What’s better: Skill or Friends?

So one leadership question that a lot of people seem to be talking about is whether it’s more important to have leadership skills, or to be able to develop relationships with other people.

Some people think that it’s better to have a well defined skill set, and through those skills you can attract people and influence them through the value you offer.

Others think that it’s better to have relationship skills, and with those relationship skills you can attract people, develop strong bonds with them, and influence them through your relationships.

After reviewing the different viewpoints, I’ve come to the conclusion that having a strong skill set and strong relationship skills is the real way to go.

Let’s look at some of those famous quotes:

“It’s not about who you know, but what you know.”

Essentially, the argument is that if you know a lot in a given subject, or you can perform a task exceptionally well, you will attract people and develop relationships around that skill.

While you can attract people with your skill you run the risk of people being interested in you only for your skill. This makes it a lot easier for people to take advantage of you, or take you for granted. When you are known by your skill, you are that skill, and your human qualities are irrelevant.

However, there are many benefits of specializing and developing your skills. For instance, if you’re good at working on cars, you become infinitely more attractive to someone who has a broken down car.

You can use this skill to attract people to you, and provide them with results. When you are able to deliver value to the other person, you will develop bonding and trust.

The other drawback is that the bonding and trust is built around your specific skill set, as opposed to your value as a person. Sure you are valuable to the marketplace, but in a non-marketplace context what value can you offer the other person?

I’ll give you an example.

When I came down with a mysterious illness in college I went to the doctor. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Finally, they admitted me to the hospital to run a bunch of tests to see what was wrong.

The doctor that was seeing me was rude. A real jerk. He had zero bedside manner. He came in, said what tests he was going to perform, and left. He cared nothing about how I felt, only doing his job and applying his skills.

The result was that he carried out the tests with utmost precision, and I trusted that he could do it, but I still felt really uneasy that he had no desire to be friendly. He was as cold as ice. He cared nothing about developing a doctor-patient bond. He was too pre-occupied with applying his skill set to care.

The result? While I would trust him to carry out the procedure, I would rather have had a doctor that actually cared about how I felt, and listened and tried to understand me and my situation.

“It’s not about what you know, but who you know.”

They say that the best way to the top of your profession is to wine and dine with those at the top of the profession. The more people you know in positions of power, the better your chances of success.

Here’s why this line of reasoning just doesn’t work for me:

Let’s say my doctor was a real social butterfly. He befriended all of the top doctors in his profession, and he tried to be their friend as much as possible. He focused so much on building his professional relationships, he didn’t take the time to improve his craft.

So, he was a mediocre doctor at best. He might not be ruining all of his procedures, but he’s not really improving his skills as a doctor, so he’s falling behind.

How much trust would I have in a doctor who just wanted to be my friend but was average when it came to administering tests and reading results? Agh! I don’t want any mess ups. It’s my health we’re talking about here.

Perhaps a better way to describe this is the teacher that wants to be everyone’s friend. In high school, there was this teacher that didn’t do very much of anything in his classes. He just sat around and gossiped with the class day after day, week after week.

Sure the students had fun “yucking” it up with the teacher, but the guy had little respect amongst the students because he didn’t actually teach. He didn’t apply his teaching skills, and the class suffered. When it came time to move on to the next grade and a harder teacher, the students were woefully unprepared.

The fact is, trying to focus on developing friendships with people to the point of neglecting your skill base is a bad idea. You can know people, but if you’re not adding value, you’re missing the boat.

Here’s the quote that I came up with:

“It’s about who you know, how well you know them, how much value you add to their life, how valuable your skill set is, and how much you are applying yourself.”

That’s the truth as I see it.

• Knowing people high-up can be beneficial, provided you know, like and trust that person, and that person knows, likes, and trusts you. The stronger your bond with that person and the more value you add to their life, the more they are likely to help you.
• You’ve got to have the skills that make you an attractive person to advance as a leader. If you’re an auto mechanic, you’ve got to know how to work on cars. It’s as simple as that. You’ve got to have the skill set and be improving the skill set every day.
• It’s not just enough to have super-awesome skills. You need to be applying those skills in meaningful ways. Apply your skills to add value to other people’s lives, and you’ll be able to influence those people in greater ways.

So, in a nutshell:

1. Get some awesome skills.
2. Use and develop those awesome skills.
3. Create and develop relationships with some movers and shakers.

What do you think?