scrapping its policy of requiring a 2:1 and the equivalent of three B grades at A-level in order to open opportunities for talented individuals “regardless of their background”.

As far back as 1965, a report from the American College testing program categorically stated that ‘present evidence strongly suggests that college grades bear little or no relationship to any measures of adult accomplishment.

In another survey a group of Harvard students in the 1940s were followed through their life and the interesting discovery was that the men with higher GPAs were not the most successful compared with their peers in the areas of income, productivity, status and even relationships. The determinant of success was hidden in the ability to relate with people and emotional intelligence skills. In essence social attitude will always trump academic aptitude.

Now that we know this, we can chart our success path in school, at work or at home simply by purposefully working on our attitude.

IRRITATING

Few things are more irritating that intelligent people with lousy attitudes. The sad thing is that people with bad attitudes may not even realise that they have bad attitudes but there are some indicators that can help to identify what kind of attitude a person has.

First a person with a bad attitude displays a level of haughtiness. They are not teachable and they seem to be averse to taking correction.

They have a know it all air about them with little or no results to show for it. They love the sound of their voices and instead of cherishing the spirit of learning in silence they always like to finish sentences for people and somehow think they have the gift of reading minds. No matter what you teach them, they tell you it is what they have been thinking about before. Nothing ever seems to be new to them.

Another attribute is that when a person with a bad attitude reads or learns something they always wish detach themselves from the lessons and instead wish so and so was there to hear the message.

The person with the bad attitude never thinks that the learning is directed at them. They always think it’s for someone else.

People with bad attitudes always tend to be rigid. Not only are they resistant to change but anything that is not their idea is viewed with suspicion and they quietly resign themselves to watch it fail.

They actually hope it will fail to justify their position that they know it all.

There is a flip side to this point. When a person with a bad attitude sees something going wrong, instead of pointing attention to it, they keep quiet so that they will be able to gloat afterwards and say that they knew it would fail. This shows that people with bad attitudes are not team players. They are only interested in themselves and what benefits them.

A not too brilliant person with a great attitude is more valuable to an organisation  than a brilliant person with a bad attitude. One thing I learnt from Richard Branson which has worked for me greatly is to hire for attitude and train for skill.

Finally, next time you feel very great about your accomplishments, just pause, take a deep breath and look at people that you think that you are more intelligent than who have done greater things and making greater progress than you. That should give you a real attitude check for a while.