Which type of skill do you value more in your team members?

Our reader poll today asks: Which type of skill do you value more in your team members?

– Technical — being an expert at their work is key: 18.03%
– Functional — skills like leadership and problem solving are critical: 81.97%

It’s the soft skills that matter. While it’s great to be a domain expert in your field, clearly leaders value functional or soft skills more. Those soft skills can be applied to a broad array of issues, opportunities, and challenges and people who possess those skills are easier to move around the organization to solve other problems. What gets even more interesting is thinking beyond functional skills to “role-based skills” like devil’s advocate, cheerleader, driver, etc. Leaders who can manage all three critical types of skills are much more likely to succeed than those who stay focused solely on the technical competencies.

Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.